WHOA! Matrix = TAIYO YUDEN???

[indolikaa]

I don't believe for one second that these are Taiyo Yuden discs.


We need to get a Taiyo Yuden representative an account here so they can deal with this nonsense. 69¢ for a Taiyo Yuden disc? I'm not buying it at all. I've purchased well over 2,000 Taiyo Yuden DVDs in my lifetime, and I've never come close to breaching the $1.00 barrier.

This smells like a rebadged Media ID scam.

[lordsmurf]

smurfie hasn't answered a single one of those questions.

If you have some good questions for me, submit them in this fashion:
- numbered... 1, 2, 3, 4, etc
- short and simple, else I won't have time to respond
- no overtones of insult, agendas, heresay, libel, etc
- put them here in a reply, start with QUESTIONS FOR LORDSMURF
- direct matter-of-fact questions, nothing fluffy, no feature leads
- send me PM saying you've got a post with questions, and you'd like my answers. This is what everybody else does.
- be nice

The only questions I've seen from you to date have been rhetorical.
You still have quite an attitude, and again with the insults. Why?

[DVDeeZ]

smurf, Insults, where do you see the insults? Responding to bogus information with facts and then responding to bogus made up sentences which were quoted with my actual quotes, those are insults? No, those are facts. I was pretty surprised that I had to repeat the same thing three times so that you could understand it. It appears you do now and i'm sure disturbed clearly gets it as well. If you don't, i'll be glad to post it again.

As far as the questions asked to you, they weren't rhetorical, they, however, were already answered but not by you, so in a sense they were rhetorical, but being that you've continued to dispute the information with "zero facts" mind you, I think the questions deserve being answered by someone with the knowledge and the facts on the issue and that's exactly what you claim so please go right ahead and answer them.

I think people want to know the "whys" so to speak as opposed to everything else. The additional information in those Ritek posts wasn't really even needed because the facts and/horrific results were there. You can draw your own conclusions from that. I see you're geared for this post to once again go off topic but since the other one was locked here are just a few of the simple questions for you to answer.

If supermediastore among others insn't unethical and neither is Ritek, then how about answering this basic questions. They aren't too long for you, right? I wouldn't want to give you my credit card number for reading through a novel. It's clear you don't have the time to do that. You only have the time to write novels, almost 5,000 of them to be exact. Here you go smurf, enlighten those inquiring minds. Please, no more speculation and/or assumptions, post actual, solid facts.

Thanks in advance.

3 Questions for smurf:

1) The original post was written well before anyones negative comments on those cake box crap Riteks, not after. Then all the negative feedback from those who got screwed with those disks was posted. That must just be a real strange coincidence though, right? How could that be?

2) Why didn't supermedia respond to the post? You tried to use the excuse that they wouldn't engage in rumors, etc. But if that were the case then they never would of responded to begin with. How come they just disappeared when some serious information was posted which directly accused them of knowingly being involved with this Ritek scandel. Surely they would of wanted to clear up any false information which would adversely affect them, so why didn't they?

hint: You can't say because supermediastore wouldn't waste their time with this blah, blah blah, because they wouldn't of had to do anything more then what they did the first time, which was log on and respond. They didn't respond smurf because they didn't want to dig themselves any deeper of a hole. But i'm sure you'll have the real answer.


3) Most importantly of all though, why are these disks considerably cheaper in cost then all the other Ritek disks? Oh, and the real question i'm sure some want answered smurf is, why are these disks so damn crappy? How bout "actually" answering the questions with some facts smurf? You can't answer the questions with facts because you have none.

[indolikaa]

Oh boy, here we go again...

[lordsmurf]

1. I was reporting flawed RITEKG03 and RITEKG04 media as far back as Dec2003-Jan2004. Flawed RITEKG01 and RITEKG02 back in 2001/2002. It's has gotten worse in the past 6 months. Almost disgusting since the arrival of newest RIDATA and all ARITA brandings (again, months old).

