It's largely down to reading good reports on Cd-Rom Guide about this drive that I bought one, I feel it only fair I should post a few test results to help others.

Test system hardware:

Celeron 633@1Gig
Gigabyte GA-6BXD Board
750 meg mixed ram
3x 120 Gig Ibm Deskstars
1x WD 20 Gig
1x Cheapo Aldi TV card
1x 32meg hercules graphics card (PCI)
1x 64meg hercules graphics card (AGP)
1x Cheapo raid card
1x Plextor 1210a
1x Cheapo NIC
400w psu

Test system software
XP Pro
Stomp recordnow max
Many other programmes...
(running Abyss web server and BPFTP all the time)

First thing I noticed was that my favourite bit of software Prassi wouldn't recognise the drive even after updating to the latest PX engine wheras Stomp saw it after the PX upgrade.

First: tried formatting all my DVD-RW's (White label 1x), no problem and despite showing only 1x (which the disks are) seemed to format far faster than the Pioneer A04 which it replaced.

Second: burned a "backup" of Signs onto cheapo (yellow top) princo 1x media, burned this at 2x with no errors.

Third: Made a "backup" of League of extraordinary gents onto Datawrite (Yellow) 4x, worked at disks rated speed no errors.

Fourth: "backed up" Dreamcatcher on Datasafe 2x (white with silver band ritek dye?), worked at rated speed with no errors (same disk would only burn @ 1x on the pioneer).

Fifth: Backup of Lion King 3 from VOB's on another machine on my network onto cheapo 2x overprints (Ritek G03 dye) and despite the router showing a lot of packet collision again no errors.

All Movies backed up with DVD Shrink 3.1 (main movie only).

Datasafe 4x from Bigpockets
Cheapo princo 1x from same (some coasters in this batch on A04) :(
Rest from SVP (no coasters at all)

Very pleased so far :)
hope this helps some others

Did you read the discs back though?

I have noticed that the A06/A07 and 2500A are quite a bit more compatible than earlier burners, and I put this down mainly to newer firmware and later generation optics.

Both the new Pioneer and NEC drives seem to leave the competition, Plex included, in the dust as far as compatibility is concerned :)

Some people are reporting compatibility issues with Ritek on the new NEC though.

All films play perfect in :
PS2 Messiah2 chip (plays green) seems it plays all dvds green tho
Xbox 1.0 DVDRegionx thompson drive (plays fine)
Xbox 1.1 DVDRegionx samsung drive (plays fine)
Dansai 952
Ronin P80H
I can see the files on the disk in explorer but Cyberlink Power dvd wont play them ?
Play fine in media player 9
My Power DVD may be fubar

Originally posted by jesterrace777
Some people are reporting compatibility issues with Ritek on the new NEC though.

And the Pioneer A07 is having problems with the Ricoh-coded Ritek DVD+R discs. A firmware update will cure these problems, I'm sure.

I wonder if the new 8x4all firmware fixes that problem.

Unfortunately not -- the 8x4all only covers DVD-R.

(I know we could argue the positives and negatives of -R vs +R all night, but still :))

Incidentally, since NEC 2500A drives don't like Ritek, and the LiteOn 411s and 811s drives don't like Ritek (and therefore by extension neither do a lot of Sony drives, the latest ones often being LiteOn OEMs), and the Pioneer A07 doesn't like the +R flavour of Ritek, so in other words the top 4 DVD drive makers don't like them in their latest incarnations, can we infer from this that Ritek are, in fact, a pile of droppings? :eek: :laugh:

Dont mention firmware i'm fed up with flashing.....errr perhaps I should re-phrase that :)

I could be mistaken but I don't think that Ritek and Ricoh are the same companies. Either way though, you can't infer that they are a pile of droppings when so many people have had great success with them (at least the DVD-R ones).

<sigh>

Oh come on, surely you must see I was being ironic? If that many writers had trouble with Prodisc, or CMC media, everyone would be on their case, calling them garbage (and they do, all the time, on this very forum). But because they're the beloved Ritek, people are able to ignore all this and blame the drives.

I'm not saying they're crap, merely pointing out a double-standard here :)

BTW yes Ricoh=Ritek. Ricoh-coded DVD+R media is manufactured for Ricoh by Ritek, and has been since the early days.

