Ritek G05 Only Burns at 4X on DVR-108

[G13]

I just installed a Pioneer DVR-108 with Firmware 1.10 into my dual 1.25 G4. I am using Ritek G05 which are rated at 8X. I was hoping Toast 6.07 would allow me to burn the Riteks at 12X or at the worst 8X. Unfortunately, Toast will only let me burn Riteks at 4X. Has anyone else had the same problem with the same drive and media? Is there a solution that will allow me to burn Ritek 8X discs at their rated speed? For what it's worth, I'm running OS 10.3.5. Thanks.

[g4cube]

A friend of mine has the exact set up that you have and they burn at 8x or more so i think that its the discs that are not a good batch or low grade media or fakes.

[WiseWeasel]

My Ritek G04 burn at 8x on my DVR-107, and they're 4x rated, though I try to set it to 4x so I don't shorten its lifespan.

[G13]

Thanks for the replies.
These are the 1st discs I've burned with the DVR-108. I'll go buy another brand of 8X discs to see if they burn faster than 4X. I used DVD Media Inspector to double check the discs. DVD Media Inspector says they're Ritek G05's, but from reading this forum I know those codes aren't always what they're pretending to be.

[WiseWeasel]

I've had excellent luck with Ritek, which I've found to have the best compatibility of all DVD-R media I've tried (and I've tried a bunch, on many different players). The problem might lie in your drive's firmware, which might only accept to burn at 8x speed on media made by 'approved' manufacturers or distributors, regardless of their rating. Unfortunately, there is no flasher utility yet for the 108 drive for OSX. You'd have to install it in a PC to flash it to some non-restricting firmware, or wait until the Mac version of DVRFlash 2.0 comes out.

[G13]

"The problem might lie in your drive's firmware, which might only accept to burn at 8x speed on media made by 'approved' manufacturers or distributors, regardless of their rating. Unfortunately, there is no flasher utility yet for the 108 drive for OSX. You'd have to install it in a PC to flash it to some non-restricting firmware, or wait until the Mac version of DVRFlash 2.0 comes out."

The drive has firmware version 1.10. I haven't been able to find any firmware newer than that. Is there any firmware newer than 1.10? I can flash it in a PC if I have to.

[g4cube]

No newer firmware than 1.10 that i know of but look at http://forum.rpc1.org/ for further info.

[WiseWeasel]

It doesn't have to be newer (than 1.10), as long as it's been hacked to read and write at maximum speed regardless of the media brand. I had to do this on my DVR-107 drive to get it to read and write at maximum speed. There's beta firmware available with region-free and maximum speed support for the 108 here:
http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=28550
There's a (conspicuous) link to the beta firmware there. You'll need the beta version of DVRFlash 2.0 for PC as well. Once you install that beta firmware, you should be able to burn at up to 16x speed with Ritek G05 media. If you want to be safer, you might want to wait for the final non-beta hacked firmware for that drive.

[sjk]

So far I've had 100% success with Ridata media (4x -R/RW, 8x +R) audio/video burns to the DVR-107 on my eMac 1.25. The 8x +r only burns at 4x; I was mostly curious just to see if it would work and am happy it did. IIRC the -R/RW are both G05 and DVD Media Inspector didn't recognize the +RW. I have no clue what the shelf life of this media might be.

Anyone know if the DVR-107 firmware hack can be used with an internal SuperDrive (e.g. on the eMac)? I've seen some version that'll upgrade directly from a Mac instead of a PC but it wasn't clear if that includes the SuperDrive. Not that I want to risk doing it...

[WiseWeasel]

Yes, you can do it easily on a Mac running OS X using the 107 firmware available here:
http://www.macetvideo.com/flashpioneerosx/flashpioneerosx.html

[sjk]

That's good to know, thanks. And that's the version I was thinking of, updated from 1.16 to 1.18 since last I looked.

[G13]

The problem I spoke of at the beginning of this thread just got a bit more wierd. My order of 50 Ritek G05's arrived on 2 spindles of 25 discs each. I just opened the 2nd spindle and tried one of the discs on that spindle. The G05's from the 2nd spindle will burn at up to 12X. I tried another disc from the 2nd spindle, and I got the same 12X burn speed. Going back to a disc from the first spindle, I'm stuck at 4X again. Looking at both spindles of discs, they are 100% identical visually. I put discs from both spindles in DVD Media Inspector, and all codes are identical. Wierd, eh?

[WiseWeasel]

In the immortal words of Danny DeVito in his starring role as Martin Weir in Get Shorty, "tres bizarre". With the hacked firmware update, you should be able to get 16x from both batches.