C'T: DVD±R media test!

[alexnoe]

Summerization:

The following media is crap (i.e. error rate turned out higher than allowed by specs):

DVD-R: Princo 1x, DataTrack, RitekG01 (HiSpace), CMC, Vivastar
DVD+R: Ricoh (!!), Ritek

Good media:

DVD-R: Maxell, RitekG01 (Emtec), Pioneer, Mitsui, Matsushita, TDK, Mitsubishi
DVD+R: Mitsubishi

When writing Ritek/CMC at 2x (with or without hacked firmware), error rate increased by 5x - 25x.

The PI sum 8 error rate of 2x certified DVD-R media was at 30-80 (Verbatim, TDK, Pioneer, Matsushita about 30, Mitsui 80) while 280 are allowed.

Ritek media at 2x showed up to 1600, as well as CMC. Ritek G01 was between 100 and 800 at 1x speed.
Princo 1x got 500.

[gooki]

alexnoe are you abel to email em full details: davd2k@gear.net.nz


Thanks

[jsl]

What was the error rate for the DVD+R media? Could you please describe a little more about what the numbers actually means?

[alexnoe]

That article is *really* long, and I can't decribe that all.

7 of 10 tested DVD+R disc were made by Ricoh, however, they had very different quality:
The numbers are: PI sum 8 / PIF / POF / HF
PI sum 8 (number of PI errors over the last 8 sectors)
PIF: PI Faults: First error correction level failed for this number of bytes
POF: Hard read errors
HF: quality of HF signal (from -2 to 2)
max allowed values:
PI sum 8: 280
PIF: 4 (not specified for DVD-R)
POF: 0

Ricoh (Emtec): 734/30/1/-2 (total crap)
Ricoh (Fuji): 124/11/0/-1
Ricoh (HP): 122/11/0/-1
Intenso (mo manuf. spec.): 730/18/0/-2 (total crap)
Ricoh (Memorex): 209/10/0/-1
Mitsubishi (Philips): 57/8/0/0
Ricoh (Platinum): 167/9/0/-2
Ricoh (Ricoh): 325/8/0/-1
Ricoh (TDK): 257/10/0/-1
Verbatim (Mitsubishi): 87/8/0/0

As you can see, no disc got better than 0 for HF signal quality.
They've measure *much* more, but I can't describe that all here.

As a comparision, the best DVD-R media are
Matsushita: 30/4/0/2
TDK: 25/6/0/0
Verbatim: 29/7/0/1
Pioneer: 31/5/0/2
None of DVD+R media reached that.

The worst DVD-R media are however
Imation CMC: 1664/208/1/-2 (no english word available to describe this)

The quality of the tracking signal was better for DVD+R than for DVD-R, but a good tracking signal alone isn't worth much...

[jsl]

Thanks for the info :) It's strange that the same manufacturer can get so different results. Do you know how many copys of each brand they tested?

[alexnoe]

I don't know exactly, but they used at least different writers for each type of media, so they must have had a few of each.

[gooki]

alexnoe, you mentioned you get Maxell DVD-R media for 3euro each, are you able to tell us where from?

thanks.

[alexnoe]

A friend is able to get them at that price (he has a "Gewerbeschein" and can get them a bit cheaper than normal)

[dvdWannabe]

What software can I use to test for the values ( PI sum 8 / PIF / POF / HF) mentioned in this thread?

[alexnoe]

None. It requires special (expensive) equipment. Although at least the Pioneer drives are capable of these measurements, Pioneer does not release the necessary information to build such software :angry:

[Streetcleaner]

That test confuses me a little bit, i have thought all Ritek brands would be the same.
For a little explanation the "Gewerbeschein" means that you`ve got wholeseller conditions.

[markrb]

Did they happen to test the G03 or G04 Ritek media that is popular now?
Is there anyway to tell what Ritek media you are getting before you buy?

Mark

[Streetcleaner]

I`ll guess you have to buyne one test it and then buy as much you can carry.

