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Well, I've been sitting on some of this for long enough now, so it's time to share some of it

Ritek:
Well, despite my situation with Ritek USA, I have gotten some new info from them. I'm told that Ritek's 16x DVD+Rs will be available for ordering from distributors early next week! Pricing still has yet to be determined, but it'll almost certainly be expensive to begin with!

Ritek is also dropping their price on Dual Layer media... or should I say already has! Oddly enough, it hasn't been noticed in the US market... and get this, Canada appears to be using up a lot of Ritek Dual layer media I'm told. ...Yeah, I don't know what's wrong with us either

Dual Layer in general:
Well, I can't be OVERLY specific, but I'm expecting some big players in the DVD media industry to be making their entry's into the dual layer media industry sometime in the January/February time frame. Prices on dual layer media will drop substantially as the amount of competing companies likely more then doubles.

16x media:
Another couple companies will be bringing out 16x DVD+Rs again in the next couple months. Prices will be dropped very quickly. Prodisc will almost certainly be launching their 16x DVD+R, and one or two companies may finally be bringing out their 16x DVD-Rs

Sorry, I hate not being overly specific on things... but some people would be rather unhappy if certain company secrets were to be leaked.

I hope TY will start making DL discs.

eric93se wrote:I hope TY will start making DL discs.

They are *VERY* tight lipped on that... I don't know anything on that one.

Ritek 16X is already available at newegg.
$5 for a 5 pack is not so bad for brand new 16X media.

$9 after shipping...and newegg doesn't combine shipping charges either.

Well, NewEgg ships their media in from Taiwan, and doesn't order from Ritek USA's warehouse, so they are sorta exempt from the above

Same goes for Shop4tech, and I believe Meritline, but I also know Meritline orders from RitekUSA's warehouse as well.

By the way.... Ritek's Silver/Blue CD-Rs appear to be old Cyanine Dye stock.... I'm told by an inside source that this media is inferior to Ritek's silver/silver phthalocyanine based media. Of course, I'll be testing this out personally!

Looks like we have a short supply of manufacturers for 16x DVD+R media! From what I can tell CMC is making it for almost every brand of media I've seen... with the exception of Ritek of course.

At this time.

SONY
DAXON
TAIYO YUDEN
RITEK
MAXELL
TDK
MCC

make 16x media.
Spotted on the market are so far.
RITEK, MAXELL, TDK and Philips(CMC),MCC

RJW wrote:At this time.

SONY
DAXON
TAIYO YUDEN
RITEK
MAXELL
TDK
MCC

make 16x media.
Spotted on the market are so far.
RITEK, MAXELL, TDK and Philips(CMC),MCC

TY 16X? Last I saw, YUDENT002 was the one that was available.

TY 16X? Last I saw, YUDENT002 was the one that was available.

No I mean YUDEN T03 !
What ???
Yep YUDEN000 T03 !

Sofar a few drive manufacturers got samples so that's why I stated TY a long.
Also Verbatim has samples and supplied to some drive manufacturers.

Well, since we seem to be pulling out all (ok, only some) of the stops, I'll shed some more light on my own comment

Maxell 16x DVD+Rs -> PHILIPSC16 (made in Taiwan, by CMC)
Fuji 16x DVD+Rs -> PHILIPSC16 (Made in Taiwan by CMC)
Philips 16x DVD+Rs -> PHILIPSC16 (Made in Taiwan by CMC)
Imation 16x DVD+Rs -> PHILIPSC16 (Made in Taiwan by CMC)
Verbatim 16x DVD+Rs -> MCC004 (Made in Taiwan by CMC, and Made in Singapore by Mitsubishi Chemicals)
Memorex 16x DVD+Rs -> CMCMAG.M01 (Made in Taiwan by CMC)
Ritek 16x DVD+Rs -> RITEKR04 (Made in Taiwan by Ritek)
Taiyo Yuden 16x DVD+Rs -> YUDEN000T03 (Made in Japan by Taiyo Yuden)
Optodisc 16x DVD+Rs -> OPTODISCR16 (Made in Taiwan by Optodisc)

Daxon 16x DVD-Rs -> DAXON008S (made in Malaysia by Daxon)
Optodisc 16x DVD-Rs -> OPTODISCR016 (Made in Taiwan by Optodisc)

I'm happy to say that I either have currently, or am expecting samples of all the above media (with the exception of YUDEN000T03... that one still illudes me for the moment).

