Flaystus' DVD-R Media brand report 5/6/02

[DigitalGreg]

ABEG, the generics from Hypermicro.com are good.

Their customer service is first rate; I got my pioneer drive from them. And their shipping&handling is cheap.

But for some reason they carry every kind of DVD-R except single-sided 2x unbranded.

[THE RIPPER]

has anybody tried the generic dvd-r's from www.supermediastore.com
there 1.09 each? also whats better, branded or unbranded?

[DigitalGreg]

anybody hear anything about ACME 2X DVDR?

http://www.cdrom2go.com/optical_media/acme.htm#dvdr

[fand]

UPDATE:

i bought a 20pack for 25dollars ($1.25) from www.qtccdr.com
(modelno DVDR-S4.7G-PR)

they should be arriving today or tomorrow. i'll let you know how well they do

cheers,

kyle

6/25:
tested, and work flawlessly with my APEX AD-1200. These are nice DVD-Rs because they have the white on one side for easy labeling

pioneer 104, nero 558.

[leebo]

Please let us know when you test them on other players, as the 1200 will play almost anything.

[byrdmaniac69]

In response to THE Ripper's question, has anyone tried the 1.09 media from supermediastore.com? The answer is yes I have burned about 75 of these and have had about 3 bad ones. The 3 bad discs had a few abrasions on them before burning. I purchase the dvdpro unbranded 25 packs and sometime the bottom disc has scratches and these scratched discs are the only ones that have caused problems for me. I highly reccomend these.
Also supermediastore now has the 2X unbranded dvdpro's for 2.18 in a 25 pack and 1.88 if you buy 100. I have burned 8 of these so far and have not had any problems. I just ordered 25 more.
Update on the 2.18 2x dvdpro, I have burned 40+ so far, all at 2x using nero 5.5.7.8 which is the only nero version that will work for me including updated versions. I received a batch of 2x dvdpros in which 8 were marked with a small pimple looking dot. I made sure not to burn over the dots and they worked fine, I just used them for 1.5 gigs and under to make sure I avoided the dots. My last 25 pack is fine and all have burned and played fine.

[Mishap64]

I have a Pioneer 104 Burner and a GE 1101PB player and I have been testing with DVDPro NON_Branded $1.19 from meritline. So far I have not did a good one. (SVCD to DVD) Video and audio hicups thru the movie. When I used DVD-RWs they seem to work much better. I am picking up either some verbatim or Memerex today from compusa and see how that goes. Still looking for good cheap priced online media

UPDATE: I used Memorex DVD-R $5.99 and did a few movies with no problems. I also tried the CompUSA Generic SKU# 288603 for $3.99 and burnt 10 movies so far and no problems. I am still looking for good cheap priced online media

[LanceSteel]

Just an update for Hyper Microsystems... It appears that they have switched the generic media that they sell on their site from quality media to crap media (but they did halve the price.) I emailed them before purchasing the new media to see if it was the same ones that I bought before and they said that it was. With the new media I haven't been able to burn a single movie without getting hiccup's or complete stops (Disk error as the player calls it) near the end of the disks. Stay away from hypermicro.com from now on.

Update:
I tested a "bad disk" on WinDVD4 and found that it plays fine. So apparently it isn't a bad disk but that my stand alone can no longer read it correctly. It is an Apex-500W which suprises me because these things can play just about everything. Still my stand alone had no problems before but now it can't ready any of these new disks.

Final Update:
I got that advdinfo program off the web and found that the old Hyper Microsystems dvd-r's were manufactured by RitekG. The new ones I purchased are manufactured by Princo. I guess that answers the question as to why these new disks are 5h1t. Does anyone want to buy 90 princo dvd-r's?

[fand]

Final Update:
I got that advdinfo program off the web and found that the old Hyper Microsystems dvd-r's were manufactured by RitekG. The new ones I purchased are manufactured by Princo. I guess that answers the question as to why these new disks are 5h1t. Does anyone want to buy 90 princo dvd-r's?

I bought a 25 pack of princo's and I haven't had one single bad one. Tested on a PS2, APEX AD-1200, Sony DVD player(2 yrs old) and Panasonic DVD player(4 yrs old). All play flawlessly.


cheers,

kyle

[ABEG]

Princo media seems to very crappy media mainly because of the fact that the quality differs immensely batch to batch. At least that has been my experience. Here is an update to my last post:

Hypermicro.com Purple/Gold Generic Media: Amazingly plays perfect in both my picky settop Samsung M101 and my Xbox which both had major problems with the last batch of DVDPro media from supermediastore.com. The reason this was quite suprising to me is the fact that both the DVDPro media and this generic media come up as Princo when you use ADVDInfo.

