fake ritek? 4 straight failures

[disturbed1]

I haven't said Ritek sucks on a global basis. But it does for me.

I'm with you though, as I recomend Ritek to others since so many people have good luck with it.

I still think it's gremlins, or the way the moon is aligned over my house. But since Prodisc works so well with all of my burners, I'm not complaining. I just like the looks of the matte finish after it's been printed with my Casio.

[adam]

Oh I wasn't implying that you were generalizing. I just meant that its really not possible to broadly classify one brand of media as being definitively bad or definitively good without generalizing, and alot of people have a bad habit of doing this in these forums.

And yeah, I think far too many people neglect to account for the gremlin factor.

[porphyra]

That is true. I keep harping about not generalising. Everyone raves about Riteks and craps about CMC. However, its worked totally opposite for me until now. But I know it isnt a general trend.

Riteks haven't worked for me. I am not saying that Riteks suck and its good it works for others since its a great bang for the buck. I just spend my buck elsewhere.

[disturbed1]

I knew you weren't saying that I said that.

I think what happend is, with my first A05, a little water moisture got to it, it spread to all of my other drives. Being that I'm a night owl I think a few food crumbs got dropped on the tray, the sunlight weapon won't help

On a serious note though,
I have read more and more reports of bad batches from the matte Riteks (red plastic wrap). User error is always an option, but most report that other media works fine.

BJ_M, and others that have good luck, are using the printables. You too Adam?

[northcat_8]

A few threads ago, about media I posted this.

I called Ritek when my order wasn't what I actually ordered. They told me that they had been having problems with knockoff discs being sold as Ritek.

As far as the media goes, I'm with Adam, I've never had playing issues no matter the type of media I used. I actually went an bought several different brands of meda, burned the same ISO to each brand using Decrypter, all burned at 4x and all play in my Pioneer stand alone just fine.

So I am of the opinion now that I think your burner and burn app has much more to do with it. Media compatibility?? Jury is still out on that, I haven't gotten to best buy or circuit city yet.

[NamDekan]

I havent had any problems with the spindles of ritek from newegg, only dvd-r to give me troubles so far has been memorex even a couple khypermedia i had never gave me as much trouble as these memorex..

but yeah, i hope i dont run into any bad batches of these riteks in the near future

[jeex]

a friend of mine recently bought a NEC 2500a dvd burner, i hacked the firmware on it and tried some verbatim 4x dvd-r's (mcc) & verbatim 4x dvd+r's (ricohjpn01).. and i must say i am duly impressed..

the dvd+r's burned @ 8x speed flawlessly, and i set the book type to DVD-ROM..

the dvd-r's burned @ 6X speed flawlessly..

--

a 30 pack of the verbatim 4x dvd+r's (ricohjpn01) & dvd-r's (mcc) cost $35 for a pack of 30.. great price for great discs on a great burner..

i think i might buy one of those nec dvd burner, hack the firmware & load up on the dvd+r's.. i'm normally a dvd-r guy.. but the +r's burn @8x (instead of 6x for dvd-r) AND i can set the book type to DVD-ROM..

the burner is only $128 too.. the combination of this burner, with hacked firmware, with the quality & price of the media is a very very good combination in my book..

i may wait about a week or two to make sure he doesnt run in to any problems, but my initial impressions of it are very good..

the discs may cost a bit more than ritek, but the quality, speed & booktype wipes ritek off the table..

there was only one weird thing..

he has a dvd player than wont play dvd+rw(ricohjpn01).. so i set the book type to dvd-rom & burned a movie to it, but it wouldnt play.. the reflectivity of a dvd+rw is the same as a dual layer disc (i think), so it should have played.. i'm kinda curious why it didnt...

[Hawseman]

Jeex,

I'd strongly suggest you buy a new system before you upgrade to a new burner....you may have issues burning at 8x on your overtaxed system. I'm quite surprised you achieve successful 4x burns with all of those drives. You system barely meets WinXP's minimum requirements. Let's think for a second here....my gut feeling is that you could get better gains on your rip/re-encoding with a faster system.

IMO, the Pioneer 06's are one of the best burners ever sold. The NEC is probably better at burning (especially cheaper media), but alot of people have troubles using it to read/rip. It is very picky with scratched and/or dirty media.

I'd try one of your friends Verbs (MCC -R) on your burner...I think you'll like that media...my retail Pioneer came bundled with one. MCC burns excellent in my Pioneer and my Liteon.

