Yeah, right... and I am the Pope, himself! Dear friend, MT_MEDIA, we all can understand the problem here. It seems like a 'Deja-vu' in my humble opinion. It reminds me of the 1996-1997 period, back when some manufacturers were assuring us all, about the top-quality of THEIR (expensive) products and the crap-quality (cheap) media that the 'bad' manufacturers were trying to sell us for almost next to nothing... I think all this will end once Liteon (not necessarily them really, just the 1st one that popped to mind) will come up with their DVD-R recorder for $200-250. Then, Pioneer will come up with a miraculous f/w update that solves every bad recording-issue, and we will be living happily ever after...

(in reply to ReggieUK)

I really want to know which drives people used to get corruption in DVD-R media because if drive is usb model then in many cases it could be usb chipset/driver problem. I've had many cases when atleast motherboard chipset made my VIA corrupted USB data when copying data to my external hd and it was random occurance and mostly with big files. So people doing these test would be nice if you would tell if you use external or internal model because it could be that fault isn't in media or drive but crappy chipset you have. Corruption i had with that VIA chipset (and not just one motherboard but motherboard s having same VIA chipset) never got fixed. I had to buy PCI USB card to make it work. Tested same external IDE drive with Intel and AMD chipsets without any problems. And like i said corruption was random sometimes no crc errors. I really like to know if these test http://www.mobiltech-media.com/a05_testresults.txt where done with external or internal unit.

(in reply to ReggieUK)

Ah one more quote here. There's a simple (and cheap) way to do a CRC verification of a burned DVD-R. You'll be needing a program called Total Commander (old Windows Commander). You can find it here:http://www.ghisler.com and it's free. This offers a two-panel explorer view. Once the DVD-R is burned, you point the left panel view to the hard-disk (source) directory and the DVD-R root directory to the right panel. Then, go to Files->Compare by content option to compare all the files byte-to-byte CRC based...

(in reply to ReggieUK)

Costas, hehe.. yes. Im about 101% sure what you say will come true. No doubt at all.

Wanton, the drives used in the verification processes has been different, since the whole test was done by our customers not by us. I never received full details from all testers about their equipment, except for the obvious 105 unit. However, we did ask that they used also the 105 unit to do the verify process. However, i know that people also have tested using Pioneer 116 and 177 units and Liteon DVD Rom. The USB problem is 100% correct as you say, we have had quite a few bad expriences with external USB 2.0 devices , CDRW units and DVD-RW units which writes inocrrect data since the VIA USB bus doesnt have a real error control function, so any supplied data will be written to the media and neither burner nor burning program will indicate anything is wrong, this is a serious issue if you ask me.
But im not sure wether its related to how the VIA USB 1.1/2.0 drivers intersects or works with the USB bus activity, or if this is a hw related problem. This has only affected VIA controllers though as far as im told.

The verify process was made with a SFV checker utility to compare with the stored SFV file on the media. Naturally, you can use the same method as Costas mentioned, it will serve the purpose equally well.


Sincerely // Mike

(in reply to ReggieUK)

Also ide controller might cause a problem. Some Highpoint (HPT) chipsets corrupt data and promise controller with some old drivers. Many motherboards had highpoint controllers onboard that corrupted data. So for people having crc problem this might also be the case. Was it A7V133 that also corrupted data with normal ide controller onboard but latest bios should fix that it also had problems with onboard promise controller. But people with VIA chipset motherboards should try updating to latest bios and try to switch to normal controller. My brother had abit BP6 and it has Highpoint chipset 366 (hotrod 66) that is known to corrupt data. My brother burned lot of cd's before he noticed that most of them where corrupt when he tried to open some zip files that where on those cd's.

(in reply to ReggieUK)

There has been far to many tests and feedback received from people with same problem, and they did not have these problems with their A04's, now upgraded to A05. So , yeah.. some could have their problems related to PC issues, but not the majority. Our inhouse testing on rather state of the art computer equipment has yielded rather similar testresults as well. I do however have several reports from a few people with FW 0.53 who doesnt suffer from these problems at all seemingly.


Sincerely // Mike

(in reply to ReggieUK)

As a reply to Wanton this time, I'd like to report here that the DVR-105 model I have here has been tested on 2 machines using 3 different ways:

1) As a Secondary Master device on a QDI Kudoz V.2.0 f/w version 3.2 and 3.4 (2002-12-09 release date) with an Athlon 1800+, 512 DDR/266MHz Ram.

