ACCU with SONY lead-in

[leisuredoc]

Now I must admit that I am confused. I just bought a 100-pack of ACCU's from Meritline because I read in another thread that these were always Ritek G-03's. Silver top, purple bottom. General use.

DVD Decryptor shows the manufacturer as SONY. No problems burning 1X in an 'A04 (firmware 1.30) with five for five so far.

Curiously, a few months ago I bought a "bad" 25-pack of Sony CD-R's that CDR Identifier showed as CMC's and the dye was obviously less dark than the "SONY" ones yet both tops were identical, branded as SONY.

I could believe that a top-quality name brand would contract out the production of disks and (hopefully) have their name as a lead-in. But ACCU's with a SONY lead-in is as scandalous as Prino's with the TDK lead-in.

Anyone else getting ACCU's that aren't G03's? What's the sure way to get Ritek G03's?
:confused:

[gooki]

As you are already aware ACCU do not make their own discs.

I purchased 500 ACCU DVD-R's (Purchased directly from the company, not through a re-seller) and they were prodisc technologies G02, shipped directly from the factory in taiwan.

[gooki]

The sure way to get ritek G03, don't use meritline.

I'm real pissed with them, as I ordered 300 of their ritek discs and was sent 300 optodiscs (Grrrrrrrr).

Use rima.com if you want to get exactly what you ordered.

[leisuredoc]

gooki,

Thanks for the warning about Meritline! Maybe I'm making too much out of this. I have OPTO's and while I know that they are of lower quality than Ritek's, I still haven't made a coaster out of any of them (except where I goofed with IfoEdit). I don't think I would attempt a 2X burn with anything but top-quality media and with three pentium-class computers connected to my LAN/cable modem (and two daughters wanting to get on the internet at same time), slow is OK with me.
;)

[gooki]

I know optodisc is okay, however my toshiba sd-r5002 refuses to write to 1 out of every 2 of these discs :(

[gooki]

Additionally it would eb nice to get what you order, which is why whenever someone say's they ordered riteks from meritline.com I always question the manufacturer id.

[leisuredoc]

I'm with you on that! That's why I was hesitant to use these so-called Sony's but took a chance. Someone once told me that "cheap" and "s**t" usually don't fall too far from each other. I wish I had the CDR Information app (and the store receipt) when I bought the crap Sony CDR's. Thank goodness for Doom9's forum as well. And, many thanks for your wisdom, gooki!
:p

[waldok]

Well,

Reading a lot of posts about cheap DVD-Rs, there seems to be a real tendency to associate both "cheap" and "not reliable". Still, some users (including me) have used very cheap material (BUlkPaq 1x DVD-R at 1.5 euros) without any problem (burner is a Sony DRU-500a, standalones are Panasonic A360 and Proline 1040). So It is very hard to figure out what the real causes of problems are : standalone compatibility ? buffering problems when burning ? defective medium ?
I think it is always worth trying cheap media first and see if it fits your needs. There's no real interest saying "cheap is shit" as a general rule since experience has proven that "reliable" brands sometimes fail too.
There are too many factors one should consider when comparing blank media, so I guess each one must go his own way and stick to what works for him (well this last sentence really sounds empty ;)

As an example of "cheap" vs "branded" , I mentioned my 2 standalone players, a Panasonic A360 for which I had to pay a lot 3 years ago, and a Proline for which I only spent 99Euros before Christmas. Surprisingly enough, the Proline beats the Panasonic hands down : reads everything (SVCD, VCD, MP3, any DVD-R, MPEG files on CD, ...), with great picture quality. So to say, sometimes, the cheaper the better. Damn, I could have bought 6 Proline players for the price I paid the Panasonic !

Now, will this cheap stuff (DVD-Rs and cheap players) be reliable in the long term ? We'll see but I still couldn't find anybody that could explain why a BulkPaq DVD-R would degrade more over time than a Sony DVD-R once burnt.

Any opinion ?

Waldok:cool:

[gooki]

If the dye they use isn't upto scratch it may initially write fine but be more susecptable to loss of data due to it's inability to cope with climate conditions. Not saying it will, but there is the possibility.

When quoting media brands please refer to the manufacturer id's and not the brand that it was sold to you. As this avoids a lot of confusion.

Ps, I have had a lot of success and failurers with different cheap media brands. Best results would be either my ritek g03's, or the Prodisc technology g02 discs. Worst manufacturer I've come across is vivastar (absolute shit)

[jaquestati]

i just got 500 of the cheap 1x accu disks for 70 cents each and they burn flawlessly at 2x in my dru500a have burnt maybe 80 so far and no coasters (1 dvd had a obvious defect i burned it out of curuiosity but was not suprised when it would not finish) (i expect 2-3 losses in a cheapo pack just like i do in cheap cd packs) at 70 cents for 2x speed who's complainin :)

they play flawlessly in my sony 550 dvd my toshiba 3800 and in my cyberhome 500 :)

the myriad of comptrecht (or however ya spell it) fronts that are around from meritt to cddvdrmedia to supermediastore etc are all a little iffy..... i did have some problems getting my order..... and it wasnt packed real well... (box was open in fact!)

but i am very pleased with the actual media...... amazing that you can get zero coasters 2x media for a merre 70 cents :)

[gooki]

And the Accu (prodisc technologies g02) give good results when burning at 2x sepped witht he 2x4all firmware on the a04. Still i prefer Ritek g03 media, but would happily settle with Prodisc if they keep improving their quality control.

[leisuredoc]

OK, many thanks to all that responded. My intent with this thread was to gain some idea about how DVD-R's were "manufacturer's ID" branded and, at the end of the day, hopefully identify both a manufacturer and reseller that would deliver a consistent product at a price that most reasonable for the (hopefully consistent) quality.

This is really a number of issues:

1). Does the reseller properly represent and then provide the product that was requested? A quick check to perhaps rima.com and gooki's input tend to support that reseller's capabilities.

2). Does the product meet my needs? This is a loaded question since there's a lot of fear apparent in many of the threads in the Doom9 forum about longevity of any and all media. An initial success in producing a workable DVD-R for all of your "stand-alones" may be a fading success in the future if the whole dye-fading issue occurs. I don't know a lot about this but hope that Alexnoe or some other expert could share his/her wisdom in this regard.

At this point, I would like to shift this thread over to another one in the same forum subdirectory and offer to assist in identifying standard test(s) for media longevity. I think there are three aspects to the quality issue - initial media quality (does it "drop-off" toward the edges), and two aspects regarding the aging process, namely light stability and "thermo-oxidative" stability." Since most people keep their recorded media under wraps or "in the dark," I suspect that the stability is mostly a time-temperature phenomenon. Example of the latter - ever leave a CD-R in the car and its 110 degrees out? How long you think that puppy is going to last?

To anyone that works for, or is close to, manufacturers of optical media, I urge you to (continue to) share your wisdom in this forum since there is a lot of misunderstanding about the quality of the media that we are all purchasing.

:p