Pioneer A04 and Princo media

[Gollum]

On friday I bought myself a Pioneer A04, 5 Princo DVD-R and 3 Princo DVD-RW.

1st DVD-RW a bunch of divx tv episodes with Nero 5.5.9.17. It was successful, it played back in the burner and in my Pioneer DVD rom. Good enough for me. I erased and tried to burn again. It failed. I re-erased and tried again something else..it does the Lead In and then fails.

2nd DVD-RW 2 or 3 divx episodes..failed before it started...I erased it and tried with Record Now that came with the burner...failed...tried erasing it...erasing now fails...:angry:

3rd DVD-RW fails immediately :angry: :angry:

1st DVD-R bunch of episodes...with nero. It works great.

2nd DVD-R more episodes (now a full season :))

3rd and 4th DVD-9 Backup using DVD X Copy...works great with my Burner and with my DVD Rom.

5th Will be trying tonight.

The drive came with one Pioneer DVD-RW and one DVD-R. I only tried the CD-RW. I made a 1:1 copy of a DVD-5 using DVD Decryptor . It worked fine. I erased and burned some files. No problems. I erased again. I also tried multiple sessions with nero then erased it all. Not a problem at all.

I do have a point to all this. Can I trust these Princo DVD-R's? If I erased these from my hardrive and tried the copies a week from now, or a month or a year, will it still be there. Has anyone actually experienced a burned disc from princo or any company that lost what was burned? I can't help but worry.

Thanks for any help.

[Gollum]

Thanks for all the feedback!:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[wfn1]

in a situation like this i always think - what would Eazy-E do?

but seriously, if you do a search in this forum you'll see that a lot of people are having problems with Princo DVD-R and DVD-RW. If you do not have to have a lot of RW's just buy the high quality ones like Verbatim. DVD-Rs are a different story, I find that I have excellent run rate with Lead Data at 1x, Ritek G03 at 2x and Ritek G04 at 4x.

[bouis]

You'll find a lot of folks who have problems and haven't a clue how to approach them, so they find something to blame to put their minds at ease. I'd put a little more stock in the suggestion that those discs available in Europe may be of inferior quality, but I have nothing to base this on other than a few anecdotes.

I've gone through 600 or so Princo 1x discs in the last 4 months. None which passed CRC check after burning (using SFV files and a DVD-ROM, not the DVD-R itself) have "gone bad" yet. None which burned successfully have failed CRC verification; less than 1% failed while burning. I got mine at QTCCDR (http://www.qtccdr.com) and Rima (http://www.rima.com).

Edit: I'm referring to the Princo 1x DVD-R discs; the DVD-RW are of lesser quality, generally with up to 10% failure rates on the first burn; though I haven't had one "go bad" which burned successfully. They also appear to have poor compatability with set-top players which work with more expensive DVD-RW media.

[bouis]

SashaP (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40405)'s exhaustive tests (http://cfauvcs5.harvard.edu/Test.htm).

Compare the transfer curves for Princo as compared to the other media: notice that the Princo's curves are straight and nearly free of spikes (especially at the end). These spikes represent areas which are difficult to read and may degenerate in the future; while playing, they often produce a "skip" where the drive is unable to read fast enough to keep up with the movie. In fact, SashaP found Princos to be reliable at 2x (you need the 2x-for-all firmware), although my own experience (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35889) suggests otherwise.

SashaP's tests demonstrate what I've always maintained: Princo 1x discs are as good or better than Ritek 1x.

[flanman]

I have had pretty good luck with the princo 1x dvd-r. I have probably burned 150 or so with maybe 5 failures due to the disk. Not perfect, but better than a lot of the cheeper media out there.

[Gollum]

Thanks for all the replies. I am convinced. The princo RW are garbage and the princo 1X DVD-R are ok. The 5 I tested work perfectly. I have used two different burning methods. I have tried playing them, with no problems. I have repeatedly put them in both my drives and not once have I had a problem. It has been 4 day's and all the data I burned is still there.

I found a few statements on the internet about people saying the princo's might lose their data over time. I believe this is just speculation. I have yet to actually here someone say they have lost their data after a successful burn.

My plan is to continue buying 1X Princo's, which are available locally and for cheap. If I have something that I absolutely cannot lose I will make 2 backups, (still cheaper then buying the expensive media). For RW discs, seen as I do not need too many...I will just buy the expensive stuff.

Thanks again for the info.

[wfn1]

there are different grades of princo dvd-r media, if you get grade a (silver tops/purple bottoms) you're ok. if you get grade b (white tops/light purple bottoms) you will have problems. and that's in the us. i can post prerecorded data for the grade b ones if anyone cares.

[bouis]

All of the ones I've tested have been of the white-topped version.

Do you have any evidence of this "grade" structure, or is just supposition?

[wfn1]

yes, the distributor i bought it from told me about it

[padre]

Yes, I think wfn1 is correct about the difference in quality between types of Princo media. I purchase 25 white-topped Princo media (light purple dye) from Meritline a while back, and they're all crap. They will record, but during playback they skip or freeze at various points. All 25 of them had this problem.

[bouis]

I haven't seen a silver/purple Princo disc in a couple of months now; I don't think they even make them anymore. Which distributor was this? Can you give me some contact information?

[wfn1]

It was about 4-5 months ago when i was buing Princo in quantity and the silver tops were still selling then. The disti name is BMI LLC, they're out of California. They do not sell Princo any more, just Ritek, Lead Data and brand names. Don't bother them if you're buying less than 1K quantity.

[bouis]

Sounds like they were bullshitting you to empty their stock of the older type. I have very little experience with the silver Princos, but they appear to be the version with which most people here have had problems with.

[bouis]

What did ADVDINFO say about those discs?

[padre]

bouis,

Here ya go!

00 42 00 00 01 40 C1 FD 9E D8 50 00 02 98 0C 13 .B...@....P.....
76 78 80 00 03 50 52 49 4E 43 4F 00 04 00 01 00 VX...PRINCO.....