2) As a Secondary Slave device on a Gigabyte i815 chipset based Mb with a Tualatin 1.0 GHz, 256 Ram.

3) As a (yes) USB 2.0 client device using Tecram DC-602B/T PCI to host controller and a Generic Host USB2.0 to IDE host-case by CyQ've (the 2400+ DVD+R was previously installed there with no problems at all using both my Athlon and Tualatin configurations).

The best combination seemed to be the 3rd one, once it was the only config that succesfully completed the verification tests with the Samsung DVD-RW medium. After all the above, I believe that we have to look forward to another possible cause to our problem...[V]

(in reply to ReggieUK)

now im really confused.

Received words just a few minutes ago from one of our clients who since yesterday burnt 8 Bulkpaq Gen 4 2X discs at 2X with the 105, all verified successfully. And these discs uses the fake TDK manufacture ID as we know. I suspected FW 0.53 but he had 1.00 . Duno what to believe really now.


// Mike

(in reply to ReggieUK)

Maybe dvr-a05 bought from europe and usa have diffrence in hardware components? Or maybe ones made in specific factory has bad components?

(in reply to ReggieUK)

Wanton, i suppose that is not completely out of the question as well.


rjw: I wonder something, do you perhaps know what brand / labelling on those Princo discs is Audiodev test? Reason im really really wondering is due to the odd manufacture ID. All discs we have ever imported which are TDK stamped uses the following id:
VX...TDKG02..000 and that is the first and only TDK stamp i have ever seen on a Princo manufactured disc. My guess the ones tested has got to be really. something completely different. Also mailed and asked our export source who could verify that they have never stocked or seen any Princo medias with that ID either. So im abit interested to find out what branding it used, and if its something thats still on sale. Mainly i would like a few copies of whatever that is to include in the testing.

This (G02) are the ones which people report very good experience with on A03/A04 Sony DRU500, Vivastar/Matsush*ta DVD-R/Ram models etc. Even a few good reports on the A05, but just as many bad reports.

Or:

VX...PRINCO..... (earlier rev, eg: Purpletop)


The fake TDKG02 has faired very well thus far in our benchmarking, unexpectedly better or on par with some others. More on this when its finished. The absolutely worst performing so far has been with the MXL id, Verbatim discs scored best so far, which should not be any surprise.



Sincerely // Mike

(in reply to ReggieUK)

Even pioneer dvr-a05 boxed comes without udma ide cable. There is a possibility that some people use normal ide cable instead of udma one even if udma 33 shouldn't need udma 66/100 cable but better to be safe than sorry. Udma cables are much more high quality than normal ones. Also pioneer might never even tested a05 with old ide cable to begin with. There are lot of possibilities why corruption happens it might be drive, cables, firmware or something else. My drive made in China + using UDMA 66/100 cable (connected to last connecter in cable because some years ago had problems with some devices if they where connected it to middle of ide cable) and nforce 420 chipset on motherboard. My drive is connected directly to motherboars own ide controller and it's only device connected to secondary ide port as master. But i haven't tested many cheap brands personally but haven't had corruption problems yet. But i'm getting datasafe 3gen white top dvd-r's in couple of days. And just for note Nero Burning rom isn't the best software to test with. I have had corruption problems with it couple of years ago with normal cd's. And i think it still uses aspi driver to burn. It would be better to try software that uses windows own routines to burn. I think stomp's recordnow 4.5 isn't using aspi my friend is using and he doesn't have aspi driver installed at all and recordnow didn't seem to install any aspi drivers of it's own. And if you do this you might have all sort of burning problems on your computer. First installing nero and then adaptec aspi drivers example installing Easy CD Creator. Because nero checks presence of aspi drivers on system and if there are none then it installs it's own and if you install other aspi drivers later they are in conflict. I'm not sure about what winoncd uses but if burning software uses aspi driver and because windows xp atleast doesn't have aspi drivers installed by default most of them install their own aspi drivers without asking and it will cause problems i mean LOT OF PROBLEMS usually.

And sorry about my bad english but hope it's good enough that you can understand what i was saying :)

(in reply to ReggieUK)

Yeah, I could go with the IDE data corruption thing, In my case I haven't had any yet, just 2 completely failed burns because it simply did not like the media.

Interestingly enough, from the 2x Media I received today (Bulkpaq 2x Gen4, 'Choice' 2x Gen3) the Bulkpaq is a 'TDK Clone' and this media has worked fine so far (the other 2 2x discs that I used previously were also TDK clones and failed immediately after it had finished writing the Lead-in), I've only done 2 burns, but 100% verified. I am using nero, but I will also be using Primo DVD and VOB Instant CD/DVD to test these discs with as well.

