i cant belive that the only discs that work or hitatchi drives are verbs, there must be another brand usin the same dye at least, i askin because unlike the states where verbs are everywhere and cheap as chips, over here in the uk theyre very rare and very expensive, the best price ive found anywhere is £20 for 10 discs (thats around $40 for you usa guys) but they rarely have any stock, are there any other manuacturers usin mkm or at least anythin but ritek, i just wish every shop here wasnt stocking 5 different brands of ritek discs, datasafe, datawrite, tuffdisc are all very readily available but little else. aside from that what happens if verbatim change their dye, are we all totally screwed? would be a very easy way for M$ to block the mod, just pay mitsubishi to change the dye a little

Verbs are 10 for £14 on SVP mate

thats not bad at all, problem is i cant order online (i owe the bank big and have to clear it before i can use the card again) and i dont like usin mail order at the best of times (ive had many a smashed package turn up at my door) all i want is a decent shop that has a good stock of decent dvd media at a sensible price, i dont mind paying 2 quid a disc if i dont have to visit 10 shops to find one disc and when you do find them they usually only have about 3 in stock, and like i say what if they change the dye, i cant belive theres only one media type on the market that works

Officedepot (riteks) have worked great for me on a Hitachi. There are on sale for $34.99 per 25 pack. I usally try to buy a pack or 2 when they go on sale, because the regular price are pretty high. I tried Memorex which are Ritek too, but they were crap.

http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=...rue&An=text

hmm even though you say they work ive not had a single ritek even come close, is there any media at all other than verbs that dont use ritek or have all other dye makers one out of buisness, i havent found a single exeption yet, if anyone finds a non ritek disc thats not a verbatim in the uk please let me know, im willin to travel anywhere but london to go to a shop that doesnt sell f***ing riteks and has more than 5 in stock at one time, of course it could be that as usual companies couldnt ive a damn about the uk so they send the decent stuff elsewhere and sell us the crap at twice the price, this is really p*ssin me of now, can i change the drive in the 360 itself?

I know for sure that Phillips D/L DVD+R are CMC Mag and there are some discs out there that sport a Ricoh media ID code (not to be cofused with Ritek). No promises on quality on either one of these options though. The thing is that the D/L media by nature is less compatible, ect. and the only manufacturer that really seems to produce a quality D/L disc is Mitsubishi Chemicals (Verbatim). I have yet to see a reliable label outside of Verbatim that carries the MKM media ID code so I am afraid you are stuck if you want Verbatim type quality.

Ive been using datasafe disks for a little while now with my hitachi, burned on a pioneer 111d and so far no issues mate.

Im fed up paying £££'s for verbatims

And just how long do you plan on using these discs? Do some error rate scans and you will discover why it is worth the extra money for Verbs.

well ill try and hunt down some phillips discs over the weekend and i may be able to lay my hands on some mitsubishi discs when im in bournemouth next week (i know a shop that had loads last time i was there) ill post results in the new media thread as soon as i have them. thanks for the info

Do you happen to have a drive that supports error rate scanning (ie Lite-On, Benq or Plextor)? I would be curious to see some scans from the various media. Outside of the occasional Ritek fluke I have yet to see any D/L media besides Verbatim give decent scans on a regular basis.

Thanks It's about £17-20 with P&P. I'll order those in a few days.

Am running a test on a few types of media soon, will update once i get results, Anything using CMC MAG 01 in a pioneer 111D APPARENTLY burns at about 80% reliability and is about 50-60% cost, thus if you can hack a few coasters not bad.

How do you go about doing an error rate scan on your drive?

I bought these Datawrite DL discs from Big Pockets, £16.98 for 25.

0000 - E1 0F 32 10 00 03 00 00 00 FC FF FF 00 22 D7 FF - ..2.........."..
0010 - 00 00 03 52 49 43 4F 48 4A 50 4E 44 30 31 02 40 - ...RICOHJPND01.@
0020 - 25 25 37 10 00 2C 6C 00 2C 6C 20 1F 0C 0C 14 14 - %%7..,l.,l......
0030 - 02 01 01 20 00 20 1F 0C 0C 14 14 02 01 01 20 00 - ................
0040 - 04 00 33 7B 5C 00 25 69 3A 26 1C 0A 0B 20 02 01 - ..3{\.%i:&......
0050 - 01 00 00 58 62 42 26 1C 0A 0B 20 02 01 01 00 5F - ...XbB&........_
0060 - 04 00 00 43 66 3E 26 1C 0A 0B 20 02 01 01 00 00 - ...Cf>&.........
0070 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - ................

There reported to have the media code RICOHJPN D01 (002), I've burned two so far without any problems but then I do have a sammy in my 360 and read somewhere that its not too fussy about media.
But I'd like to do an error rate scan if someone could tell me how.


Cheers.

