pioneer 105

[hrtnpj]

Hi Guys,
Can anyone suggest some good dvd-r's to use on my pionner 105 as all i seem to be making is coaters out of the datawrite 4x red im using which my daughters thinks is funny. Also any ideas about upgrading the firmware on the dvd-rw drive as it came pre-installed with my computer from packard bell and the firmware updates on here wont work. Thanks in advance.

[MeTaLgEaRsOoTy]

well try looking at www.rpc1.org.
thats the place to look for firmware.
try the forums,im sure theres talk about some of the 105s that come prebuilt into pcs.it might be different firmware,or you might need to reflash it so as its recognised as a REAL pioneer.
i think the latest firmware on that site for the 105 is NILS 1.33 region free,12 speed max rip,2speed recording on 1 speed media.
as for dvd-rs,IMO,i thinnk the datawrite red4speed are shite.
they say that they are now guaranteed 4speed,because earlier batches were flawed and shouldnt have been certifiedfor 4speed,but there still shite.
bulkpaq tango 4speed are a very popular disc,but there still quite poor,and you really only get what you pay for.currenty i see that you can pick these up for as little as £15 for 25.
try something like an infiniti or ritek,maybe even a brand name,like memorex.
i bought a pack of 25 mirror platinum dvd-rs,and must say that they were excellent discs.quite cheap too.
but lately ive been sticking with infiniti dvd-rs.
one more thing,have you tried to slow down the record speed to maybe 1 or 2 speed on the reds.
like i say flawed batches on datawrite reds and bulkpaq tangos were available and some stockists were still selling them at the same price even though they were,in some instances,meant to be disposed of.

[BJ_M]

ritek disks work great , apple disks work great with the pioneer 105

[hrtnpj]

Thanks for that, i tried using the datawrite at 1x speed and they still messed up at aroung 4 gig. ive tried loads of different programs and still had the same problem.

[MeTaLgEaRsOoTy]

yeh thought so,the datawrite discs you probably have are from the "old batch".
the ones that were substandard.
like i say,they say that problem i ssolved now,and different manufacturers and suppliers are used,but thats not entirely true,as its the bulkpaq supp/manus,they use.
out of the frying pan into the fire,i think.
but as for Ritek discs,yeah,there a good brand.

[amichael]

That's all very interesting.
I have had my 105 now for about a year and ever since day one I have been using Bulkpaq and datawrite DVD-r because, simply, they were cheap - I mean about 59p each. All have made excellent copies. A few times some of the DVD-r wouldn't play on certain players, but that turned out to be the software I used to write to the blank dvd-rs.
Interesting to note earlier someone mention platinum mirror DVD-r . I too have recently tried these as they 'looked good' even though they were slightly more money, but out of the 20 I bought - about half were coasters as the end of the films the picture began to break up.

I have heard from countless places that Ritek are the sure good ones out there, but now there seems to be so many makers claiming the 'ritek' deep purple coating. But me, I won't pay there prices until I get problems with the very cheepies. Bear in mind I give my DVD-R on many various friends all with different DVD players and received no problems !!!

Finally to add that I did upgrade to the region free firmware now 1.33 about 2 months ago - nothings changed, is it my imagination or has the read speed improved on this version ?