Bought a batch of 50 due to their recomendation, and none will work. Tried disks throughout the spindle, not just the top few.

Some give 'power calibration error' and won't start. Some burn half way and then fail. Some complete, but have the dreaded cloudy ring.

Using pioneer 105, firmware 1.00, Nero 5.5.9.14, DVDXcopy.

This is the first time a brand of DVD has failed on my writer, and fails on both burning applications. Anybody know what my problem is, or do you reckon its just a bad batch?

Cheers,
Dylan

they dont work on mine bud either come up with power calibration maybe a bad batch I havent botherd with them again though

What firmware are you using by the way?

they work on my mates 105 v1.00 @ 1x

Ok on me AO4..

I have just got my 105 and it came with 1.21 firmware. The yellow tops work on mine. Also the 4x Datawrite white tops, datawrite 2x grey tops and the purple 1x bulkpaqs all work. I just spent £60 on 40 4x printable surface datasafe made by ritek and £30 on the builkpaq greentop and none work. Have sold on green tops and will have to take the remaining discs back to computer fair for exchange. Just ordered 20 datawrites and 50 yellowtops. Try and borrow some discs of your mates to try or buy a selection box from the disc sellers. I 've wasted £90 so far. Stick with the ones that work. If you can get a reliable 4x disc its worth the extra money for the 15min burn time. I have 1x discs for setting away when I go to bed or out to work. I got P i s s e d of waiting for 1 hour for my 105 to chuck it or to complete and have a disc that dos'nt work. Best of luck mate

they work on mine fine,im usin stomp record now max.im burnin at the lowest speed and no probs wit them on my 105 yet.

Just upgraded to firmware 1.21, and exactly the same results. Burn half-way and fail with a cloudy ring.
Guess it must be a bad batch =(

out of the 50 i had about 20 fails but others were ok,just got datasafe blue/white 1x and eveyone ok

i get that cloudy ring as well with my pioner 105(firmware 1.00).bought a pack of 25 and the 3 discs i burnt using recordnow ended with an error message,the suface was cloudy.must be a lot of faulty batches of discs going around,gonna bring the rest back to computerfair and demand my money back.

these discs work fine on my A05 every time (1.21 fw) but my mates A05 (1.21fw) does the cloudy ring and error message thing with them. we checked my batch against his and found that they were different, mine had a white middle with printed black serial around it and his were just white in the middle with no printed serial.

I'd blame the bloody 105 as much as the disc(more so) it's a very unreliable piece of kit.I have tried datawrite 4x only for them to write at 2x,an expensive experient at £1.90 a disc.We really need a hack for this unit and soon,to not be able to burn at 4x with 4x media is a farce is I would say pioneer must have to state that not all 4x media works in their advertising or it would surely be seen as mis-leading advertising.

used a few yellow tops and burnt ok so far.
using a05 FIRMWARE 1.22
smartripper
prassi

batch no. on centre of disc is H023091132311

CHEERS
SCRUMP

Had no probs with the yellow tops, all 50 burnt without a prob using stomp. Been one of the best that i've used as they workin everything i've tried them in.

zxsdef: Have you tried the FWS 4x, bought some a few weeks ago and they work a treat. Even play on my Xbox when burnt at 4x. I think they were only £15 for 10

datawrite 4x work fine here on my 1.00fw,not tried the yellowtopped yet but brought some datasafe blue tops 1x and some datawrite grey tops 2x

Yeah i'm also running off the 1.00 firmware

no probs with yellow tops as yet
a05 FIRMWARE 1.21 burnt around 20 of mine

wheelie
:D:D:D:D

where did you people get the 1.22 firmware from ?, i only have 1.21

http://www.*******************/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=161
have a look at this.