[disturbed1]

Jeex,

I'd strongly suggest you buy a new system before you upgrade to a new burner....you may have issues burning at 8x on your overtaxed system. I'm quite surprised you achieve successful 4x burns with all of those drives. You system barely meets WinXP's minimum requirements. Let's think for a second here....my gut feeling is that you could get better gains on your rip/re-encoding with a faster system.

No need to upgrade anything.

A PIII @ 800 is more than enough power to burn at 8x. It is only moving data. Nothing else.

My Celeron 1000 burns to 4 A05's at the same time, while using ~10% CPU.


It's the disk subsytem that is important in burning (moving data), as long as the drives can supply the data fast enough, which any ATA 66 dirve can. 8x is only ~10MB/s. Hell, even ATA 33 can handle that.

[Gazorgan]

Your assuming his controllers are worth a dam. I would have trouble doing 8x on my system. It can be done, but only on a fully de-fragged drive, and then only burning DVD video (sequential reading).

I'm around 197/200 on RITEK G04's. 2 Coasters were Nero for sure. It hink most of the people burning coasters (how do you know it's a coaster?) have DVDRW/MEDIA/Player combination issues.

[disturbed1]

Your assuming his controllers are worth a dam.

I am. Can't speak about about VIA chipsets/controllers.

I'm using an ASUS CUBX with 4 IDE on board channels (8 drive max), each burner primary master, nothing else on any IDE channel.

2941UW dual channel SCSI controller with a 9gb system dirve, and 36gb removable image only drive.

When I got my NEC 2500, I tried in an Intel 850 and 845, both were fine. These are P4 1500 and P4 (Celeron 1700) systems. I also put it in a SIS socket 370 board, but only tried 4x which was fine.

I have a soyo 440bx dual board that has issues at 2x. It overloads the PCI bus. So controller means alot, but I was calling that part of the disc subsystem.

[axolotls]

Perhaps that's why G04 prices are suddenly going down in price. An exodus from G04s....

I personally love the printables though.

[lacywest]

no wonder i got a good deal on them (50 for $51 shipped).. hopefully the guy isnt an ******* about taking them back and exchanging them for something wortha shit.

your help is much appreciated.

"the guy" ... ??? ... where did you get them ... on Ebay ??

[rgtaa]

With the pioneer 06 others recommend turning off high resource programs ( I use task manager to make sure nothing is working in the background as I'm burning which takes alot of resources ... I was surprised to see 2 programs used 80-90 percent of my resourses ( these 2 programs would cycle from 40-90 percent in waves) ... and once I turned off the resourse hogs ... NO problems burning.
I can surf the web and do some stuff but I don't do anything that makes the task Manager spike!

[Hawseman]

Your assuming his controllers are worth a dam.

I am. Can't speak about about VIA chipsets/controllers.

I'm using an ASUS CUBX with 4 IDE on board channels (8 drive max), each burner primary master, nothing else on any IDE channel.

2941UW dual channel SCSI controller with a 9gb system dirve, and 36gb removable image only drive.

When I got my NEC 2500, I tried in an Intel 850 and 845, both were fine. These are P4 1500 and P4 (Celeron 1700) systems. I also put it in a SIS socket 370 board, but only tried 4x which was fine.

I have a soyo 440bx dual board that has issues at 2x. It overloads the PCI bus. So controller means alot, but I was calling that part of the disc subsystem.

D1....I only agree with you 98% now.

The 440BX (ata66 capable & great chipset) issue re-enforces my previous post. I'm sure the 370 system wasn't as loaded as Jeex's.

My point was that a system upgrade would be a better option than upgrading a 4x burner to an 8x....If I could cut my video compression down by half or even three quarters, it's more than 8 minutes saved.

This will also take care of any possible drive throughput issues. The problem with ata is it's a theoretical burst rate. If you measure true throughput, you'll see that it can measure as low as 12mb/s on a slower system (p3 chipset). Try loading the PCI bus, another drive on that ide channel, and a resource hungry op system and you could have a recipe for failed burns....ala 440BX.

Plextor 708 burners minimum requirements include a P3-800. NEC doesn't post theirs...but I'm sure it's close to the same. That cuts it a little too close in my book...especially with the system Jeex has.

I'm just trying to get Jeex to think, before he forks over a C-note. It's definetly not cheaper to upgrade the system...just smarter.