As for Stomp RecordNow, yeah, I had heard that Stomp will record to 'troublesome' media that other software will just spit out, so that could be an Idea.

BTW. the 'Choice' media has burnt fine for me too, but again only 2 discs so far. I will let you as soon as I have some more substantial results.

(in reply to ReggieUK)

Hi again Wanton74. I didn't mention before that as a profession, I am a programmer. I am actually the man behind the latest HitachiHack utility http://gameland.simhost.co.uk/index.php?page=hitachihack, which is using the ASPI layer to operate and send low level commands to reset the RPC-2 Counter of certain (mainly old by now) Hitachi DVD-Drives. I have been into this for about 3 years now and I can assure you that I do know even the deepest aspects of the ASPI layer. As it's name suggests it's nothing but a 'layer' on which some programs are based to perform certain tasks (ie: recording). I will not try hereby to explain how Nero or Easy CD Creator operates - it would be exceeding the theme of this conversation anyway - but the main idea is that whether you have or not ASPI installed you may NOT have problems related to recording a CD or DVD on ONLY one device. In my config, exists an ASUS 48x16x48 CDR apart from the Pioneer DVR-105. Why wouldn't this device create the problems of the DVR-105 once they both use the ASPI layer? Bottom line - I strongly believe that this is a Firmware/media combination problem... Just my 20c...[8)]

(in reply to ReggieUK)

What i meant was some people might have multiple aspi drivers installed and that they might conflict. I've seen so wierd stuff happening due to multiple drivers installed. Nero installed first then Easy CD Creator. Some times burning just stops to an bad media error middle of burning but another burner worked just fine both where 4x burners but can't remember both models but one that had errors was sony burner. And after nero was uninstalled + it's aspi drivers removed manually because they didn't want to go even if you just uninstalled it. After that sony drive worked perfectly.

(in reply to ReggieUK)

1st sory for the bit rude post last time.

I know that physical scores and real life tests can make a different. However a disc that scored bad on errors. Will be problematic in the end.
About the quality of HF signal. (reflectivity) This one is more complicated. So a high score doesn't have to work beter on some players. (the discussion about reflectivity & absorption )
Tracking. two groups for this point. Bad tracking causes problems on some players. Then again the difference between okay, good and very good is small. So they could have devided this one in just good or bad.

About the real life tests I have seen in some other Dutch Magazines.
Verbatim scored the best on this point.

With consoles most magazines had problems with the cheaper media. If you want to know which disc's they tested and on what then I can dig this up.
However it reminds me that a lot of results come close with the profesional test if you divide it in 3 parts that is. Good Bad Okay.
One excaption the old Datatracks scored very good but then again these were made by Taiyo Yuden why the newer aren't.

Verbatim seems to score in all tests at least good up to very good. So I am not doubting that they will score again very high in your tests.

Info about princo discs.
Brand: Princo
site of brand: www.princo.com
site of store where the tested disc came from: www.peisch.de
manufacturer code: TDKG010000d9
manufacturer: Princo
burning speed on the following burners:
Pioneer DVR-A04 1x
Pioneer DVR-A05 1x
Toshiba SD-R5002 1x
Sony DRV-500A(firmware 1.0d) -(not possible)

(in reply to ReggieUK)

Oh.. no problem ;). It wasnt rude.. just abit wrong.

As for these Princo discs, they are very unusual, and are according to my sources some of the eraliest revisions. They also never made it onto the Scandinavian market. Distributors in England never picked up on those either due to bad quality according to their own testings. So my guess is simply that there are a few batches still around and someone picked em up cheap.

I will try to see if i can get hold of any, would really like to include in the tests. As for Consoles, Princo with the fake TDK G02 ID is verified perfectly with XBOX/PS2. VX PRINCO stamped are about 85-90% full sucess on both PS2 and XBOX, even though burned at 2X when only 1X certified. So i really dont think Princo is such bad quality as many try to convince it is (at least not the newer generations, cant say for the TDKG01.... which obviously seems crap), especially when comparing to Maxell media.. these are seriosuly, the worst sh*t i ever tested, and scored very, very badly in both speed transfer, seek times and compatibility. That was quite surprising. Verbatim ofcourse has been wonderful experience in all the tests, and from what it looks like will certainly be crowned #1 in these real-world tests. Anyways, you will have alot of interesting reading when we are finished.

(in reply to ReggieUK)