Princo: Now its official

[alexnoe]

http://www.instantinfo.de/shownews.php?show=200

TDK has now officially confirmed that Princo is faking TDK code (which was inofficially known), that these discs are not 2x writeable, and that TDK has nothing to do with these crap discs (they said it more diplomatically, but that is what they intend to say)

[Doom9]

how reliable is that news site?

[alexnoe]

Good question...I hope that they are reliable :rolleyes:

[jsl]

It's been official since the beginning of December:
TDK Europe's Press Release (http://www.tdk-europe.presscentre.com/corp/Releases/release.asp?ReleaseID=1215&NID=Press%20Releases)

[alexnoe]

:eek: And I missed it :angry:

[atreides93]

Well if this isn't a good enough reason to boycott Princo I don't know what is!! That is fraud!

[padre]

You know those "True 2x" DVD-R's that AllMediaOutlet is selling?! They are Princo's with the TDK manufacturer ID. I bought a set of 25, will probably only burn them at 1x, not taking chances.

[atreides93]

that sucks. how much did you pay for them???

definitely only burn them at 1x.

[padre]

I paid $28.75 (free shipping). I've emailed them for an RMA, and notified them of the fraudulent TDK identification code on these Princo DVD-Rs.

[OUTPinged_]

Prinos are sold there in all shops, and all of them (even those that are boxed and sealed) have TDKG01(02) lead-ins.

All of these dont burn on 105th writers (so called "fading burns").

The funny thing is that i got one princo disk by mail which had vx.princo lead-in, and it burned fine.

I am getting a sample bulkpaq disk this week. Hope there won't be TDK lead-in this time.

[Antonio S.]

TDK has now officially confirmed that Princo is faking TDK code ...

This is not really a fake...

Some companies make blank media to others. Even branded media like Maxell, TDK, Fuji, Memorex, and Panasonic doesn't make their own media. They just order from a media manufacturer and put their own private label. Even the same media that you always bought may be made from diferent manufacturers...

Antonio S.

[padre]

Antonio, there is a significant difference between one company manufacturering media or parts for another, and what Princo and some others are doing - which is putting a high quality brand name (ID) on their cheap POS media. In the world of microcomputers, many companies farm-out actual production of their product to 3rd parties, but they do so by giving them the exact specifications. Done that way, you can't tell the difference. That's not the case here.

It would be interesting to hear your reaction when buying a BMW Z4, only to discover they put the body of Z4 onto a Ford Fiesta frame and engine. I don't think it would sit right with you, and you'd call it fake then.

The only reason they are doing the fake coding is to sell the products as "2x compatible", and it's not.

[alexnoe]

TDK clearly stated that they have never sold media to Princo

[GGOE]

Don't know if it is the right place to post here, but I use nearly only Prico discs and they worked fine with the Pioneer A04. I have burned more than 100 movies so far with them and had never any problems.

I can even remember a magazine which tested some discs and the Princo got some high ranks in it.
And the Ritek ones were nearly the worst ones.

[OUTPinged_]

Dont blame Princo on that.


Lead-in is used to identify media in 104, for it doesnt look at dye itself.

Some idiots think that if blanks have TDK info in that lead-in they are manufactured by TDK. That isnt right and TDK clearly stated that they arent producing bulk disks.

The only thing i dont understand - why people think of Princo so negatively?

Is it ok to use ID that looks same to other company' listed in media table by a company that wants to make their disks be written by some actual writing strategy? That is the root of the problem :/

[atreides93]

It seems pretty obvious to me why people don't like Princo right now. They pretended their disks were better than they actually were!! Everyone knows TDK disks are more expensive and higher quality than Princo.

Vendors were selling these Princo disks as "unbranded" TDK's.

[gooki]

especially since princo's faked 2x media preforms worse than their 1x media when written witth the hacked 2x4all firmware.