I think this is a combination of firmware and bad media batches, the drives themselves will only behave as good as the firmware tells them to unless they are faulty or have been damaged. I have had 2 bad batches of bulkpaq green tops and my friend definitely had a bad batch of datawrite yellow tops - mine were good his didnt work so I gave him some from my batch and they work fine so the proof is in the pudding! Media quality control is at an all time low! :-(

Tempted to update firmware, but I think i'll resist for now.
If it aint broke, don't fix it :)

Bring on the hacked firmware for ao5 plzzzzzzzz!

scrump says he has 1.22 firmware, but the pioneer website only has 1.21 firmware on it

Pioneer drives are a strange lot. I had them since the A03 was first on the market, and believe me I've had a few. The strange deal is no 2 drives are the same. I've had exactly the same drive with same firmware in the same PC same OS/Bunring app etc etc etc. One will write to blank a whilst the other will give the ol Power Callibration error or not even recognise the VERY SAME DVD-R. I'm not talking cheap media here I'm talking Apple and Verb that are alleged to be the best of the best. Their customer support are about the biggest bunch of shiesters I've ever seen, god help you if you need to RMA a drive back to Pioneer.

There is a lot of rubbish media out there and I hate more than anything getting Bulkpaq etc through the mail from trders, but by contrast I'd say Pioneer have to hold there hands up and take at least 50% of the blame for all the coasters you're all getting...
Swung over to Sony burners now, paid a bit more per unit but have to say I'm more satisfied with the results.

Also a good measure of peoples confidence in the drives is when you buy a fast 4x burning drive yet you see lots of posts saying "burned at slowest speed" Why should you? You paid extra dough for that drive, probably even traded a perfectly good 2x burner in for it, why then should you have to scratch about for a decent quality 1x blank? (current situation driving the prices of 4x media up through the roof aside)

Lets hope someone at Pioneer actually looks in these forums, they may get to realise that unless they release a decent firmware for the A05 very soon they are going to lose the dvd writer market and their reputation for reliable products if they still have one!!!!

zxsdef,

Bidpockets told me that the 4 x datawrte only go at 2x in 105 burners due to a fall out between pioneer and datasafe. Apparently pioneer did'nt put the header code in the firmware for these discs to be recognised as 4 x only 2.
This was a costly lesson to me equally as they onl told me this on complaint !
What's pionners game anyway should'nt we choose what speed and who's brand name media have on them?

It looks as though the problem with the yellow datawrites on the 105 is due to there being two varieties.
The ones I used wouldn't work with firmware 1.00 and 1.21, using Nero, DVDXcopy, Prassi and Instantcopy.
Not sure of the serial number at the moment because I'm in work. I'll post it when I get home, and hopefully somebody can post the ones that work for them

firmware 1.21 not 1.22 soz for confusion
scrump.

I'm using Yellow Datawrites with this serial/batch code:- H062891128611 on my A05 which I bought from www.xsct.co.uk/ and they work fine, only at 1X though of course.

I'm even thinking of starting an online petition at the moment to present to Pioneer, this whole firmware situation is evil! If there is enough response from members here and at other forums I'll go ahead with it.

One question though, I seem to remember an online petition site that anybody can join up to and have such a page, anybody know a URL for this?

OK I've found the petition online site and have checked up on most of the details involved in starting this. The very fact there is a sticky thread at the top of this forum with almost 30,000 viewings goes to show how big a problem this is. Now a petition might not even solve anything you may be thinking, and yes of course you could be right, but sitting back and doing nothing other than complain about this situation will do us no good either will it?

Quality DVDR media is not cheap now is it? Every coaster you make costs you money, every 4X DVD-R you pay for but yet can only burn at 1X is an insult to you as a customer of Pioneer. Why should they be allowed to get away with this con?

If anyone has any views on this or indeed any ideas or thoughts, maybe you know a good contact in the PC press (US or UK) then please let me know at:- lazza@burnbabyburn.org.uk

So is anyone prepared to simply just take the time out to vote online and get behind this if/when it is launched? It cannot be done without the support of you guys. ;)

I'll vote, getting media for this burner is a damn pain...

Originally posted by dylan32
I'll vote, getting media for this burner is a damn pain...
Thanks, but as I've only had a small number of replies so far it looks as though this is a non starter unless something dramatic happens m8.

:confused:

I'm in, if the petition site is free, why not start one up... if you built it they will come!

OK, I'll see what I can do later time permitting as I've had quite a few e-mails now asking to go ahead with this.

Add me in

count me in bloody thing (105) it's driving me crazy!!!!!!!

:mad: :mad:

i think every member of cdrom forums with a 105 will be involved

you got my vote Mate

And Mine

I'm definitely in.Why not make this a sticky in all forums you could be assured of a big list then!

I'm in Lazza pioneer are taking the pi**