[alexnoe]

They did only test 1x and 2x DVD-R media, but not 4x media.

They had one Ritek G03 disc and wrote it at 1x. The PI sum 8 error rate increased in the outer regions and went up to 128 (which is OK). Although 128 is OK, the error rate should not increase towards the outer portion...

Tracking and HF signal both got "average" (compared to Princo, which got "very bad" for both :) ).

Assuming that the quality of Ritek G03 is constant, these discs would be pretty good generic media for 1x writing.

With the error rate increasing towards the outer portion, 2x writing must give very low quality there (they did not check that though).

[thxtof]

Alexnoe, any comment on the quote from our friend Trilight :confused:

Originally posted by TRILIGHT
That still does not change the fact that there is no software or testing method shared in that post. As such, it's completely worthless. I could just as easily say I ran my own tests and my own media I cooked up in the kitchen is the best around because my "flux capacitor" test said so! Geeze! There is nothing scientific about the testing method (um...wait...there isn't one) or the results provided in that thread.

[klona]

A bit agreesive to me, but not totally false.

can you give us reference to the original article ?
Do you have more info about "how" they did measurements ?


On the other side, I feel this post useful, as it's a forum, to discuss and it's a lot more scientific and precise than thousand of post I read (and wrote at the beginning hughh) " blublu brand is the best of the world, I just burned one DVD-R and it's playing perfectly in the 5 first min on my PC. (not mentionned : 5 min is enough to test I want to post first on this fantastic result I am so happy I finally burned a DVD !!)

We spoke a lot about "How the hell can we test a media quality ?" and this is the first time we see the beginning of an answer.

[Doom9]

well.. people who don't know c't should let the judging to the ones who know the mag. It's about the only computer magazine that I still trust in. The article is called "Scheibenwahl" by a Hartmut Gieselmann, it was published in c't issue 25 on pages 124-133 and it's not available online or in English anywhere. It would be way too much work to come up with a halfway decent translation as the article is very scientific explaining the various things that have been measured. For your reference a CATS-SA300-DVD-PRO Analyzer by AudioDev (www.audiodev.com) has been used. Drives used were Pulstec SDP-1000. If you can afford a testing system it would be no problem at all to perform these tests on your own.

Now c't itself stated that the test have to be taken with a grain of salt as qualities can change a lot in short periods - but to to call it worthless is almost an offense of rule4. If any computer mag doesn't publish bs it's c't. Period!

[alexnoe]

About trilights comment:

I agree on that being able to perform these tests on ones own (as C1/C2 measurements for CD-R) would be veeeeery helpful (and LiteOn, whose CD-R drives are the only ones which currently allow customers to do proper C1 measurements, don't officially support it, but don't seem to be annoyed, since we use WSES for our reviews on cdfreaks), but Pioneer doesn't want us to do these tests.
Please send all your complaints to their support address :)

The C'T seems to be the only hardware magazine at all which has an open ear for constructive critique btw...assuming that Trilight only knows BS writing magazines, such as Computer Bild, PC-Welt, etc (i'm sure there are lots of them in english and french as well as in german), his comment is...understandable. It's the first media test of all I saw which makes sense :)

I could scan these pages...but publishing them here would probably violate copyright :( , and I'm sure that not all of you can read German well enough ;)

What I can tell you is that they've burned discs of 4482 MB. Although 4489 MB would have been nice, 4482 should also suffice.

[spath]

> PIF: PI Faults: First error correction level failed for
> this number of bytes

You mean frames I guess (wrong bytes cannot be
counted in case of an uncorrectable PI frame) ?

By the way, was the HF quality score calculated
on jitter measurements ?

[alexnoe]

Jitter has been measured, too (12% for Princo is a lot, isn't it...)

HF was mainly scored according to the amplitude of the generated signals for the shortest and longest pits/lands.

About PI:
Could also be the number of frames in which PIs occured.

Problem: I haven't got that C'T here at the moment :( , and I could not memorize everything.