[alexnoe]

The only magazine which has been proven that they can do media tests, and that they have understood what they are doing, is the C'T.
They gave a :scared: :scared: :scared: - Score to Princo (high PI-sum 8, bad HF signal, bad tracking, and these were only the 1x discs).

[atreides93]

What is C'T?? did they rate Ritek G03's??

By the way, I looked through my old disks and I had two Princo's that I bought back when I didn't know better. They are both labeled "TDKG01..." according to dvddecryptor. I can't read them properly in my dvd-rom drive. First time my dvd-rom drive had trouble with a DVD-R !! luckily it appears to be readable in my Pioneer A03...but that sucks!! i'm copying them now over to Ritek's so i don't lose the data on these. i have little faith in these falsely marked disks.

[alexnoe]

C'T is a german magazine about, but not restricted to, computers.

It's the only one whose authors are trying to learn something, and whose authors try not to write disinformation, even if a piece of information is not what people want to hear.

Their articles are usually a bit technical and some are abolutely incomprehensible for newbies.

Although their rating of the media has appearently been very strict (Spath told that really crappy discs can have a DC jitter of 20%, while for the C'T, everything above 9.5% was bad), it allows you to compare different discs.

They had a Ritek G03 disc in their test. It wrote well at 1x (nothing compared to Verbatim (assuming a good batch ;) ), Maxell or Panasonic though). It's hard to say if their G03 disc was out of a good batch or a bad batch :(
They did not have Taiyo Yuden, because they didn't find any.

We already had a thread here about that media test. Use the search to find it ;)

I have found that my "Penmax", which is terrible crap, are TDK G01 as well...faked IDs seem to be more common than I had ever believed...

[OUTPinged_]

@arteides:

I want to point out that Princos that were manufactured with TDKG01 lead-in were real bad and they dont stand any comparison.

But they are improving and later breeds of princos (PRINCO "V" (not VX)) seem to perform well.

Mmmm, i just wrote one of them with my 105 and it seems to work.

C'T tests were done pretty long time ago. I am sure that now the layout will change and that average blank quality has increased.

Lots of newer breeds were introduced, including infamous g03 riteks, newer 2x verbatims, 2x TYs, 4x blanks etc etc.

[alexnoe]

The C'T test is in 25/02 (i.e. 50th week of 2002).

Why should the average blank disc quality increase :scared: For CD-R, 5 years ago it was hard even to find crap discs, and now, it's hard to find good ones...I'm afraid that the developement of dvd±r will be the same.

[gooki]

I tend to agree with alexnoe there.

As the DVD±R media market becomes more price competetive, some manufacturers will start cutting corners in order to keep the prices down, in turn that will reduce their ability to produce constantly good quality DVD±R discs.

With that said some manufacturers like taiyo yuden, maxell, pioneer etc will retain and improve their manufacturing process and rely on economies of scale and their 'quality' image to keep their products competetive.

[Antonio S.]

Well, I have been using a NON Branded media from Meritline.COM (DVDPro DVD-R Grade A) and discovered that it is manufactured by PRINCO. Frankly speaking, I never had problems with this media. It is as good as TDK, Apple, and/or Panasonic, without the HIGH price. I had bought about 100 pieces; except for the burning speed (1X), I never had problem with it. Even the first one that I bought, about a year ago, doesn't have any kind of problems.
So I don't see why this company may want to use TDK's id when they have the capacity to manufacture good media and bring their name to a higher level...

Antonio S.

P.D. I change the firmware of my Pioneer A03 burner to a hacked firmware 2.00 to see if I can burn it at 2X speed, but it is not possible. The burning process crash...

[OUTPinged_]

@alexnoe:

I tend to disagree with you on your point that quality of blank media is decreasing.

There were always crap media and expensive media that is safe to use. As writing speeds increased and blank price decreased more and more Verbatims,BASFs, TDKs and lots of others are beginning to shift from one department to another. Sony is still selling verified TYs around so if you want expensive and safe to use media, just go buy them. If not, dont complain that these Verbatims you buy 0.20 a piece are crap.

