Anyone used Vivastars unbranded media before?

[Faustus]

Their branded media sells for about 6 dollars each and records at 2x. Their 1x unbranded sells for about 2 dollars each.. anyone use these before? They only come in packs of 50 so I'm hesitant to order that many...

[agzz]

dont know about their dvd-r and dont know if this helps but i have used their cd-r for a while and i hav enot had a single problem with them in what i guess is 100+ burns now. neither have my friend, that i know of, with atleast as many burns.

[birdygal]

I have bought a 50 pk and burned 10 so far not a single one with problems, It is the only media I found so far to burn on their panasonic vivastar branded dvd -r/ram recorder. Played on both apex 1000 and 1100 set tops

[Faustus]

thanks for the good info... I might just take the pluge, plus I spoke with the store and if they dont work for me they'll let me send them back for store credit. So I don't totally lose either way...

[wellsi]

I've used dozens of the Vivastar unbranded without any problems. At £1.30 each, I could afford a few coasters but so far none have gone wrong.

Cheers,

[R0N|N]

the unbranded Vivastar DVD-R don't work for me....
I run Panasonic LF-D310, and I can burn no problems.
But the files are unreadable, whatever on the burner itself or my Pioneer IDE DVD-ROM.

Princo kinda worked, and Mitsui definitely worked.

I ordered 150 pieces of vivacrap dvd-r from this shitty shop : http://www.thepriceiswrite.co.uk

HE won't take them back.

I wanna die I now...........

[Alasdair]

Sorry to hear about your bad luck with the Matshita LF-D310.

I'm also struggling to find reasonably priced DVD-R media to work with this machine. I shelled out for 25 Princo unbranded with no luck at all. The machine doesn't even recognise them as writable media.

I have had success with Apple branded disks (not too expensive at about £3.50 each from Dabs). I also paid for a couple of TDK and Panasonic disks from PCWorld for abou £10 each, just after buying the drive, which worked fine.

The guy I bought the 25 unbranded disks from is being totally reasonable about it (www.cdr-by-mail.co.uk). He has even sent me a few samples of Princo branded, Duradisk and DataSafe. Unfortunately none of them work perfectly. I guess I will have to ask for my money back, or I might see if he can procure me some Mitsui, if you say they work OK.

Have you investigated a firmware upgrade? I am completely clueless, but I read about the possibility of it helping in another Forum.

All the best, Al.

[Eug]

the unbranded Vivastar DVD-R don't work for me....
I run Panasonic LF-D310, and I can burn no problems.
But the files are unreadable, whatever on the burner itself or my Pioneer IDE DVD-ROM.

Princo kinda worked, and Mitsui definitely worked.

I ordered 150 pieces of vivacrap dvd-r from this shitty shop : http://www.thepriceiswrite.co.uk

HE won't take them back.

I wanna die I now...........

1 Princo disc I tried worked on the LF-D311SC. I'll buy a 5-pack for testing.

[wellsi]

My second recording on the new white faced Bulkpak discs (made by Princo I have since found out) failed to finalize. Now it only plays on the DMR, sending my other standalone dvd player into a loading frenzy...

Guess Princo are just a hit and miss afair... Only bought 20 of them...

[Eug]

Well, it's turning out most of the Princo discs I have are crap. Most read fine in the burner but screw up elsewhere. Actually not even all will work in the burner.

It turns out I was just lucky with my first disc. And actually, I had tried that disc in 3 or 4 drives/players before I posted my above message and it worked fine. It was totally useless on the 5th player unfortunately, which I tested yesterday. That 5th player works fine with Apple media.

I will avoid these Princo discs like the plague from now on, as others have suggested.

[wellsi]

the unbranded Vivastar DVD-R don't work for me....
I run Panasonic LF-D310, and I can burn no problems.
But the files are unreadable, whatever on the burner itself or my Pioneer IDE DVD-ROM.

Princo kinda worked, and Mitsui definitely worked.

I ordered 150 pieces of vivacrap dvd-r from this shitty shop : http://www.thepriceiswrite.co.uk

HE won't take them back.

I wanna die I now...........

Ronin,
The site's Terms state he'll take things back if they don't work. He also (rightly) states your consumer rights aren't affected... Well, if the goods don't do what they state they should, you can demand a refund. The discs advertised are not Vivastar though, they're datasafe. And even though he has a flashing advert stating dvd-r for 85p, when you click the link, they're £1.49 inc vat. Chuck in false advertising whilst you're at it! (grin)

[R0N|N]

ok after a bit struggle, I've got Vivastar to accept these 150 unbranded DVD-R's as RMA

I couldn't access the files with my Pioneer DVD-106S, and a binary compare between the files on HDD and on a burned media in the LF-D310 gave 70% mismatch.

I'm supposed to receive the replacements early next week, I'll keep u guys updated.

seems these cheap dvd-r's(0.85 GPB a piece) had a real shitty recording layer, the guy on the phone said he would send me some repalcements with the latest dye version

Cheers!,

and if u buy shitty Vivastar media, you know u can call their swiss office, and try get RMA

BTW anyone got the DVD INFO program to see the DVD-R manufacturer working on the Panasonic LF-D310 ?
I get a SCSI Error, but some of the other functions work fine.
I run win2k server, adaptec aspi 4.60

The guy from Vivastar said A124 firmware has only few improvements for the FIREWIRE version of the drive, and that I should use A123.
Too bad they still didn't send it to me,
I'll try ask again and I will submit it on www.firmware.fr.st and I will let u guys know

[sdenvers]

I bought a pack of 100 unbranded DVDRs from scan.co.uk for £140 or thereabouts. They've since come down to about £100. At the time I didn't know there were incompatibilities, but do now.

Anyway, they show up as Vivastar. Having burned 80 of them, I haven't had a single problem with one of them in my Pioneer A04 or DVR7000. Unfortunately the Sony DVD player doesn't recognise them so I can't really share them, but that's not a problem. I'll just use better media if it's for someone else.

I'm probably going to buy another 100 unless someone can recommend a cheaper place?

[R0N|N]

ok, in case anyone wanna know, I received the 2x certified Vivastar branded media with jewel case as replacement.

works just great now

too bad my Pana is 1x, but what the heck, I can burn DVD-R just like I used to burn CD-R : FLAWLESSLY

I could tell you where to buy 0.85 GBP media but it doesn't work, so that would be quite pointless, wouldn't it

[sdenvers]

Ronin, would you recommend thepriceiswrite? I'm also after a good/cheap source for DVD cases (2 per case).

[R0N|N]

Well, read my former messages in this thread, the guy never got back to me after I had the problem with these 150 shitty vivastar DVD-R I receveid.

he sent me emails everyday before I received the blanks to know if I received the pack, and then nothing when I couldn't burn these medias.

I believe he's selling the coasters from vivastar, someone picking them up from the factory garbage :P

this shop is like 99% of online shops, they are happy to help you order, but if you have problems, you're out of luck!

like they say on isonews, "if it looks too good, then it's probably a scam"

[sdenvers]

this shop is like 99% of online shops, they are happy to help you order, but if you have problems, you're out of luck!

like they say on isonews, "if it looks too good, then it's probably a scam"

Yeah, Scan are like that. If you need to return anything for a refund you may as well not bother, unless you enjoy wasting your time.

The guy at valuemedia at least answers the phone and will send out samples (not free though). Not sure if he knows much about DVD-Rs but he probably knows more than I do.

I've ordered a bunch of stuff from bigpockets.co.uk after speaking to a guy there including some gen 3 BETAs, whatever they are.