2. A company is not responsible for scouring forums. They have a business to run. The fact that ANY of the media companies have accounts at videohelp is astounding to say the least. You will also not see a company responding in what is considered a "gutter" of an environment, which is what happens when insults, libel, and derogatory language are used.

3. Simple economics. Example. All amounts for example purpose only. Materials plus profit for the January 2004 supply line dictate a minimum sales price of $2 each. Materials prices fall next month. Materials plus profit for Feb 2004 supply line require sales of $1 per each. While this could mean "hey, extra buck profit this month", in a competitive environment (like media) that won't happen. Now the problem! Jan 2004 supply is still out and about, and with great reputation. How to solve this? An old business swindle... add a new "brand" to the lot. In the case of RITEK, the newest materials and/or manufacturing process may be inferior. ..... There are other scenarios, but many of them look like this (some entail longer profit periods, and I think this may be more of the case for Ritek, judging how the re-degradation started almost 6 months ago). The biggest issues of these RITEK discs are material/manufacturing, resulting in the errors listed at www.nomorecoasters.com (dye spread, melting, etc). Remember, RITEKG01 and RITEKG02 was trash media too, back in 2001/2002. RITEK CD-R has ALWAYS been a mark of trash. But it's not RMA, nor even anything new. It's just being cheap (materials) and careless (QC).

[DVDeeZ]

lordsmurf you answered the questions without any more snide remarks so i'll do the same.

1) There have been major issues with virtually all mass produced media so your response doesn't gel. Let's make this a little more specific. People have had issues with Ritek here and there it's been sporadic. But never has anyone said they've purchased from Rima or Newegg or supermediastore, etc and consistently got the same crap. It's been more of a this batch is great this one is mediocre, this one sucks.

You may get bad stuff and you may get good stuff. Ritek still has more positive feedback then negative, probably around the 70/30 ratio maybe even 80/20. With that being said, how is it that these cake box Riteks were said by virtually every one that used them to be complete crap?

You don't see that in any other Ritek post. If you do then please post it. There is clearly something wrong with those cake box Riteks mentioned in the Ritek posts. What is it that's wrong with them? Them meaning those specific cake box spindles that were mentioned in the Ritek posts. I think it's pretty safe to say that you really don't know. Would that be an accurate statement?

2) No, a company's job is not for scouring forums, but when you take the time to respond once, you'd certainly do it again, especially if the information being posted is bogus. Interesting that they completely avoided responding after the post was written, however, they responded afterwards to something that has absolutely nothing to do with the Ritek discussion, attempting to shift gears. Why would they do that? It wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that they were stymied by the response that they got and they never would of expected that. In addition, any further response would of gotten them a bigger burial. That wouldn't be possible though, right?

3) Answer #1 and you'll answer this.

I have one last question for you though lordsmurf, and then i'm through with this Ritek discussion. Do you know any of those people that were mentioned in that Ritek post? If you do know them, then you wouldn't say you don't remember the names that were posted. So do you know any contacts with Ritek from that post or otherwise, or contacts that do business with Ritek?

And last but not least, and even more importantly, are you saying that you know for sure that Ritek is absolutely not engaged in knowingly selling Grade D inferior media to ultimately be resold by some of these online sites?

Thanks again for your time.

[lordsmurf]

1. Same reason. Refer to #3 answer I gave earlier. The difference in materials can easily account for this. They're just made bad. There's no scandal, it's just shoddy workmanship. Period.

2. Not necessarily. Their first response was before a shift in environment came. After that, I'd stay clear too.

3. Done.

4. (not numbered). I've slept since then. I remember little more than RMA argument and then official response. If any funny business is going on at RITEK, only those few would know. In all evidence, it is unlikely. When it comes to GRADING info, the information is mixed. I've come across info that there exists A,B,C,D, but I've seen contrary evidence too. I'm afraid USA and Taiwan may use different terms, but again, not sure. If RITEK claims supermediastore is an authorized seller of GRADE A RITEK media, I have nothing to the contrary. Especially when they both agree. Nothing is gained by lying here. If ESBUY or somebody came up with "GRADE A" RITEK reseller, and RITEK played stupid, then maybe we'd have some argument. The whole RMA issue was straight out of a textbook case of libel.