[CoolRain]

This is not uncommon. Riteks are known for producing unreliable batches where some/all discs are faulty. I have had miserable experiences myself. Were these RiDATA packed red packaged discs? They seem to be the worst.

Good luck with the rest.

Did you know you can complaint this to ridata? It is true that sometimes the whole batches all gone bad. It is believable cause we are not talking about TDK or Pioneer's branding disk. Pricing does make difference. However, buy reading the DVD code, it is too bold to judge rather the DVD is fake or not. But at the same time, don't take it wrong, there are fake Ritek out there. Believe or not, there are people using ritek's stamper to produce fake Ritek product. I say, you goign to have to be careful where you buy it from.

[disturbed1]

Hawseman, I do agree with you 100%. I would upgrade my everyday PC first, before getting a faster burner.

The SIS socket 370 wasn't loaded at all. Built in graphics, sound, and nic. Everything else disabled (Printer port, USB). 1 HD primary master, and the NEC.

The 440bx dual board is loaded way down. 4 SCSI HDs, 4 IDE HDs, 2 NICs, Capture card, Promise TX ATA 100 card, ISA sound card some other stuff too. Thinking about that, I see your point even more about Jeex's system.

But for a DVD Duplicator/burner, the system requirements are actually quite small.

Becarefull with min. specs, most of those are for the included software package.

[lordsmurf]

I've moved on to PRODISCS03 and more MXLRG02 (just pay more and deal with it).

As far as PC speeds, I have a AMD-K6 200mhz with 2GB OS HD and 128MB RAM, and only NERO 5.5.10.54 is installed on it (not even solitaire is on the PC), with BTC1004IM 4x DVD±R burner, and it copies on-the-fly flawlessly. It also has a 40GB HD for backing up anything that needs to be backed up. I got sick of good PC time be wasted on such menial things. NOTE!! I use a UltraATA PromiseTX2 card in it, otherwise it would not operate. The older IDE speeds cannot keep up.

I think the answer is simple: RITEK cannot keep up supply/demand and maintain proper QC.

[Hawseman]

But for a DVD Duplicator/burner, the system requirements are actually quite small.

Becarefull with min. specs, most of those are for the included software package.

Agreed...d1's overall agreement factor back up to 99%...

He may be okay at 8x...

Jeex's power supply must be cussin'. The added laser power of an 8x burner might just be enough to put his psu over the edge. And that suggs, because it can show up as blue screens, freezing, and quirky crap. Troubleshooting that problem can frustrate even the geekiest of geeks.

[disturbed1]

Agreed...d1's overall agreement factor back up to 99%...

99%

That's just wrong

[nickelzy]

I started a new thread a few minutes ago before I noticed this one regarding Ritek G04 discs. I bought two 50 pack Printables from Rima.com last week (red wrapper) and I've only gotten 4-5 to work out of about 30 that I've burned. I opened both packages, and same problem! I thought it might be my drive, so I left it at that. However tonight, I installed a new Sony DRU-530a drive and the Ritek's wouldn't work with this drive either!

No matter what success people say that they have with Ritek G04 printables, for me, I find it terribly difficult to take a chance and spend another 100 bucks on some more Riteks (after this experience). The only reason that I really want the Ritek's is because I love their printable surface.

Does anyone know of another printable disc that is similar to Ritek? I'm using Memorex DVD+R printables right now, and they're good, but I really like the Riteks!

[disturbed1]

About your other thread-

Like Adam said, a bad disc is one with bad blocks. Or high errors.

Use DVD Info Pro to do a block scan. This tests each sector of data on the DVD for read errors. If a part of the disc fails to read back (red squares) then it's a bad disc.

You can also use the speed test to see if the dye layer is unbalanced, or poorly writen to. Look for a smooth diaganol line, with very little to no "bumps".

If both those tests pass, then it's either an authoring error, or compatibility (media to player) error. I've found that BeAll discs are great quality discs, no sector errors, good transfer read tests, but poor compatibility with my player(s). But I still think they're good discs.

The problems I had with Ritek were sector errors. Where most of the bad discs failed inside 10% of the sector scan tests. The discs that didn't have sector errors were perfect in every way.

Also, some writers don't write to DVD-R media correclty (Nu-Tech), and explains why some users have poor results with DVD-R media. DVD-R is a more complicated (and expensive license) media when compared to DVD+R. DVD+R is working hard to populate, with great support (from Philips/Ricoh), while the DVD Forum has been known to be tight lipped to some.

