Beware of the silver top BeAll's. Never again for me.

[tgferg67]

I've had skipping problem near the 3/4 mark to end of movies with silver top 1x BeAll's that I bought from Meritline. 5 out of 15 burns have been bad.
I have burned a 100 of the old Samsung BeAll's with the labled top with no such problems.

I burned these disks 1x speed with a Pioneer AO4 burner.
The Nero CD Speed transfer rate test show several dips in the bad disks right around the 3/4 mark.

[NIIDeep]

Great... I just bought a 50 pack of the 4x BeAll's from Meritline.com.

So I'm a bit confused. Are there two versions of "BeAll" media? One from Samsung and one from BeAll Developers (something like that). Or did Samsung phase out and someone else take over.

Let me know.

Thanks.

[Saminai]

BeAll is a subdivision of samsung, like a spin off...
They're supposed to be pretty good...

But then who knows what shit meritline is selling these days...they're a really awful retailer. i don't buy anything from them anymore.

[VinnySem]

Wow, this is the first complaint I've ever heard about the BeAll disks. I have used them exclusively for about 6 months, using about 100 of the disks, and I've had less than 5 bad burns, all of which were ID10T errors. I can even burn them @ 2X in my A04 with the 2X4All hacked FW. What is the media code from DVDInfo?

[tgferg67]

The media code for the silver tops is BeAll G00001.
The media code of the 100 previous "old" Samsung BeAll's that I had no issues with is also BeAll G00001.

The new silver tops I bought from Meritline are not the same quality as the old Samsung BeAll's. The Nero CD Speed transfer rate test shows several dips in the test where the old Samsung BeAll's show a perfect line with no dips.

[ROBERT BLACK]

Just great. I have two white top labeled Be All DVD-rs left, and was in the market for more. Now, I'll have to avoid the silver topped ones.

[Lobe]

avoid Meritline at all costs! they seem to find the crappiest media in existence and slap a brand name on it.. you never know what you will get from exceprt that it will be useless crap. with the worst customer service EVER!

[NIIDeep]

Can this get any worse? I'm suppose to be getting my "BeAlls" from Meritline.com today. I'll see how they go. I hope it doesn't mess up my drive.

I read alot of negative comments about Meritline.com and this is why I bought stuff from supermediastore.com. But supermediastore.com didn't carry the BeAlls.

If this is crap stuff.... I'm never going to buy from these people again. I'll probably stick to big and expensive name brands. Less trouble.

[Roll Tide]

FWIW, I just bought 100 silver tops from Rima.com. These are the first I've used of the BeAll brand, but I've burned approx. 10 between my Sony DRU-500A, Panasonic LF-D521, and Panasonic DMR-E80H. I haven't had any problems, but mine came from Rima. I hope this problem is just isolated.

I liked my first experience with them. They shipped same day as my order. I got a good price, $99 for 100, but I noticed to day the price has dropped to $90 for 100.

I've only ordered once from Meritline. No problems with the media I got from them, but I was not impressed with their bulk disc packaging. They didn't use spindle-packs to prevent the discs from rubbing together. I think I like Shop4Tech and Rima better than these guys because of this.

[LanEvo7]

Have you tried returning them?

[tgferg67]

Have you tried returning them?

Unfortunately I ordered them way before I needed them and am past the 30 day return date.

Roll Tide,
Did you Nero CD Speed or any other tests after your burns or do you just assume they are ok because they play in a particular dvd player with no problems? The discs are more likely to skip in more "picky" dvd players but the skipping problems are justified in the bad results of the Nero CD Speed transfer rate test. Good dvd media plays in all dvd players and and can be verified by testing after the burn. My bad discs do play in most dvd players without problems but these are BeAll,s not some bottom of the barrel media an I expect them to play in any dvd player.

[Jerry]

I've had the same problem with the Beall 1X inkjet printables. They play in 2 of the 4 players and computers I have. The Riteks play in them all.

Jerry

[NIIDeep]

Well I got my BeAlls today and I've burned one disk at 4x and it worked! However, they "feel" alot cheaper than the Riteks. They seem to be thinner and the purple dye seems to be very light. Much lighter than the Riteks or any of the other media I have. My order from Meritline.com seem to go through smoothly. Nothing out of the ordinary. I got a 50pk spindle. Everything was sealed, came in a spindle with labels etc. So for now they seemed to be okay.

It almost seemed like 4x burning is a sure thing so I tried burning a Ritek G04 again. And all of a sudden DVD Decrypter is burning at 4x with no problems.. I'm not sure what's going on but the only thing I did was install the ASPI 4.6 driver. However, I'm not using it in DVD Decrypter. Still using the standard SPTI driver. Maybe my first three Riteks were bad??

In any case, I'm successfully burning at 4x with a Sony DRU500AX firmware 2.0f. No hacked firmware or anything. And maybe ASPI 4.6 installed has something to do with it. Media I tried that burn successfully at 4x are TDK DVD+R, BeAll DVD-R, and Ritek G04 DVD-R.