[swallowtail]

I'm actually more interested in the long-term duration of those Matrix discs, but since the topic has been shifted to the subject of RITEK discs, the following link provides some additional info, in case anyone missed it before:

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=16734&sid=7a6b16091840ba4f5253d83a8585fc37

[lordsmurf]

This is interesting:
http://www.dvd-recordable.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Reviews&file=index&req=showcontent&id=76

FLASH of www.rpc1.org is the writer of the article. He's a good guy, normally good info. I had some good help from him back in the early days of firmware hacking, back the the 103 and 104 were the only real burners.

Note the broken English of the RITEK company. I'd bet TAIWAN contacted him, not USA/Europe/etc. This is where the A,B,C,D,etc info always comes from, overseas. From the sound of it, RITEK landscape was not meant for USA sales? Odd.

Also note FLASH started that in March this year. Again, this is not a new issue.

My worst RITEK always came from the red-wrappers. They had another packing system before that, that's when they were good (although they could have been re-packed).

EDIT: Oops... looks like the TY thread turned to a RITEK thread. HTF did that happen?

EDIT AGAIN: I contacted FLASH. He's a supporter and writer for that site, but not the owner. Still a great guy with info that is to be trusted.

[DVDeeZ]

lordsmurf, I said that was my last Ritek post but I guess I lied. Being that you don't know anyone that works with Ritek or for Ritek, your posts have been all of what I said they were from the beginning, which was all opinionated. Anyone that reads your responses to my questions can clearly see that you just danced around the questions.

I didn't realize that a highly respected cdrlabs user "dolphius_rex" also has some information regarding the Ritek issue. I don't know who they are but they did the respectable thing by not giving names. They've also stated they've actually done work for Ritek, but a highly respect user like them is just spewing more libel. Yep, I'm sure a highly respected user at cdrlabs is also concocting the story, right smurf.

I think 500AX tried to do the right thing as well but when supermediastore flat out lied on the forum they felt the need to give names. I think they did the right thing there as more people on the forum would of just been suckered into believing the Ritek RMA issue was phoney just because they see the name "super media." That was what super media was hoping.

Unlike you smurf, I have a contact that works closely with Ritek among other big media companies. Matrix isn't one of them unfortunately, so the information I can obtain on them is limited, but even limited, it's still more then can be obtained with phone calls somewhere. Too bad my friends relationship changed with Ritek because I used to benefit with 500 pcs every 3 months when I saw them.

When you whined to Baldrick to remove that thread which "was" accurate and "not" rumor, I immediately pm'd him with some facts and was prepared to give names if necessary to get the thread back in the public forum. I figured if Baldrick cared about not letting the majority of these members get screwed by Ritek and supermediastore, then he'd put that post back out in the public forum which is exactly what he did.

Also, unlike you smurf, I know for a fact that Ritek has on numerous occasions dealt in many unethical business practices such as the one mentioned in these RMA Ritek posts. I also know not think, they are selling GRADE D media which has been resold. The companies they've sold the media too like supermediastore are fully aware of what they are getting, that's why they are getting it so cheap.

You never answered why those Cake Box Riteks are considerabley cheaper then the others Riteks, but don't worry smurf, I've already answered that. I've also already answered the other 3 questions I asked you with real answers and more importantly, real facts.

EDIT: Didn't even see flashman's post until after I posted this. Obviously someone else who actually has "facts" and it's clear with the information they posted that they have facts. You can fool some people with swift talk and dancing around, but you can't fool most of the people unless you have actual facts. People want to see facts. Of course I wonder where the surprisingly few people who challenged this thing to begin with are now. You not being included in those few smurf. I figured more would of challenged such critical information, but there's evidently alot more intelligent members in this forum then the other way around.