To do an ACCURATE Error Rate scan you will need a Lite-On, Benq or Plextor DVD Burner. For Lite-On you can use a couple of different programs: Kprobe2 and the latest Nero CD/DVD Speed. The Benq drives will do them with the latest Nero CD/DVD Speed and the Plextor drives will do them with Plextools or Nero CD/DVD Speed. The latest Nero CD/DVD Speed (V4.7) does seem to support the Pioneer 111D, however upon comparing my Lite-On 160 and my Pioneer 111D, I wouldn't put too much faith into it's abilities as an accurate scanner.

Don't have any of those drives, I got a NEC3500, don't think I'll buy one just for this.

Cheers for the info anyway.

Trawling the net I found a LiteOn DW1670 for £17.99 with delivery and couldn't resist so I ordered one.
Soon I'll be able to test those RICOHJPN D01 disc and see if they really saved me money in the long run, or will I be going back the verbatims.

I've been using Memorex DVD D/L discs with my hitachi drive and they've worked fine

Yup, drives are cheap enough these days that it is worth it to have them just for scanning (not to mention the Lite-Ons are excellent rippers with the right firmware). I have a 160P6S that I bought just for ripping and error rate scans. I am really curious to see your results. If you don't already have a full version of Nero, the latest Nero CD/DVD Speed can be had here:

http://www.cdspeed2000.com/

Thanks for the link, but I've already got the latest version in anticipation of delivery of the new drive.
I'll post the test results as soon as I get it.

Its still listed as Waiting for delivery of stock as of today so I'll be waiting a little longer.

Cheers.

I've got the drive know and it shows up as BENQ DVD DC DW1670v1.03 in windows.
But when I run Nero CD/DVD Speed 4.7 and start the Disc quality test I get drive does not support this function.
I thought Liteon and BENQ drives were supposed to work with Nero. Do I need to change any settings ?

Cheers.

Just read at Cdfreaks that the 1670 doesn't do DVD scans but can scan CD's, Oh well still supposed to be a good burner.

Burnt a RICOHJPN D01 disc with the BENQ and got dirty disc error, same disc burnt with NEC3500ag work perfectly.

Man that stinks. I know that the Benq 1670 is a POS but I didn't know that Lite-On outsourced to them for a period of time. Their latest models are all made by them. I would return the drive and hold out for a good deal on the 160P6S or the 165P6S.

Its too much hassle to send it back, it was cheap so I'll keep it.
When I get another game and make a backup I'll try verbatims with it and see the results.
I think I'll make sure the next drive I buy isn't a clone and actually made by LiteOn or whoever next time.

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ProductInfo.a...ProductID=12074

https://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpag...t-16xbb&P=1

Found 2 links to the drives you mentioned which one would you recommend ?

Well first one doesn't work. Can't comment on the second one as it doesn't seem to be the same model. Bottom line the 160P6S doesn't do lightscribe (fancy method for labeling lightscribe compatible discs) or writing to DVD-RAM. The 165 does. So if those things aren't important to you then get the 160P6S model.

Thanks for the info, I'm going to start looking around for retail boxed drives just to makes sure I'm getting what I think I paid for.

Cheers.

blank discs are like anythin else, you get what you pay for, i dont mind paying a bit extra for verbs coz i know they will do the job. i tried a few others and they just dont compar to the verbs.

Well got myself a BenQ 1650 for £25 form PCWorld (Birmingham UK).
I did a scan of that disc I burnt with the 1670 and got a DDE and it was screwed the disc was no good so theres hope still for the 1670.

Heres a scan of those Datawrite RICOHJPN D01 (002) disc burnt at 2.4 on a NEC 3500AG.
This is a working, so far, backup. I'll post a scan of a Verbatim disc after this to compare.











Heres the Verbatim burnt on the same drive and speed.

This scan is alot better than the previous one but both disc run on my sammy 4.2a.

im have just bought those datasafes form big pockets using a pioneer 111d with latest pioneer firmware and it wont wont burn past 52% any ideas??? verbs work great..

Just read this thread. The evidence is all pretty much there, aside from a few folks who have 360 drives that would even read a hot turd if they placed it in their drives. A little history on Datasafe:

Datasafe, Datawrite, Tuffdisc, White Label, Ridisc, Rivision are ALL owned by E-net Budget media distributors. E-net are well known for changing out manufacturers at the drop of a hat, grabbing factory second media and slapping their labels on it and they also do overprints. The bottom line is that their media is a quality rollercoaster as you never know what on earth you are really getting from batch to batch. They are also well known for releasing new lines and starting out with decent quality stuff and then switching off to crappier quality under the same label after they have hooked people on that particular line. Can't tell you how many times I have seen that cycle.

Ive been using Aone disks £8.50 for 10. i have a pioneer 108 latest firmware all the disks have burnt fine and all work with my 360 sammy/toshiba drive 4.2

I bought a pioneer 111d that was supposed to be the best for the job it failed all three tries with it and i havnt used it since

so the burner failed on this occasion with my 108 beating the 111d even on crap disks.

Maybe i got lucky with my 360 drive they all work great

The Sammys tend to be far more forgiving for media than the Hitachi drives.