I just bought a 50 pack of 8X tonight and was about to post a question about this very thing. The package tells me I need to upgrade my firmware if I have a 2.4 or 4X drive or I could have potential problems using the media.

Will let you know.......

Keith

[edit] :Just went to Dell and there is no firmware update available for my drive.......aaarrrggghh

John,
thanks for that, my other option was Ritek 8x, going to order a few 100 for Taiyos.
Bob.

I'm buring 8X Riteks at 12X with my new Pioneer DVR-109. No problem so far but I plan to keep burning the really important stuff on 4X at 4X just to be safe.

dvdrhelp also says Ritek G04 is good, G05 is "mixed", specific data at dvdrhelp.

Taiyo Yuden 8x seems better, rated good at the same site, but not flawless.

Sigh.

Hey, if it's not too late, meritline.com has G04 RIteks, still available. 500 for 32 american cents each. Or 100 for 34 cents ea. Those are the prices for Printable. It may be cheaper for non printables. I didn't check the price, but they have those too. (You got me nervous and I ordered some just now.)

I'm using Verbatim 8x DVD-R, supplied in 50 pack spindles, and burning at 4x in a Pioneer A04 unit without problems.

Kevin

I've just got a bunch of 8x Ritek G5s that I'm using with a Sony 4x burner and an 8 bay duplicator loaded with fully updated Pioneer A09 burners. Of the fifty some odd disks I've burned so far, I had one fail on the burn, but no problems on any of the 6 DVD players I've tried with random playback of the burned discs. I'm a little leery because of other peoples reported problems, but my own experience in an admittadly short period seems pretty positive.

I followed a thread on one of the other boards (relating to DVD media) that said Ritek had a QC problem with 4x and 8x media about this time last year, and really suffered a reputation hit because of it. They are apparently doing fine now.

I've used nothing but Ritek 4x media until last fall, when I bought my first 100-pack of 8x (G05) media. Apparently I managed to avoid whatever bad batches came out of Taiwan--every disk has played satisfactorily except for one. I replaced that client's disk with an identical one, which played fine. The original disk plays well on all my DVD players.

I burn the 8x disks only at 8x, and have burned about 150 of the G05s to date. Ritek has captured so much of the market in such a short time, I wonder if some of the negative reports are salted there by competitors?

Boomhower:

Since you mention a speed of "2.4x", you must be using +R media, about which I know very little. I am not aware of any mandatory firmware upgrade over on the -R side, though there was one for my old Pioneer burner a couple of years ago when 4x -R media first came out.

Incidentally, I did a brief search on Ritek a few minutes ago, and found a two-year-old article where Ritek says they are planning on having a 40% worldwide market share of all DVD media by about now. I'd love to see one of their factories in operation.

I've got 1 DVR 109 and 3 DVR 108s in the duplicator. I probably need to update the firmware in the 108s, could be fun doing that as they're in the duplicator, guess I'll have to put them into a PC to do it, groan.
I tried one 8x Maxell at 12x in the DVR-109 and it burnt and played back fine in that drive but every DVD player had a major dummy spit over it, probably need to update the firmware in that drive as well, groan again.
Problem is, just cause something plays OK doesn't mean it's 100% OK nor does it tell us how long it's going to last. The Taiyo Yudens are nearly 3x the price of the Riteks that I've been using but for mastering that doesn't even rate a blip on the radar and most of the stuff I duplicate I also author, shoot, edit etc so I try to use the best of everything that I can. I just did a run of 30 DVDs, the damn slicks are all black and printed out on my inkjet I think the ink on the paper cost more than the blank DVD, pays to keep it all in perpective.
Bob.

I'm using 8x Verbatim in a Pioneer 4x burner no problems and no rejects.

JJK

From 8x I used only TDK DVD+R
With any problems:
NEC 2500A (official fw 1.06) - 4x max
NEC 2500 (modified to NEC 2510) - 6x max
NEC 3520 (official fw 1.04) - 4x max
NEC 3520 (modified fw to 1F3) - 8x
modified firmware 3.22 for NEC 3520 not try yet

FWIW -
www.america1.com has a pretty competitive price list, but more important a really complete list of firmware downloads -

in fact, if one of you "pricecheckers" has a better source, would you list it here.

I'm lazy - once I get a reliable source of media, I tend to stick with it, and I've been ordering from America1 for years - but now feel I should really re-check their prices. Any thoughts?
v

John,
I burn at 1x - 2x max. Never had a disc returned. Also, you mentioned Verbatim 8x media above. What does the media ID code say on it? Who actually made it for Verbatim?