[lordsmurf]

Knowing somebody that knows something or somebody is called "heresay" and is not reliable material. I refuse to rely on heresay for anything other than LEADS on stories. This story ended at a RITEK press release. Simple as that. "Ritek says" is more reliable than "I got a friend that knows some people at Ritek, and they said". I know people that know people, but who cares.

I've answered all your questions.

I warned Baldrick that he had LIBEL in his forum. Nothing more, nothing less.

You, sir, have an agenda. I have no idea why.
You're becoming Ritek's Michael Moore.

If you're so hell-bent on this rampage, I suggest you follow the ways of THETRUTH.COM and get some corporate documents to back your claims. Else shut up.

[DVDeeZ]

no lordsmurf, it's not heresy when enough respectable people claim the facts are true. So "DVDEEZ" isn't highly respectable, that's fine, I don't care to be. But I certainly wasn't going to sit back when I saw super media have the audacity to try and use their name to attempt to cover up for their unethical business practices. Then to see you, someone who has absolutely no facts on this issue at all, come out and back supermediastore and Ritek and basically, give the members on this forum bad information which would cause them to get screwed, most of them who probably work real hard for their money too, they didn't deserve that.

You've also contradicted yourself smurf. You said that you'd doubt Ritek would engage in such unethical business practices, yet you say that flash, the owner of the site you linked has generally good info. He pretty much to a 'T' states exactly what I've mentioned here. So how could he have good info if Ritek wouldn't engage in such proposterous business practices. Yawnnn, I've made my point ten times over. I could care less about Ritek smurf, but I do think the members on this forum have a right to have enough information to allow them to stay away from danger.


You're also making more assumptions regarding those landscape disks. You're off once again. Do yourself a favor lordsmurf and just stick to testing out and reviewing the little bits of free media you get from supermediastore. Don't comment on things in which you dont' have the slightest clue about. You are doing nothing more then misinforming the users of this community and setting them up with your opinionated info which will ultimately set them up for failure by purchasing these kinds of disks from this kind of vendor.

There really is more then ample information for people to realize that supermediastore is shady and unethical as hell as is Ritek.

I warned Baldrick that he had LIBEL in his forum. Nothing more, nothing less.

But he didn't have libel on the forum, and he obviously realized that. Too bad the NakedGeek crap started again, or the thread wouldn't of been locked. At least the members of cdrlabs can view it at will as dolphinius has linked it to his signature. Humm, not a bad idea.

What they do with that information is up to them. There's no reason for me to say anything else on the matter.

Hopefully we can get back to the topic now which are these Matrix disks. I'd agree with swallowtail, "long term" storage is my only conern now.

[winny]

Lordsmurf, yoo made an interesting point about Flashman owning dvdrecordable.org which, if true, would call into question his impartial postings.

If you do a whois search it says DVD-Recordable.org is owned by E-NET(aka, DataSafe, Datawrite, Bulkpaq)

Taking your original point, this could actually bring into question the impartiality of their site's information. It has been suggested before that e-net are known to be rebranding c and d grade ritek media to a grade.

If so, people should know the truth about dvd-recordable.org.

[indolikaa]

Would anybody with a Lite-On drive like to post some kprobe results for this media?

[LanEvo7]

Not commenting on the quality of either matrix or ritek discs, but shop4tech has had past records of straight out bsing to people about the discs they sold.

Regardless of whether these discs are real ty or "fake" ty, as long as they work well then it should be fine. I had quite good results from the Lead Data's that had a Sony media code on it. They don't sell these anymore(at least I don't think so), but they burned perfectly fine and still play after about a year.

The "fake" TDKs as I recall didn't have any trouble burning. It was after everything finished that problems arose. The end of the disc unreadable, degration, etc. The fake maxells were just horrible.