When will people acknowledge that (a) when Ritek have problems it isn't always the drive and sometimes it's the media, and (b) when any other manufacturer's discs have problems it is sometimes the drive and not always the media???

And, like I say, I get particularly narked when, having proven that manufacturer X produces discs with lower error rates than Ritek, the response comes "well you try reading them in 6 months". There's no getting through to some people... it's like a blimmin' cult :rolleyes:

your full of it.... no offense but these discs have a proven track record and still do on earlier drives just because a few new drives "Yes New" are having problems with G04 riteks you blame the media?, I aint a brain surgeon but from where im standing it seems like changes in the drives and nowt to do with the media, Remember its the drives that have changed and not the media and the same media that you try to rundown on every other post still burns perfect on 104's, 105's, 106's, 1300A's, DRU500's, but just because the new NEC & Liteon drives dont like them you blame the media, The same media that still burns well on there older drives... Im lost on this one...

but just because the new NEC & Liteon drives dont like them you blame the media,

If you took the time to actually read what I was saying you'd realise that I'm actually knocking others who blame media when it's drives that are to blame in many cases, and using this as an example. You clearly can't see this, yet I'm the one full of it?

I have nothing whatsoever against Ritek media. I've used many hundreds of Ritek discs, without issue. They are among the most compatible media. It is you who will blindly say that a whole load of other manufacturers are poor because of some reject media released by Silicon Group and other unscrupulous distributors.

Of course they have a proven track record. The point I am trying (and failing, evidently) to get across is that they are not the only non-Japanese manufacturer producing good media. You're the one saying that other manufacturers' media will probably fail after 6 months despite evidence to the contrary. You're the one bashing manufacturers based on incompatibilities whilst conveniently ignoring incompatibilities with some drives vs Ritek media. Not me. And it isn't just new drives -- the NEC and LiteOn series have not particularly liked Riteks since the 4x drives came out (look at the error rate reports on CDFreaks for evidence). Again, I will spell it out to you in case you choose not to understand once again -- that does not mean Riteks are bad media, it means that some drives like them more than others do. ALL media, DVD-R DVD+R or CDR, suffers from this issue.

So, who's "full of it", again?

Originally posted by jesterrace777
I could be mistaken but I don't think that Ritek and Ricoh are the same companies. Either way though, you can't infer that they are a pile of droppings when so many people have had great success with them (at least the DVD-R ones).

Ricoh delivers the stamper and production guidelines (technology) and there own dye formulation, Ritek does the manufacturing. This is cost reducing and improves quality as Ritek does high volumes but works according to Ricoh quality control, Both are high quality discs but although manufactured in the ritek factory any disc carrying the ricoh MIB does not carry the ritek dye although they are simular and both produced in the ritek factory.

Originally posted by jase
If you took the time to actually read what I was saying you'd realise that I'm actually knocking others who blame media when it's drives that are to blame in many cases, and using this as an example. You clearly can't see this, yet I'm the one full of it?

I have nothing whatsoever against Ritek media. I've used many hundreds of Ritek discs, without issue. They are among the most compatible media. It is you who will blindly say that a whole load of other manufacturers are poor because of some reject media released by Silicon Group and other unscrupulous distributors.

Of course they have a proven track record. The point I am trying (and failing, evidently) to get across is that they are not the only non-Japanese manufacturer producing good media. You're the one saying that other manufacturers' media will probably fail after 6 months despite evidence to the contrary. You're the one bashing manufacturers based on incompatibilities whilst conveniently ignoring incompatibilities with some drives vs Ritek media. Not me. And it isn't just new drives -- the NEC and LiteOn series have not particularly liked Riteks since the 4x drives came out (look at the error rate reports on CDFreaks for evidence). Again, I will spell it out to you in case you choose not to understand once again -- that does not mean Riteks are bad media, it means that some drives like them more than others do. ALL media, DVD-R DVD+R or CDR, suffers from this issue.

So, who's "full of it", again?

Im going by experience m8 and not what ive read from a forum somwhere, So what your saying is that all the princo media ive had to replace that i couldn't get to read with any drive i tried was bad luck? The same bad luck numerous peeps on here have had and also had to replace. Anyhow im glad theres cheap media going about as this drives the price of quality media down as well, The bottom line is i can confidently recommend ritek media to anyone but can honestly say i couldn't with most of the dyes you've mentioned, Anyhow the best test is your own test and not what you read and optdisc, princo & AN31 have all failed misserably in mine.