Verbatim DVD-RW: Plays perfect in the Samsung. I needed to load it twice each time for it to load on the Xbox which was very annoying, however, I still have not found any DVD-RW that worked right with the Xbox minus the Pioneer branded DVD-RW.

I still have some Verbatim DVD-R and some Apple DVD-R that I have not yet tested. Will post here once I do so.

[fand]

I have purchased a 25pack of Ritek from supermediastore.com .. will let you know the results when they arrive in a week.

-k

[LanceSteel]

What might be nice is if people can post the little snippette from ADVD with the manufacture info for the dvd-r's that they've tried along with where they bought them. Maybe they could even post the direct link to the brand that they bought (I know some sites have 5 billion different styles, brands and quantities of dvd-r's.) This would help me out immensely.

fand:
When you get those dvd-r's please post on how you like them! Ritec's have been really good to me and for 1.29 or so a disk it just sounds too good to be true.

[leebo]

Ritec's have been really good to me

Baseball bin berry good to me!

[asiandvdburn]

I've bought the Primedisc ones from them and had no Problems with them burning at 1x on my Pioneer A04 and playing on Pioneer 343. They are made by Ritek.

Does the Primedisc work in a PS2?
Are these 3rd generation dvd-r's?
Can they be burnt at 2x?

[KungFuCow]

I've burned on a couple of different kinds of media with no problems. I am using a Pioneer 104 and playing back on a JVC XV-S300BK and an Aiwa XD-DV370.

COMPUSA Generic Media - $17.99 for a 5 pack - This media has worked flawlessly in both of my players. Checking the lead in track information, this media is shown as being manufactured by LEAD.

ESbuy - 25 Pack Generic - $65.00 - These discs are rated at 2X and burned at that speed on my 104. Playback on my Aiwa was okay until about 50 minutes in the audio and video started stuttering. Playback on the JVC has been flawless. This has been over the course of several burns. I may drop the speed back to 1x and see if that helps the Aiwa out. Checking the lead in track information, this media is shown to as being manufactured by TDK, TDKG02 to be exact.

FWIW the reason I say "no problems" is because IMO the Aiwa DVD player is a POS. I bought it before I knew anything about DVD players and it's never really impressed me. It doesn't play back a lot of different kinds of CDR/CDRW media either so I don't condemn any media for not working on that player.

[Anonymous65]

It's amazing how things are so different with almost the same hardware.
I have the Pioneer 104, Apex-660, and the gold ESBuy DVD-R's work fine...

[ABEG]

Here is another update:

OptoDisc 1X from Newegg.com (1.80 each, free shipping): These discs worked great for me and came in jewel cases with actual branding. They come up as manufactured by Vivastar when I used ADVDInfo. I burned an XBox game and movie and both loaded flawlessly, the movie even loading in my picky Samsung m101. I find these discs more appealing than the hypermicro.com discs now that hypermicro is using Princo as their generics.

I still have some Apple discs and some Verbatim 2X discs to test. Will post more information once I get around to testing them.

[leebo]

Is anyone having success with double sided DVD-R discs?

[thaiwoo]

[quote="asiandvdburn"]

I've bought the Primedisc ones from them and had no Problems with them burning at 1x on my Pioneer A04 and playing on Pioneer 343. They are made by Ritek.

Does the Primedisc work in a PS2? Don't know since I don't have one.
Are these 3rd generation dvd-r's? Don't know either.
Can they be burnt at 2x? No only 1X.

I've went trough 25 of them and not a single bad one. Just ordered another batch from www.shop4tech.com

Too bad that they only burn at 1X, but for that price I don't complain.

[SergeantD]

BRAND NEW at Meritline:
New! 9.4GB DVD-R General Purpose DVD Recordable Double Sided

only $3.49 a disc which makes me hesitant but hell they could be good. I just added 4 of them to my order and I'll let you know when I try them.

[pware]

Update on Hypermicro disks:

Just ordered 50 disks (Gold/Purple) and they sent me Silver/Purple. Not are the now swapping out substandard media, they are also lying about what they are selling.

[LanceSteel]

Pware:
Look at my above post in this thread. The Purple/Silver's are princo's (which are total crap IMHO.) I emailed them and they gave me an RMA # to send them back. If you email them you may want to tell them that they are getting a bad rep with the vcdhelp.com community.