Your Sony 530 is not a sony drive, but it's rebadged Optorite DW-081. Search for information about both drives, and for a newer/better firmware. Then bash Ritek :P

[nickelzy]

Some of you guys take this shit WAY too f-in serious. Who's bashing Ritek? Sure as hell ain't me. I just simply reported what happened in my case. Nothing more nothing less. As for this "bad disc" issue - ok, I won't call it a "bad disc", then what the hell should I call it. How about "one that won't work". Is that better? I'm sure Ritek is great (as they get a lot of great reviews), but my point is that whatever batch I got, isn't working, and I've tried two separate drives and both produce copies that don't work with the Riteks that I got from Rima.

[disturbed1]

Take a step back and slow down there. You're the one taking it too serious.

We offered tips to help you figure out a problem.

[nickelzy]

My response wasn't to others - it was directed to YOU - my point (that you obviously minsunderstood) was that I wasn't bashing Ritek, as you claimed. I wasn't doing anything of the sort. I appreciate your other comments, but the part about bashing Ritek got me a little because too often when someone states that a particular media isn't working for them, many people on this forum take it so personally.

[disturbed1]

That part was a joke :P

It was implied, that after you troubleshoot, and did everything (something?) possible, then bash Ritek. Not saying that's what you're doing.


Need new Emoticons (this is a joke) type.

[Progenator]

Just something to consider.

I recently bought a 'bad' batch of Maxell blue top DVD+R's from Wal-Mart.
These things had notches on the edges, like a notched coin. The really looked terrible.
Inserting a blank, Windows XP would'nt even recognize it (however no eternal spin on my drve), Nero would'nt think about burning it, neither would Copy To DVD, or Sonic Recordnow, Tmpg DVD Author, but at 2.4x (for a 4X media) DVD Decryptor would, no problem, and produce great results. My DVD (not Data) played easily in every player I had.
I only give up on a DVD media if I get the 'eternal spin' in my drive.

I always burn at 2.4X for 4x media with DVD Decryptor, never fails.
Just sharing my experiences, something to add to the confusion.

Windows XP Pro SP2
Asus A7n8x- Deluxe
AMD 2500+
2 x 256 3200 Azen Ram
LG GSA 4040B
Western Digital 80GB SE (8 meg cache)

[smearbrick1]

What most people are failing to mention is that they are basing their results on compatibility rather than failed burns/sector errors... whatever. Point is; you can't claim to have a bad disc just because if you burnt the same project on the same media in two different drives (Assuming the burns completed successfully). It's still the same project (prone to navigation errors and all sorts of other goodies) and still you are using the same reader (dvd player) at least this is what I'm gathering... Sounds like your player may have issues... If you are worried that the media is bad, but the burn completed successfully, run it through DVDINFOPRO and do a sector scan. This, and only this, will tell you if you have a "bad disc".

(When I say "this and only this" I am referring to the error-checking and not the fact DVDINFOPRO is the only program you can use for this. Just a disclaimer.)

[nickelzy]

Smearbrick -

I hear what you're saying (as a couple of others have mentioned as well), but then what I don't get is ok, lets say that the 30 Ritek G04's that I burned don't show any detectable errors in DVDInfoPro - but if they don't work in 4 or 5 separate new and old dvd players, don't you agree that something is sour here? And to blame the dvd players - I don't buy that one. If I was talking about one or even two dvd players, then maybe. However, I'm talking about 4 different ones that I've used and I'll try another one this evening.

I don't know, just thought I'd throw that out there because even if the discs aren't bad as you say (which I do understand your point) something is still wrong. I'd rather use media that isn't that fickle, and the Memorex DVD+R's that I've been using since having the problems with the Riteks play perfectly in every dvd player that I've tried - which is about 8 different players I've tried now - all work beautifully.

[DTSL06]

Using my 5th 50pac of Ridata red packs G04 (matte/pearl tops) and so far so good. Only coaster where either software related or a chair to keyboard interface probm

Had 2 failed Memorex (Ricohjpn01) 4x in a roll on my Plex708a using DVDDrecrpter and DVDshrink last nite. This media has been very good in the Plex and norm take ~8min for complete burn, but it took 14min's. It was Nero hanging at 99-100% and not finalizing the disk. So I switched to DVDClone2 and the same DVDDecrypted files burn fined in ~7-8min. I unclocked my system back to default and the Nero burn fine at ~8min so it could be HW related also.