[spath]

> Jitter has been measured, too (12% for Princo is
> a lot, isn't it...)

It's a bit high, but on the other hand a far-east
cheap copy of any movie can reach 25-30% :)

> HF was mainly scored according to the amplitude
> of the generated signals for the shortest and
> longest pits/lands.

This is also a good criterium, which should be in
line with the jitter results. Whenever you find these
jitter figures back, could you post or send/mail
them to me, I'm interested.

[alexnoe]

C'T tested only media you get in Germany, and the cheapest crap on earth cannot be found here ;)
I just remember that I have scanned it not long ago...i'm sure it's still on my hard disc

I just realised that I randomly use PI or PIF :( I'm sure you always know what of these two I mean.

The jpg pages of the entire media test part are 1.17 MB.

[alexnoe]

Due to a scanner problem (only runs as SPP on my board, but produces low quality scans then, some figures are hardly readable), I can only give some numbers, not all:

Jitter: DC jitter / bottom jitter:
amplitudes: I3 / I14

DVD-R:
Apple (Maxell): 6.95% / 6.55% // 0.43 / 1.89
DataTrack (EuroDig Disc): 7.64% / 8.30% (?) // 0.34 / 1.62
Fuji (Pioneer): 6.79% / 7.29% // 0.48 / 2.01
Hispace (Ritek): 10.53% / 7.45% // 0.27 / 1.34
CMC: hardly readable in the scans, but jitter is over 10% // 0.29 / 1.64
Maxell (Maxell): 6.36% / 6.16% // 0.45 / 1.96
Princo: 11.91% (bad memory :( ) / 11.61% // 0.30 / (?)
Mitsubishi: 7.01% / 7.27% // 0.40 / 1.76

DVD+R
Emtec (Ricoh): 8.37% / 10.05% // 0.35 / 1.71
Intenso (no manuf. id present!): (?) / 14% // <0.30 / 1.45
TDK (Ricoh): 8.39% / 10.43% // 0.37 / 1.76
Verbatim (Mitsubishi): 8.39% / 8.62% // 0.35 / 1.62

BTW, the DVD-R discs with the lowest jitter and best HF signals are not exactly cheaper than DVD+R discs...

[Doom9]

BTW, the DVD-R discs with the lowest jitter and best HF signals are not exactly cheaper than DVD+R discs... That was a point of c't for quite a while now. Most people compare the cheapest DVD-Rs with the cheapest DVD+R but that's like comparing apples with pears. First of all, DVD+Rs can all be written at 2.4x speed so for fairness sake you should comapre 2x DVD-R prices with DVD+R prices. And there isn't really any high quality 2x certified media that's not from a major brand producer.

[alexnoe]

The money-issue with dvd-r vs dvd+r is definitely gone, unless someone is happy with 0,70$ princo 1x speed dvd-r discs...

Has anyone seen 4x dvd+r (quality) discs? I do not speak about announcements, but real prices.
4x dvd-r (quality) discs are about 5 euro each here.

[armyb77]

Hey Best Buy currently has Verbatim 4.7GB 4x DVD+R you can purchase a 50 pack for $99.99, and free shipping Thats not bad for +R and they do work at 4X in the DRU-500A. Here's the link if anyone wants it:

Verbatim 4.7GB 4x DVD+R Disc Spindle (50-pack) (http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11202440&m=887&cat=2843&scat=2845)

Have Fun all
Armyb77

[int 21h]

Not too long ago, I bought a 10 pack for testing (before my 100 Riteks got here) of Imation branded media (Really CMC) and I can tell you that the jitter of those discs makes a huge difference in readability in my PC DVD drive (luckily they read fine in my dvd player), usually if I try to image them with my PC DVD Drive, they stop somewhere mid through with a read error. If I use my DRU to image them, it works fine. I guess because it spins them much slower.

[FredThompson]

here's the original German and an automated translation to English. Pictures don't appear to be around anymore.

http://www.thewholewideweb.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=167