Most of the Japanese majors are contracting out production of media to Taiwanese and similar companies. For example

Sony use Lead-Data, Prodisc
Ricoh use Ritek
Mitsubishi use CMC and MBI
Hitachi-Maxell have started using Ritek again
JVC use Maxell who in turn...
Fuji use Prodisc
Pioneer use Ritek

Generally the spindles from these manufacturers will be Taiwanese, though more and more of the "premium" media is coming from these factories.

Generally the media will be of a higher overall quality than the "bulk" media from these companies. But the agreements are usually of the type where both companies develop the media together, and the media will usually use similar base materials to the stuff put out under their own labels. So a Sony/Lead Data disc is quite different to a Sony/Prodisc disc, although they're both made to a relatively high standard.

You don't actually see all that much Prodisc, CMC and Lead Data bulk media because of this -- most of the runs are for the majors.

Anyhow the best test is your own test and not what you read and optdisc, princo & AN31 have all failed misserably in mine.

Absolutely. I only made reference to the other site because they have some useful, factual (rather than hearsay) evidence of their findings.

At the end of the day, it's what you are happy with. If a disc runs in the players it's burned for and has no CRC or high PI/PO errors then regardless of brand, that particular disc is a good disc, I'm sure we can agree on that.

I've calculated that I've burned around 650 Ritek discs in the last 4 years, around 500 Princos (which I'll admit can be pretty miserable at times), 400 Prodiscs, 800 Optodiscs and 300 CMCs, and probably a good 1000+ "others". I've had one bad batch of Riteks that I can remember (25 discs), one lot of Prodiscs (another 25), no CMCs (although probably around 50 that wouldn't burn on certain writers), and a fair number of Princos, no bad Optodiscs at all funnily enough. So I'd say I've been relatively lucky, perhaps. I put it down more to avoiding anything made by e-net.

Princo media can be very bad. But, unfortunately for me, there are drives that'll only read Princo (one or two Xboxes) so I've had to use them. If there is one major Taiwanese maker I'll agree wholeheartedly with you about it is Princo. I don't understand what their problem is -- they can be coaxed into producing some good media, but a fair old proportion of it is complete garbage.

I know that m8 but that wont and never will change my opinion on certain dyes as if they were worried about compatibility and quality they wouldn't wait till now if you see my point, As for the ricoh made by ritek well that only part true as thats what i though until i read up on it, The are made by ritek on the ritek production line but cary their own dye formulation and use there own stamper but anything carrying the ricoh MID has the ricoh dye and not ritek, mainly +R media which i don't use anyhow.

Ironically, the "Ricoh" dye (actually another Ritek product; Ricoh didn't create it by themselves) is of a lower quality than the Ritek.

It's not particularly the dye that is the issue in any case. Manufacturing tolerances play a larger part in the quality of a disc.

Very true... Probably the other way aroung though, more like ricoh make the ritek dye... Just a thought as why would a company thats been manufacturing media for over 40 years get ritek (whos been around about 15 years) to make there media... Just a thought

Possibly. But Ritek is a specialist, whereas Ricoh isn't... Ritek's specialism is in making decent optical media at low cost. They're good at it... so to save money it would make sense to invest in a company like Ritek rather than duplicate the spending yourself. Ricoh can then concentrate on making high quality electronic items which is their specialism.

It's been happening more and more recently. The Taiwanese have reached a level of expertise where it makes sense. Same principle as Ford buying in the Zetec engine design from Yamaha. Why? Because the Japanese make better engines than the Americans do, and cheaper.

Just a quick update on the drive itself, I decided to clean out one of the drives in my FTP box and before I deleted the older Xbox ISO's I burned them to disk (cheap princo 1x media) 12 ISO's burned @ 2x no coasters :)
Then "backed up" Final Fantasy X2 for one of my kids onto Datasafe 2x (silver band in middle Ritek g03 dye?) again first time success using Stomp.
Never knew the Zetec was a Japanese design, the engines used to be built not too far away from me ;)

Originally posted by jase
Ironically, the "Ricoh" dye (actually another Ritek product; Ricoh didn't create it by themselves) is of a lower quality than the Ritek.

