"Since its inception in 2002, Ridisc has become the leading storage brand in the highly competitive European market and is on course to become a Global Leader in the worldwide optical storage market.

A complete solution provider with recordable CD, DVD media and other electronic storage media, Ridisc's commitment to quality is the driving force behind the brand. From manufacturing, packaging and through to delivery, the goal is zero defect at any point along the supply chain."

Ridisc is a popular media brand, known mostly for its value for money solutions. After the request from many of our readers, we decided to proceed with a thorough testing of the performance of this brand. You can see what users think about Ridisc media by following this link. We received six different media types.

The ID codes of the media we used for our tests are presented in the following table:

Ridisc Media	Code ID
4X DVD+R	RICOHJPNR01
4X DVD-R	RITEK G04
8X DVD-R	TTG02
8X DVD-R	RITEK G05
8X DVD-R printable	CMC MAG AE1
16X DVD+R	CMC MAG M01

For recording, we used 24 different drives. The models and their firmware revisions are summarized in the table below. The firmware versions used were the latest for each drive at the time of this review.

Recorder	Firmware
AOpen DUW1608-ARR	A070
Asus DRW-1604P	1.18
Asus DRW-1608P	1.50
BenQ DW1620	B7U9
BenQ DW1625	BBEA
HP DVD640i	ES04
LG GSA-4120B	A116
LG GSA-4163B	A104
LG GSA-5160B	A303
LiteOn SOHW-1653S	CS0K
LiteOn SOHW-1673S	JS05
NEC ND-3520A	1.04
NEC ND-3530A	2.10
Philips DVDR16LS	P1.6
Philips DVDRW1640P	P3.4
Pioneer DVR-107	1.21
Pioneer DVR-108	1.19
Pioneer DVR-109	1.40
Plextor PX-712A	1.06
Plextor PX-716A	1.06
Ricoh MP5316DA	2B.9
Samsung TS-H552B	TS09
Toshiba SD-R5372	TU55
Waitec Action 16	BSX1

- Test Method

In order to test the writing quality and readability of the burned media, we used two readers with two software applications:

• The LiteON SOHD-167T with patched firmware being able to read DVD5 up to 16X CAV and DVD9 up to 10X CAV. For the transfer rate tests we used Nero CDSpeed ( v3.75).
• The Plextor PX-712A with the latest available firmware ( v1.07). For scanning the disc, we used PlexTools 2.21 version at 2X CLV reading speed, BURST mode, with middle accuracy.

In general, a "perfect" disc should have a smooth reading curve, very low PIE/POE and zero POF error rates. Most often however, even though a disc has very low PIE/POE error rates, the reading curve may not be smooth containing dropoffs. Due to the fact that we oversped the reading capabilities of the LiteON SOHD-167T, such drops are expected, especially near the outer area of the disc.

The measurements in the following pages should be taken not as the absolute criteria of the burning quality, but as an indication level.

- Testing software

1. Nero CD-DVD Speed v3.75
2. PlexTools v2.21
3. Nero Burning Rom v6.6.0.12
4. DVD Decrypter 3.2.4.0

More information about our test machine is included in the table below:

Test PC
CPU	Intel Celeron 2.66Ghz
RAM	DDR 512/400Mhz
M/B	Asus P4P800-X
HD	Western Digital WD 800JB 7200RPM 8MB cache

You can always discuss and share your experiences with these media in our forum.