[DVDeeZ]

Would anybody with a Lite-On drive like to post some kprobe results for this media?

Just scanned this one tonight. I can post more, they're all pretty much the same though. Some get as high as ~50 PI avg, which is still fairly low. Still haven't experienced any playback problems on any of my standalones.

[soundforbjt]

That scan is moot for 2 reasons;

1. You always use a Lite-On burner, not DVD ROM to run KProbe!

2. You should scan @ 4X not max speed.

[budz]

You're using a LITEON DVD-ROM. It can be used but not recommended. So the scans aren't accurate. As mentioned the scans are done @4x not MAX. Perhaps you need to read the how to kprobe from cdfreaks.com LITEON FORUM.

From LITEON FORUM, "For the following recommendations to be true K-Probe must be set to 8 ECC PI/PO sum while scanning and preferably scanned by a Lite-On DVD-Writer (in other words NOT a DVD-ROM or Combo!)."

[-jsl-]

Just scanned this one tonight. I can post more, they're all pretty much the same though. Some get as high as ~50 PI avg, which is still fairly low. Still haven't experienced any playback problems on any of my standalones.

I don't give much for Kprobe scans especially not when scanned on DVD-ROMs and combo drives. Flash your 166s with a 14x or 16x read speed hacked firmware instead and make a read transfer graph in CD-DVD speed.

[chas0039]

I would also be concerned about these disc being TY. Even if they are now, Matrix could switch to a different brand later. I remember very well how Piodata started with TY for their 8X media a few months ago (I have one) and then VERY quickly switched to an inferior brand without warning. I recall Supermediastore was very up front about this and clearly stated that there were two kinds and only one was TY. They had two different part numbers as well as prices. I would hardly expect shop4tech to be so diligent, so this deal may well have a limited life.


jsl: Thanks for your suggestion about CDspeed and the hacked Liteon. I just got a 167T and after running a number of tests it was very informative. Almost ALL of my Ritek G04 will start to have read problems when the speed gets past 8X while all of the Prodisc S03s I have tested will read flawlessly right up to 14X.

[aero]

Just to put my two cetns in from someone who actually bought these Matrix disks....I have had nothing but trouble with these disks on a couple of different burners. About one out of ten coastered, but worse, a lot of disks ended up unplayable after a month storage. This was with a couple of burners and several differnt burning programs. I have been burning for a year with a variety of expensive, moderate and cheap media and this -- by far -- was the worst.

In contrast, I also go the purple wrapper riteks that were the subhject of the rumor last month. One coaster out of fifty and no problems with burns all the way to max capacity. they all verified and those I checked were fine. ie they bunred, verified, played and for the two months I have had them held up as well as the red wrapper ridatas.

I have come to the conclusion the anit-ritek "RMA" thing was a bogus urban myth. I worked in retail management for quite some time and returning to the distributer or manufacturer is NEVER called an "RMA" anyway, an RMA is between end consumer and retailer. since office depot never sold them the whole things sound fishy from the semantics claimed anyway. Stating that Office Depot RMA'd them back to the distributer is just s(h)illy.

Yhat is my two cents and my direct experience. (not something I heard from "a friend")

[DVDeeZ]

Regarding Kprobe results, I have several burners, a Lite-On isn't one of them. I've read plenty of posts which I can link here where probably hundreds of people have used Lite-On ROMS and gotten very accurate results. A burner may be more accurate, but not enough to cause an extreme difference. Either way, i'm more concerned with the fact that they playback perfectly and show no errors with DVDINFOPRO.

I would also be concerned about these disc being TY. Even if they are now, Matrix could switch to a different brand later

Sure they could and the same could happen with any other media manufacturer. Some of the Worlds biggest media giants have done this to cut costs. I even mentioned this as to one reason why I purchased more so quickly.


aero, you couldn't of used these disks and had them become unplayable in a month because shop4tech has only had them in stock for 3 weeks.

