Question for those who own the Pioneer DVR-A05/105 (1 Viewer)

[John_Berger]

I just bought my Pioneer DVR-A05 as an upgrade from my A03, so I'm looking for 4x media to go with it.

The place where I normally buy my discs is offering the Ritek 4x. I have had nothing but good luck (zero coasters) using Ritek media, and it plays in every DVD player I have. Supposedly, the DVD-R media that are included in the DVR-A05 are Ritek. That right there says a lot if Pioneer uses Ritek media.

However, this company is also offering 4x DVD-Rs from a manufacturer called Princo. The catch is that these discs are $30 less for a spindle of 50!

I'm leery of going away from Ritek because of how well they've worked and that Pioneer include them with their drives, but $30 is a hell of a price slash. Has anyone used the Princo brand with their DVR-A05 with total success? I'm willing to pay the extra $30 if there's a chance of making coasters with Princo. I looked on the Internet for media compatibility tests with this brand but couldn't find anything.

I'm also open to other brands that successfully use 4x speed with the DVR-A05 that don't cost an arm and a leg.

 

[Tony Aguila]

I had problems with a batch of Ritek media with my A05, so I went with this on-line seller's house brand (which they claim is also Ritek) and have had zero failure. But if you insist on Ritek, my source sells it for $79.50 per 50 disks, so I don't know how anyone can sell any other brand for $30 less than that!

My advice is to get the smallest bulk size available, probably 25, even if the unit price is a bit higher, so you can make sure it will work for you. I'm so confident with the brand I use that I order them batches of 200.

If your printer is capable of printing directly to disk (e.g., Epson 900/960), you may want to look into printable media. They have really come down in price.

By the way, I couldn't find the Princo brand on the list, but they do have Prime, which claims to be Ritek G04 compatible, selling for $10 less per 50.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Ritek and Princo often license their dye to other disc manufacturers and also have their own brand names. Ritek for example, sells under it's own name of Traxdata.

Princo-dye discs sell in large numbers over here, most commonly on Datawrite discs.

I've used x1, x2 and x4 of these discs and they've all worked fine. The x4 version (red label for those who are interested) are rated as some of the best x4 media out there and we can get them for as little as £0.79p each (Ritek x4 are typically £1.30).

I've had maybe 6-7 duffers of these discs, but they were all at the end of one packet. The two other packets of 50 I've got through have been fine.

 

[Darren Lewis]

My father recently bought a Pioneer 105, and shortly afterwards I bought one too (put mine into a firewire enclosure to use with my laptop). We've both used Ritek and Princo dye Datawrite DVD-R with no problems, though only burned a couple so far.

 

[MikeH]

John,

Any reason why you didn't jump up to the dual format A06?

Mike

 

[John_Berger]

Becuase I'm not going to pay up to twice as much for the drive just to avoid the need to take that extra 1/2 second to actually look at the media that I'm buying to make sure that I'm getting -R media instead of accidentally buying +R media.

Based on everything that I've seen, DVD-R/W is more mature and more compatible than +R/W, which makes sense since -R/W is the only version approved by the DVD Forum. How ridiculous to pay that much more for a different drive to gain access to another format that is less mature, less compatible, costs more (from what I've seen), and removes the need to actually (horrors!) look at what I'm buying.

(Sorry, but you hit a pet peeve of mine regarding writable DVDs.)

 

[Darren Lewis]

My decision was cost as much as anything. The 105 was £99, and the firewire enclosure was about £49 so I have a firewire DVD burner for about half the cost of buying a retail firewire DVD burner.

After reading around the net (and here) DVD- seemed like the format for me. I'm mainly going to burn data archives (my digital photo collection), so I only need one format. Most big brand machines that are shipping with DVD writers have DVD- drives from what I saw. Also my two DVD players will play DVD- but not DVD+


Darren.

 

[MikeH]

John, that was going to be my guess. I have been comparing the two for about a week now and have come to the same conclusion.

I also think that if DVD writers are anything like CD writers it won't be long before we see 10x write and the bar always being raised. Saving the money now means more to use for the eventual upgrade. Not to mention like Darren my player only plays DVD-.

(Sorry, but you hit a pet peeve of mine regarding writable DVDs.)

Please don't throw anything, I bruise easily.

 

[John_Berger]

Please don't throw anything, I bruise easily.

Damn. There goes my fun.