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I seem to get a conflicting sense of which DVD media type is best for the BenQ 1640, probably due more to my inexperience than what I'm seeing posted.

Would it be accurate that DVD+R is give slightly better quality than DVD-R? Which would be more compatible with players that I'd connect to a TV or home theater system?

How about for DVD-RW? + or -? Does the RW media produce lesser quality results?

And finally, would Taiyo Yuden be the wisest brand choice?

Thanks for any attention anyone can give me on this.

Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD media seems to perform very well with the DW1640, in particular the DVD-R (which is odd, given that the drive is based on a Philips chipset which normally would be biased toward +R burning).

Acro Circle brand 8x DVD-Rs also worked very well

Most of my media test results can be found here:
http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... 13&start=0

At rima.com, TYG02 costs $41 per 100 DVD-R discs, TYG03, the 16x version is $50. The aforementioned Acro Circle 8x media is $28. That's a big difference. What benefit would I gain by spending the extra money on the TY media? Durability over time? Recording quality? Something else? Nothing, at least in a practical sense? Something else?

I could be wrong but strangely enough I'm finding the 1640 seems to burn -Rs better than +Rs. I've been burning my +Rs in the 1620 and -Rs in the 1640 and my Pio 109 which doesn't do a bad job with +Rs using the Buffalo FW.

mrslim wrote:At rima.com, TYG02 costs $41 per 100 DVD-R discs, TYG03, the 16x version is $50. The aforementioned Acro Circle 8x media is $28. That's a big difference. What benefit would I gain by spending the extra money on the TY media? Durability over time? Recording quality? Something else? Nothing, at least in a practical sense? Something else?

The TY media is generally better made, and will probably last longer.... although A-Grade Optodisc has scored quite well in longevity tests in the past, I would still chose Taiyo Yuden over it for important stuff. 99% of my personal stuff goes on Acro Circle 8x DVD-Rs these days though. They have become quite stable on most burners, and the pricing is too good to ignore. (just don't use them on Pioneer DVR-107's!!).

As for Taiyo Yuden 16x DVD-Rs... they don't work on the DW1640, even with the latest firmware. Well, they'll burn at 16x... but the results are horrible! So stick with TY 8x DVD-Rs, or Acro Circle 8x DVD-Rs (buy Acro Circle specifically, since many *MANY* companies will sell B grade or worse Optodisc media as 'A Grade' Optodisc.... even Rima! So look for Acro Circle brand).

Just to be clear, is the Optodisc Acro Circle media at at this Rima link the Grade A Acro Circle branded DVD-R media that dolphinius_rex mentions?

Would Acro Circle vs. TY02 make much of a difference in how a movie backup would play in a DVD player that's attached to a TV/home theater?

That link scour provided doesn't give me the greatest confidence in the drive. Hopefully firmware updates will help along the way.

mrslim wrote:Just to be clear, is the Optodisc Acro Circle media at at this Rima link the Grade A Acro Circle branded DVD-R media that dolphinius_rex mentions?

If they say it's Acro Circle, then it should be A Grade. And yes. that's what I'm referring to.

mrslim wrote:Would Acro Circle vs. TY02 make much of a difference in how a movie backup would play in a DVD player that's attached to a TV/home theater?

Well, the 3 things that affect playback the most are Jitter, Beta (aka Assymetry) and PIE/PIF errors. For Jitter and Beta, Acro Circle performs very close to Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD-Rs. For PIE/PIF errors, Taiyo Yuden is a little better. I expect no problems with play back for either disc... unless the machine is quite picky (in all fairness, both discs show a little out of spec Beta scores, but I haven't seen any playback problems on anything I've tried them in).

mrslim wrote:That link scour provided doesn't give me the greatest confidence in the drive. Hopefully firmware updates will help along the way.

Keep in mind that the person doing the testing in the link Scour provided is only using the LiteON drive for testing. I compare with 4 different units, and 5 different tests, to make sure I get a very good impression of over all disc quality. Out of all the drives I use, the LiteON is the least reliable for useful data, and generally I just ignore it since it contradicts the other drives, and real world testing on various DVD Players and drives.

Put more simply, I have no faith whatsoever in LiteON based testing.

dolphinius_rex wrote:[
Put more simply, I have no faith whatsoever in LiteON based testing.

And you thrust the Benq?

Scour wrote:

dolphinius_rex wrote:[
Put more simply, I have no faith whatsoever in LiteON based testing.

And you thrust the Benq?

I trust the jitter testing on the BenQ... but only because I've personally compared it to CATS tests I've had done

The PIE/PIF scanning is pretty good too... but not perfect of course! (but very little is worse then LiteONs.... only Pioneers! )

While we've been using Lite-On drives for some time, the PIE/PIF scanning on BenQ drives usually match up with the stress test results. Jitter results do seem a little high though, but maybe this is better on the 1640.

Put more simply, I have no faith whatsoever in LiteON based testing.