"Designed by RICOH, produced by RITEK" is the official information regarding Ricoh media so if you're claiming anything else I would like to know your source? If Ritek created the Ricoh dye why would they bother creating another dye for themselves?
And I don't know where you've got the idea that Ricoh media is of lower quality than Ritek because in tests of longevity (accelerated aging tests) as well as quality tests of discs burned with various burners (tested on professional analyzers) Ricoh has proven to be of far better quality than over-hyped Ritek media.

It was a C't article that made mention of this. They stated that the Taiwanese Ricoh media used a modified version of the Ricoh formulation, and that the discs were of a lower grade than the (relatively small amount of) Ricoh media made in Japan. They went on to show that the media they tested wasn't as good as the Ritek, in that test. It was part of a larger survey that they put out every so often, and I don't have the evidence to hand :(

To be fair I don't know how much truth there is in that, but C't can generally be trusted. If it isn't true, then thanks for putting it straight; in fairness my own informal tests have tended to support what you're saying about the quality, so long as you don't get a cheap disc with a Ricoh MID (in part the reason why I put Ricoh in inverted commas; there are some shoddy reject grade Ricoh/Ritek discs floating about).

Interesting you should mention "over-hyped" Ritek, that's bound to fan the flames :D

Do you know what issue of C't that was? Because I thought I've read them all but I can't remember reading that and besides the first test that C't made in the end of 2002 Ricoh media has scored very good results on most burners.

Unfortunately not. It wasn't a full edition I had to hand, it was a scan I received in an email (as I remember that it was a pain trying to translate from the German ;)) I might even have got the wrong end of the stick on some counts if the truth be told, my knowledge of German is far from complete...

Yes, I've also seen other scans where they did rate the Ricoh highly (notably the 2002 C't test IIRC, but back then the Ricoh discs were being produced by Ricoh themselves). In fairness this one I'm referring to did rate the media well, just not as well as some others.

Another update on the drives performance (yes I no I'm sad)
Re-Encoded The SVCD Centropy version of the Hulk to DVD with Tmpgenc DVD author burned with Stomp to cheapo Princo 1x @2x works fine in Ronin, Pacific, Xbox, Dansai 952.
Only problem I noticed so far was that Alcohol 120% (Build 410) sees my Datawrite (Princo?) 4X DVD-R's as 4x but only burns them @ 2x? weird Stomp sees and writes them @4x...

The NEC does seem to be able to surprise me on a regular basis.....

It'll refuse Ritek and Prodisc, then it'll write to some of the worst media I've ever had (Yi-Jhan -- 105 writes these but the last 0.5Gb is almost unreadable) and the disc will read back on everything I've tried it on. Unbelievable. Even the Pio 107 didn't manage that with the first public firmware release (although it now does with the new hacked 1.10 firmware as well).

jase, what dye is on the Riteks and are the disks branded? it would be nice to know the ones to avoid.
Talking about it's appetite for cheapo disks I have an old batch of 10p "overprint" cdr from SVP (mixed brand) now my old Plextor 1210a will just about turn out a working "backup" of a PS2 game ISO on these if burned @ 1x, the NEC has just done 2 @ 32x and both work fine...could just be luck but still I'm very pleased with it so far.

I burnt 25 of the unbranded frosted top Ritek from SVP (not sure if they still got them) on my NEC 2500 and all worked fine on my xbox and they've been tried on a few standalone players again with no probs. Ive just bought some of the printable Ritek from SVP and they are crap in my standalone dvd player (dansai) and they werent cheap either :(

I've tried unbranded frosted and Arita and both give pretty rough performance on my 2500A -- although both discs work just great on the 107.

Prodiscs just get spat with a power calibration error. Again these are burning without issue and read back on anything I've tried when written on the 107.

So the trend appears to be failures with the newer generation of disks?...not good news, it may be worth posting a poll to see who has had success and with what.

A poll might be good but i honestly think it's just a complete lottery using Riteks in a NEC 2500. Im just going to buy small quantities of them in future and hope for the best, i'll make sure i have some verbs etc handy though just in case.

This is just an example of how media varies from batch to batch, regardless of who makes it. The writing strategy appears to be marginal for all Riteks at the moment in the 2500A, and the better batches are performing a little better but still not ideally; it would therefore be my advice to avoid using them in this drive for now until/unless NEC sort the issue out.

Whether that means using something like Ricoh or Ritek +R discs, Verbs, taking your chances with Princo or sending the drive back, is up to you.