Manufacuter id's that also should show up soon.
FUJIFULM04 and some codes by Prodisc.

Also Maxell has 16x DVD-R. Don't know the code out of my head but I know that it's on the list at this moment.

i heard from a distributor here that he'll have 16X DVD+R and 2.4X DL MoserBaer media by the end of the next month..can this be true? i havent heard anywhere or from anyone that there is MB DL's.

Well I just added MBIL 16x +R code to the list so for +R it's true.

About dual layer.
They might make MCC licensced media. So far no Dual Layer own code for MBIL has been spotted.

Also notice the followeing.
SONY 16x -R SONY16D1
and
SONY 16x +R SONY-D21-000
have been spotted in Japan and will probally be in the next update of dvd identifier. (a long with quite some other identified stuff)

Also note the followeing
CMCMAG.M01 - is not approved by philips.

CMCMAG.M02 - is provisional approved by Philips.

so I wonder if Dolphinius Rex was guessing or got the media. Since there's a good change that not much CMC M01 will actually hit the market but that it all will be M02 because of better support.

Thanks RJW,i'll check with the guy every now and then and i'll try my best to get my hands on that DL media for testing (dont have a 16X writer now!)

Prodisc 16x DVD+R should also be out soon (samples have showed up at various places) and Infomedia 16x DVD+R I believe is already released in Taiwan.

RJW: The CMCMAG.M01 media I have is Memorex 16x DVD+R branded. It's being sold retail in the US market already, but not yet in Canada.

Also, someone else has 16x DVD-R media ready, and has begun shipping to distributors, but it isn't allowed to be sold yet. I'm *GUESSING* it's Prodisc, but even my source couldn't tell me what they had been given because of an NDA. So I'll have to wait until a little later to find out.

where is Ritek DL in Canada...I've never seen any...I jsut use Verbatim....perfect with my 1620....LG 4120b just could never burn DL properly for my taste.

You can spare yourself the time for trying to find Ritek dual layer.
Media seems to have huge variance in quality and isn't very well supported by most drives.
If your interested in usseing something else as RITEK dual layer then try to find PHILIPS C02 or wait for RICOH which should release there media in december. (At this moment it is not known who is manufactureing RICOH. Some information is pointing that RICOH will do it themselves some other is pointing to volume production by RITEK.

Maxell has JUST (as of this morning) pulled their 16x DVD+Rs as is, quoting quality and compatability problems with the OEM media. No word yet on what will replace it.

You mean these
Maxell 16x DVD+Rs -> PHILIPSC16 (made in Taiwan, by CMC)

or Maxell's own manufactured 16x media which is also available.

I was referring to the Maxell 16x DVD+Rs with a Philips code, made by CMC.

I've also have seen information on the following media (yes some of these have been mentioned, but not the full information).

TDK 16X DVD+R -> TDK003 (made in Japan by TDK?)
TDK 16X DVD-R -> TTH02 (made in Japan by TDK?)
Maxell 16X DVD-R -> MXLRG04 (made in Japan by Maxell)
Smartbuy 16X DVD+R -> PRODISCR04 (made in Taiwan by Prodisc)

I've seen the 16x TDK DVD+R in stock (in Sweden) but they were way too expensive.
At least some of the TDK media are made in Luxembourg now in TDK Europe's plant there. It looks like they even export these to Japan, see here. BTW interesting that some drives report TTH01 and others TTG02 for the same 8x DVD-R (unless he mixed up the media), can anyone explain this?