Any less faith in NEC then? I can't stop pulling your chain, apologies. I just want my 3500 to have PIE/PIF scanning capabilities. The reliability of the testing must be pretty abysmal since NEC won't release it (or perhaps they want us to upgrade ).

vinnie97 wrote:

Put more simply, I have no faith whatsoever in LiteON based testing.

Any less faith in NEC then? I can't stop pulling your chain, apologies. I just want my 3500 to have PIE/PIF scanning capabilities. The reliability of the testing must be pretty abysmal since NEC won't release it (or perhaps they want us to upgrade ).

The pioneer drives are based on the same chipset as the NEC (or at least an NEC chipset). I'm expecting similar results

doh

Hello!

The most guys trust a Liteon much more than Pioneer and NEC drives.

Scour wrote:Hello!

The most guys trust a Liteon much more than Pioneer and NEC drives.

True... most LiteON DVDRW drives have one thing going for them that I have not seen from Pioneer drives (And I assume remains true for NEC drives, as I have not seen/done scanning with them): They can return roughly consistant error data on the same disc, when scanned multiple times. Although from my experience, this error data is sometimes WILDLY out of proportion to the quality of the disc, at least it doesn't change significantly from scan to scan when all the conditions remain the same (same disc, same test speed, same firmware, etc...).

Also Lite On were the first who supported some form of testing. So that's why people hyped it to much.

About who is better Lite On or Benq I won't comment. I have seen to manny different reports for some folks Lite On's work better for others Benq.

ALso I know a person for which both performed very incorrect when it came to playbility on his little brothers ultra cheap DVD player.

However Benq has the advantage of giveing a rough but way to high value for jitter. Still it's better as nothing but on the other side the way how benq drives report errors are not according to ECMA standards. (There samples are different alloweing higher PI-8 sums).

RJW wrote:About who is better Lite On or Benq I won't comment. I have seen to manny different reports for some folks Lite On's work better for others Benq.

That´s what I heard.

RJW wrote:About who is better Lite On or Benq I won't comment. I have seen to manny different reports for some folks Lite On's work better for others Benq.

That is the only reason why I include any LiteON testing in my reviews at all. I personally feel it's a complete waste of my time, but 1 test per disc only takes 15min, as opposed to the Plextor testing I do, which takes 1.5 hours per disc... and since I run the LiteON tests on a seperate PC while the Plextor is doing testing, it doesn't take any more time to include the tests then to not. But maybe only 5%-7% of the LiteON tests I've run really make any sense with the performance of the disc (looking at my most recent BenQ DW1640 testing only at this time; approx 150 DVD burns).

Back to the original question, I'm also seeking a good choice for 8x -R or +R for my 1640, with the complication that I'm in Australia and can't get my hands on either Acro Circle or Taiyo Yuden. Fuji was mentioned in another post: can't get that either. Any more high recommendations? I'm looking towards reasonable archive life, 2 years would be great.

So far I've had a good result with the Verbatim 8x DVD-R MCC 02RG20, P1 Errors/failures/Jitter well within specs. These have the "injet printable" surface which I'm not sure about.

I've poured over dolphinius' review (fantastic, thank you very much), but I have absolutely no familiarlity with what brands of the many with acceptable results, have a reasonable longevity. Any more leads would be greatly appreciated.

It would help if you let us know what media types you have easily available to you

Of course... I've been scouting the last few days and here are the ones I've mainly come across:

Ritek, Sony, Imation, TDK, Mitsubishi, Maxdata, Vertex, Verbatim, Optodisk, Laser, Benq, Mr. Data, Datastream...

I can keep searching though, if none of these are worthy of investing data into. I'm not after perfect burns, just don't want to find my backup faded away in 10 months...

Thanks

Edit: I know these are not the exact media types, but I can investigate further as to the actual DVD type if I can narrow it down.

Subby wrote:Of course... I've been scouting the last few days and here are the ones I've mainly come across:

Ritek, Sony, Imation, TDK, Mitsubishi, Maxdata, Vertex, Verbatim, Optodisk, Laser, Benq, Mr. Data, Datastream...

I can keep searching though, if none of these are worthy of investing data into. I'm not after perfect burns, just don't want to find my backup faded away in 10 months...

Thanks

Edit: I know these are not the exact media types, but I can investigate further as to the actual DVD type if I can narrow it down.

From this list I would choose Verbatim, next Sony. Don´t know exactly the ther brands.

Subby wrote:Of course... I've been scouting the last few days and here are the ones I've mainly come across:

Ritek, Sony, Imation, TDK, Mitsubishi, Maxdata, Vertex, Verbatim, Optodisk, Laser, Benq, Mr. Data, Datastream...

Here's my suggestions:

Good Media, in order of best suggestions to least suggested:
Verbatim 8x DVD±R
Verbatim 16x DVD+R
Mitsubishi
Sony 8x DVD±R
TDK
BenQ
Imation

NOT Recommended:
Ritek
Maxdata
Vertex
Optodisk (Probably B grade or worse!)
Laser
Mr. Data (This is a CMC home brand... probably not top quality)
Datastream