For CD-R, 5 years ago it was hard even to find crap discs
Even harder it was to find a disk that costed less tnan 1USD. But I prefer to have .10 blanks that are able to burn at 40x than 2USD blanks that burn at 2x, event if they fail sometimes.

One more thing: how much cdrs were you burning 5 years ago?

About DVD-R: while it isnt clear why one would prefer 48X TYs vs 48X Princos, it is very easy to see that 4X Riteks are better than 1X Princos :-) So they all will switch to 4X which means new dye and potentially better compatibility.

[OUTPinged_]

@Antonio S.

Princo wasnt using their lead-in code to make them a name or something. It was just because of lack of princo lead-in in burner's firmware. These disks were being sold as unbranded or labeled as princo. The accusion begun when some not very intellegent people began thinking that if a disk has TDK lead-in it is manufactured by TDK, despite the fact that it costs 4 times less and has a different dye colot. Some blank shops/traders took advantage of it.

The point is: If a disk doesnt have "TDK" written on top of it, then it's not TDK.

P.S. My local cd-r fab is now making their own unbranded dvd-r media that has V.PRINCO lead-in. But the dye color doesnt match the one of boxed princos.

[alexnoe]

Even harder it was to find a disk that costed less tnan 1USD.I used TDK 4x discs, about 4 - 5 DM (i.e. $3 in those times).
But I prefer to have .10 blanks that are able to burn at 40x than 2USD blanks that burn at 2x, event if they fail sometimes.I delete any data which is so unimportant that it is worth not more than a 0.10 disc which degrades after half a year, or after one day of sunlight.
One more thing: how much cdrs were you burning 5 years ago?Maybe about 10 discs per week.

With your 0.20 Verbatim: I think you confuse Verbatim DL (CMC or other crap) with DLP (Mitsubishi)

[Doom9]

@antonio: Princos may work for you, but they don't for the majority of people (pretty easy to see when you follow this forum closely), including myself.
Actually there's one interesting angle to this that a friend brought to my attention a while back. It's mostly people having the A03 burner that are content with Princo blanks, where A04/A05 owners aren't quite so happy. Personally I've tested almost all brands Meritline offers, the only cheap blank that worked reliable were the Meritline DVD-Rs (Ritek G03). And now I prefer to pay $2.66 for a Verbatim 2x disc than having to worry that one day my discs won't work anymore.

[Antonio S.]

Doom9 said:@antonio: Princos may work for you, but they don't for the majority of people (pretty easy to see when you follow this forum closely), including myself... Let me clear something...

Sometime ago I bought from YesBuy.net some Princo branded DVD-R's. This are the worst type of media I ever bought in my life!!! None of them work, they are crap. However, the DVDPro DVD-R Grade A from Meritline.com ( even when the ID said that are manufacture by Princo ) is a diferent story. As you said, maybe is the burner (A03), however I burn both in the same burner. Never have problem with DVDPro, even they are more compatible that DVD-R's made from Apple (my Phillips 825 dvd player recognize the DVDPro but not the Apple).

Antonio S.

[Doom9]

oh, when I say Princo I mean the Meritline variant of it.. that is DVD Pro Grade A. They are in my crappy list forever.

[OUTPinged_]

I still state that overall blank quality did increase in last 5 years. Cheap crap media was introduced but you can usually easy notice that (price/package), also a list of "safe" media breeds can be easily obtained in forums.

It now turned into "cheap media is crap" and "princo is crap" discussion. Pointless.


@doom9: princos quality vary from fab to fab. I am burning the ones that produced by local fab and they play on standalones/dvd-roms flawlessly. Not a single blank was lost and i wrote 14 of 50 of them already. Compare that to these old RITEKG01 boxed princos that i tried and all 4 of which didnt success in verifying.