You may of used "Matrix" disks in the past but you haven't used these. What is the mid of the disks you've used? I was curious though why shop4tech would keep the same name (MATRIX) of disks as solid as these when they have had some people who have had some issues in the past with a completely different Matrix disk. Not to mention the entire appearance, mid, and dye type are nothing near the Matrix disks prior to these.

Basically, I was told that they have registered the Matrix name as well as put the Matrix name on the disks in production and it would be too costly to just completely change the name as well as production processes. I actually never had any issues with any Matrix disks at all. I've read these don't have a long shelf life, but I've read that on Princos and I have some Princos today burned from more then 2 years ago that still play perfectly.

As far as the Ritek issue goes, I've commented enough on that so there's no need to comment further. People can draw their own conclusions from reading the thread. It's great those disks worked out well for you. I'm sure the other 90% of the people that purchased them would love to know why they didn't work the same for them.

[dvdtek]

just got my 2nd orders of 8x dvd-r media today from www.shop4tech.com, so far so good with my last 10 burns. I will keep you update if there had any bad one.

[budz]

DVDdeez wrote:

I have several burners, a Lite-On isn't one of them. I've read plenty of posts which I can link here where probably hundreds of people have used Lite-On ROMS and gotten very accurate results. A burner may be more accurate, but not enough to cause an extreme difference. Either way, i'm more concerned with the fact that they playback perfectly and show no errors with DVDINFOPRO.

Lmfao! So post your links where probably hundreds of people have used LITEON DVDROMS as you've stated. Back up your statements with some documentation. I've been reading this thread and in my opinion you're talking bubbles man.

idolikaa wrote:

Would anybody with a Lite-On drive like to post some kprobe results for this media?

anyone wanna send me the matrix media and I'll do a kprobe scan on my LITEON DVD 411@811. PM me.

__________________________________________________ ___________

[DVDeeZ]

budz, I can post at least 20 different links from this site as well as cdfreaks which will show at least hundreds of various people who have had accurate results using a DVD ROM. Even the creator of the program, Karr, states you can use a Lite-On ROM to test the results but says a writer may be more accurate. If you are so interested then do a search on this site and then at cdfreaks and see if you can find those posts. There's only a few hundred of them so it might be difficult.


With posts like this budz

budz wrote:

Yuh, know what I have been really patient with your stupid comments. But now I've lost it cuz people like you have their fingers stuck up their ass. You obviously are so blinded by the fact that you haven't burned any coasters with CMC, so you tell people in this forum it's their fucken problem and not a failure on CMC discs.

I've posted my opinions based on my experiences using the crappy ass CMC MEDIA. You fail to under fucken stand that the phrase, "THERE ARE VARIABLES IN BURNING DVD'S." Go back to school or take out a fucken dictionary to find the meaning of the word, "VARIABLE". Like my old school teacher told me, "Everyone has common sense but they come in all shapes and sizes". Geez your common sense must be the size of a fucken pea!

You just aren't worth more then a few seconds of my time.

anyone wanna send me the matrix media and I'll do a kprobe scan on my LITEON DVD 411@811. PM me.

Yea sure, I'll send you my 100 pack that I paid for as soon as UPS delivers it. Maybe i'll have them send it to you directly, overnight, and i'll even pay the shipping on that. Actually, with your very informative posts budz, i'm sure someone else would be glad to give you media they paid for.

[Shocker Milwaukee]

I have both a LiteOn LDW 401s burner & a LiteOn 166 DVD-ROM. Their Kprobe scans of the same discs are vastly different.

[Supreme2k]

Attention, jaxxboss! Attention, jaxxboss!

Please report to thread number 226063. Fart needed, STAT. That is all.

[indolikaa]

I invented STAT.

[gitreel]

What didn't you invent?

[indolikaa]

What didn't you invent?

Intimate methods for pleasing even the most demanding vinyl goats...