I never expected to hear of this many problems with the type of media it will take, I dont like the idea of taking "pot luck" on whether a batch of (expensive) disks will burn or not, I must have been fortunate so far with the old stock -R's I have I guess time will tell...

Today I tried to make a backup of "Stitch Experiment 626" for the PS2 it got to 13% and up popped the "cannot read from sector/cannot extract blah blah" error, first I thought it might have been Stomp throwing a wobbly so I then tried DVDdecryptor and then ISObuster all stopped at the same point (drive de-fragged an box re-booted too).

Not to be beaten I pop the disk in my old A04 in another machine (which still reads but won't write) and try to make a global image in Stomp....went all the way without a glitch....burned it over my lan to the NEC no problems.....strange :( I havent' ruled out the possibility of a bus fault on the box the NEC's running in yet tho.

I have just burned my 100th ritek in my 2500a and not a single coaster. Ive been using the datasafes and the inkjet white tops from SVP. ive also had success with the 4x white top verbs from svp burning at 8x. Also used philips DVD+RW 4x and they work great too. I have had 2 coasters in total when messing around burning on the fly with the re-writables, but due to a badly scratched source disc.

What firmware are you guys using? I flashed immediately to 1.06 regionfree ripspeed unlocked firmware. Couldnt be happier.

Some people are having problems (including myself, who up to now hasn't had many problems with any media) and others are reporting that the discs work OK. A bit of a lottery really.

Originally posted by BigStan
What firmware are you guys using? I flashed immediately to 1.06 regionfree ripspeed unlocked firmware. Couldnt be happier.

Original 1.06, had some bad experiences flashing my old A04 recently so I'm trying to avoid it at the mo.

im strugglling to make good burns on my nec2500 using ritek G04 disks.

ive tried using the original firmware, then i moved to the dangerous brothers rip lock free, region free firmware. it made no difference.

i can burn the cheap datawrite redtop v2 4x media with no problems. however, ritek G04 disks are almost impossible to burn (when burning a full disk) without errors. the errors occur after the 3.5gb mark.

ive tried using G03 disks, same thing

the G04 disks im having problems with are the white top 4x ritek printables, from svp.

what ive now done is got 2 people who can write perfectly to G04 disks on their nec2500a's and sent them out a disk each of my G04 disks. i have instructed them to burn to the disks and put up a nero cd-dvd speed graph screen shot. once and for all i will see if i have got bad batches of ritek media or whether it is my nec2500 that is picky.

i just get the feeling that it isnt a problem with bad ritek batches but perhaps bad batches of nec2500a drives. some drives can write to all media with no problems, while the other batch of drives cant write to riteks for some reason.

i shall let you guys know how my expt goes.

Several people have reported this problem. It is a burner (or at least firmware) issue as people have taken the same batch of disc and tried them on another burner (ie Pioneer) and they turned out fine.

justerace, the problem is that the pioneer seems to be built perfectly for the riteks. the nec isnt. however, that wouldnt explain why some nec2500s can burn riteks but other nec2500s cant. that is what im trying to investigate.

i have no doubt my riteks would burn on a pioneer fine, but i wanna see if another nec2500 can burn them properly. if so, then there seems to be quite a variance in quality control at nec. some drives of the same model maybe quite different in their abilities to burn certain disks. maybe a day will come where we start to identify nec2500s with their serial numbers and not their model numbers (similar to the way we identify good cpu from bad ones, by using the cpu codes, ie. some cpu codes tend to be more overclockable than others).

either way, 2 other nec2500 owners shall receive the disks within the next 2 days and they will show what they can do with my "bad" ritek disks.

i shall keep u all posted.

There are more than 125 media comments on this if you want to read them at http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdwriters

According to those results, there is not a single person having an issue with Ritek/Ridata media. Then again that is only a total of 12 people or so.

OC-Freak at CDFreaks had very good results with the 2500 and Riteks. Others don't seem to be able to burn them at all without significant read problems.

We'll have to see what happens when NEC finally release an updated firmware, but it seems it may be a QC issue -- in other words some writers are at the end of the QC spectrum where Riteks burn OK, others aren't.

I believe Ritek media requires less laser power than most other types to be calibrated correctly -- perhaps this is the problem. Other similarly formulated media, such as the Postech G04 and Prodisc S03, have similar issues with the NEC.

I'm burning to prodisc s03 liike a charm with my 2500.