Pioneer firmware 1.40 only burns at 1x

[timmy4]

Has anyone installed the new pioneer firmware 1.40 and tried ritek disks?

I have installed the new 1.4 firmware direct from pioneer (have a pioneer A04)and now all the dvd-r media that burnt at 2x (Traxdata, DVD Master and Lynx - all quality media from Ritek) now all burn at 1x.

However the Generation 4 green bulkpaq still burn at 2x as they did before.

Any suggestions why ritek won't burn at 2x

[bunginuts]

I recently upgraded to 1.40 hoping that Pioneer would finally fix the many flaws in the A04 or 104 drives but imagine that, more problems. I will never buy a Pioneer product being that I've been pushed on the break of insanity trying to get this god awful dvd burner to work as it should. All my media burns at 1x as well. Best you can do is revert down to 1.33 and then upgrade to a hacked upgrade to burn at 2x. Here is where I got all media to burn at 2x http://firmwares.co.uk/
I wish you the best of luck on this quest.

[LanceSteel]

I recently upgraded to 1.40 hoping that Pioneer would finally fix the many flaws in the A04 or 104 drives but imagine that, more problems.

What types of problems do you have? I upgraded to 1.40 and my player seems to be exactly as it was before (with no problems.) My player has always burned at 1x so I guess I've never missed the 2x burning.

[Thorn]

Many websites like allmediaoutlet.com have a disclaimer that the cheaper ritek discs are 2x ONLY for the 104/A04 firmware 1.31. They also sell "True 2x" ritek discs that I'd imagine you could burn at 2x with firmware 1.40. I'm pretty sure that's because they decided the old media wasn't reliable enough at 2x.

To summarize, media has to be approved before it can burn at 2x and I think the reason Ritek discs could be burned at 2x and now can't is that Pioneer decided that the discs were reliable at 2x and then changed their mind. Yes, it could be political but I kindof doubt it.

If you really want to burn at 2x then buy 2x media. If you want cheap media then learn to deal with 1x burn time. For those of us with valuable data, it's not worth hacking a firmware to burn at 2x on media that's not reliable at 2x...

Bunginuts: what other flaws have you noticed with the 104?

[bunginuts]

Some other problems I have are like the burner just stops writing while the burning ap says its still burning. And it only writes the media at 2x, can't choose 1x if thats the speed of my media.

[Thorn]

Hmm, you couldn't burn at 1x even before upgrading to 1.40? I've burned several 2x discs at 1x with Nero at 1.32 and below. Are you using a different app? Other than that, I don't know why it would stop burning -- maybe you got a bad drive (if quality control had some problems, that would explain why there are many who love their 104s and some who say they hate theirs)