John

A quote from SonyEPM dated 7/1/03:
"For best results, with maximum player compatibility, we advise burning at 1x. Same thing with CD masters- 1x is preferred."

I've heard the same thing, but offer a few points:

(1) I think the burner does a quick calibration check for evey blank. Since blanks from every vendor vary so much, I believe the burners do this to make sure they have the laser power set just right. I also think I've read somewhere that some burners even do this at several points of the burn process. But how could they? Wouldn't that screw up the whole process? I honestly don't know the intricacies of disk burning, only that it's just that--an intricate process.

(2) It is not uncommon to see a disk burned at ANY speed start to show read errors on those PI/PO charts the testing authorities run. The fact that a disk is certified by a vendor and burner to burn at 8x means that the error rate is "acceptable" in that the built-in error correction process fixes the errors before passing the data on. The implication is that going higher would be unaccceptable in that some disks might be under but others might be over the threshold error rate that results in uncorrectable read errors. Again, it's a complicated process.

I personally burn my Ritek 8x dvds at 8x. I burn my 48x CDs at 40x, only because I discovered my CD burner apparently overheats if I do a batch at 48x.

"www.america1.com has a pretty competitive price list, but more important a really complete list of firmware downloads"

That would be Americal (not america1.com), I have bought from them for years also. Good customer service and ground is overnight in SoCal.

Since late last year I have found more interesting deals at Supermediastore.

The more recent sources I have seen indicated very clearly that you should not burn DVDs at speeds much lower than rated due to the new types of dyes used.

I have not seen any inkjet-printable Taiyo Yuden, so I bought Ritek G04s and G05s which worked very well in my newer burners only.

Now if only I could update the DVD burner in my Compaq R3160 laptop to use these. It is very picky about disks, and after updating the firmware I haven't had any luck with even G04s, sigh. Project...

Mitsubishi Chemical are good discs but they are not the only ones who make discs for Verbatim. CMC Magnetics, Taiyo Yuden, Ricoh, MKM, and Matsushita all make and have made discs for Verbatim. Moreover, Verbatim became infamous for first using MCC, then switching to CMC Magnetics (a pathetic company) then switching back to MCC and a few others.
Some companies still do the following: Use a different write strategy than the media ID they burn into the discs. In other words, a write strategy of 2x on a disc with a media ID of 4x for example.

John

Just because I have nothing better to do this Sunday morning, I have just gone through a random sampling of my Verbatim media dating back to April of 1997. All of them have returned the "MCC" media ID code. All of them are the Verbatim "DataLife Plus" discs. I've never bought any of their low-end discs and they may very well have been manufactured by someone else.
=========
Despite the fact that I do have other things to do this Sunday morning I'll refer you to this page.

John

On americal.com not all existed firmwares and only oficial (not full feachured)
More better firmware page http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php
or http://club.cdfreaks.com/forumdisplay.php?s=b1b4a43925e9d6f54aab17646812cbd6&f=61

Just to set the record straight. I use a Plextor drive for CD mastering using CDA, burn onto either gold or platinum mastering grade CDs. Error tests (Plextools) post burn indicate lower errors buring at 20x than at 4x, 4x is as slow as the drive will go. I don't think the difference actually means anything, the duplicators will read the disk and in the process any errors will be corrected. If they hit an uncorrectable error then they reject the master.

My main goal in using expensive media for CD mastering is longevity, these masters should be good for 100 years, perhaps 300. To date no one is able to produce a DVD capabale of anything like that, we've looked at DVDs made using the same technology, gold and thylocynanine however such a DVD would only burn at 1x and not play in domestic DVD players. Given those restrictions and the plant needs a minimum order for 100K units it's just not commercially viable, sadly no one puts much value in making something that'll last longer than they will. For anything that you need / want to preserve for posterity mastering grade audio CDs are about all there is and you'll need an aweful lot to store any amount of video although perhaps with the new H.264 codecs this may be more feasible now.
Bob.

100 years from now no one will know what those discs are let alone play them. Premature April fool joke.

JJK

100 years!!?? My experience tells me that if you can get ANY kind of recordable DVD to play on ANY player a year and a half after it was recorded, you're doing incredibly well!

The general rule of thumb I've heard from the people at the dv.com dvd forum is to burn your disks at their max listed speed. The errors tend to be least that way, but only slightly.