[pware]

LanceSteel,

Agreed! I've burned about 8 of these and they all crap out at the end of the movie. Any advice for a good substitute? It's like hitting a moving target. Everytime we find a good supplier, they swap out on us.

Pware

[THE RIPPER]

i'v tried hypermicro's generics and esbuy's , but the best deal is at www.supermediastore.com i got there deal with 90 dvd-r's and 100 dvd cases for 127$ . the discs work great and you get free shipping.

[ar]

Hardware: 2Ghz P4 / WXP / QPS-DVD-R/RAM
Stand-alone's - Apex 1500 (plays almost everything), Old Denon (hard to please), PS2
Software: various

My experience w/ DVD-R media:

Apples consistently work very well
Memorex would not play on Denon
"Legacy" from CompGeek inconsistant
CD-Recordables - 2 batches, both bad (second worse than the first!)
HyperMicro: just got these, so still testing, but: they are silver... first test (with VOB) successful, even on Denon player. (Prassi Primo would not write)

[fand]

UPDATE

Tested Players:

Panasonic A110
Apex AD-500w
Apex AD-1200
Playstation 2

Results:

One DVD-R did not play in the Apex AD-500w out of about 20 made so far.

Media:

Two different companies Princo-brand (around 1$ a piece).


Although I just bought (and should be arriving Tuesday) a 25pack of Ritek, and if Ritek is playable in all players I have access to, then I will purchase the 100 pack from supermediastore.com

cheers,

kyle

[pware]

Update on Hypermicro disks:

I called Hypermicro’s customer service about the crappy Princo disks they sent and they acknowledged that these disks are bad and that they have stopped shipping them. They offered me a new set of RITEK disks at not charge and are going to ship them to me even before they receive the old ones back. I am very pleased with their customer service and I hope that I’m just as pleased with the new disks!

Pware

[leebo]

Here's an interesting post by Ralph LeBarge (of DVMagazine) over in the DV forums.
It's reguarding a question someone posted about one manufacturer making blanks for two different vendors:

I dont think it is correct to assume that just becuase one OEM makes blank media for more than one vendor, that the compatibility should be the same for each vendor.

In some cases a vendor will require less stringent testing in order to get a better price from an OEM, thus it is possible for one vendor to sell blank media that is of lower quality than another vendor, even if both vendors buy their product from the same OEM.

- Ralph

[LanceSteel]

I purchased the esbuy.com brand disks which are 2x dvd-r's (and nero would allow me to burn them at that speed.) Unfortunately, I can get them to play in my apex-500w for a short while then it starts to sputter and then finally hangs. My PS2 and pioneer 500m drive can't even access the damn disks. The only drive that can read them from start to finish is my pioneer dvr-104 (the writer that they were burned with.) Advdinfo says that these are TDKG disks. I was only burning at 1x too. I would stay away from these too. I know some people have had good luck with these but I did not.

[spiderman2k1]

My view on DVD-R's I have two DVD plays Sony 550 Apev AD-5131 and my Dad has two DVD player's also JVC do not know the model Philips do not no the model. On my Apex A friend burned some movies on cheep disc they would not boot on my Sony but played on my APEX but some times jumpy. Now Pioneer and SmartDisk they play fine on the Sony. On my Dad JVC jumpy with cheep disc and fine with Pioneer and SmartDisk. I will say this . I used to burn VCD's. PNY made the best CDR about two years ago a dark green color die it would play in any thing even my Sony 550 that does not play cdr's. Part of the problem is the die the other part is the Player I copied the Matrix VCD i bought over sea's copied it with PNY play the hole movie on my Sony no problem went to a friend house he has the same sony model DVD 550 at the end the movie lock's up. On playstation you can tweak the lense if it does not read CDR's well people do this on the first Playstation it does work buy jumpy still I say buy a new Playstation. I have a Dreamcast that play's and CDR that you put in it. I burn some game's for a friend and they would not play in his DC. I had to Jap Ps2 same model the very first PS2 one play most CDR's the other would only play the cheep COMPUSA. If your lense is not set on the dime it will not play back cheep disc or cdr's back well. it seems that some cheep DVD-R even the real good DVD players like APEN have problems. But i did read at another post that some on the DVD post said that he and his brother both bought APEX and they both did not read CDR's at all. Some one was take a long break at APEX. Some time you get a bunch of bad stuff off the line. go some place else or wait a month. If you are going to use cheep DVD-R's Get a APEX I think they have the best bet of play back if you want to make shore no problems stick with APPLe Smartdisk pioneer