Confirming comments re: Ritek G04's- Graded stock

[nimbles]

Dunno how long this has been up on the blankdiscshop site but noticed the two following descriptions:


Ritek (G04 dye) Landscape 4x DVD-R in packs of 50 (Graded stock. Sold without warranty)
These Ritek (G04 dye) discs have been overprinted in Orange and have been printed with a "landscape" pattern. These discs (and all Ritek discs with the "landscape" pattern) are graded discs from Ritek's Taiwan production line i.e. they are B grade or lower.

These graded discs may contain dye imperfections that will prevent them from working as well as an A grade disc. They do however use the excellent Ritek G04 dye, so the discs that do not have imperfections will work well. The writing surface on these discs is dark purple.



Ritek Arita (G04 dye) 4x DVD-R in packs of 25 (Graded stock. Sold without warranty)
It has recently been brought to our attention that we should be mentioning that these discs (and all Arita branded discs) are graded discs from Ritek's Taiwan production line i.e. they are B grade.

Arita has always been one of Riteks "second string" brand names. All Ritek discs that are branded as Arita are, for one reason or another, not quite as good as Ritek’s A grade media but the Arita brand is still popular because of their lower price.


dunno if others are going to give warranties on this media- but seems to conifrm what jase1 (i think) was saying

[jase1]

I'm impressed to see this level of honesty from SVP. I know Steve of old and it doesn't surprise me, he knows the industry and is generally a straight-up guy. These discs should never really have been sold as "A" grade and although they may well work, Steve is right to make this distinction.

As a side-note; I've been analysing the landscape DVD-Rs and can make the following observations; first that although the error rates are a fair bit higher than normal they're generally reasonable (but may therefore give trouble on some writers); and second they're not overprinted as such; the "branding" is first-generation so these discs are a better bet than the orange overprints which are the same disc with a second print over the top of the landscape.

[Lazza]

Sh!t! :eek:

I have just bought a load of Arita 1X Ritek's too as I thought only the overprints were graded. I've used most of them with no problems but would not have touched them with a 30ft long bargepole had I known.

Not happy, not happy at all. SVP would have known this all along of course and for some strange reason only decide to tell us all now after selling the Arita brand for quite some time.

Be very interested to see what Steve has to say about all this if he looks in.

Also had this passed onto me from a very reliable source about the 107's SVP are selling to. Here is the post unedited:-


ok i've found this out.
my drive is a OEM MEDION drive which by the sounds of it is not a proper proper pioneer drive if that makes sense.

when trying to upgrade i get this.


DVRFlash v1.1 : Pioneer DVR firmware flasher
Coded by Agent Smith in the year 2003 with a little help from >NIL:

DISCLAIMER

THIS PROGRAM IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE ABILITY OF THIS PROGRAM TO FLASH A
PIONEER OR COMPATIBLE DVR DRIVE IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE
PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY
SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

THIS PROGRAM IS NOT ENDORSED BY PIONEER CORPORATION OR ANY
COMPANY RESELLING PIONEER EQUIPMENT AS THEIR OWN BRAND (OEM)

IF YOU UNDERSTAND THE RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS PROGRAM AND
DISCHARGE BOTH THE AUTHOR AND PIONEER CORPORATION FROM ANY
DAMAGE OCCURING AS THE RESULT OF ITS USE, PLEASE INDICATE SO
BY ANSWERING THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:

Do you understand and agree to the statement above (y/n)?
y

Reading firmware 'R7100107.110'...
firmware is of Normal type (PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-107D 1.10 )
Reading firmware 'R7100007.110'...
firmware is of Kernel type (PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-107D 1.10 )

Drive Information:
Description - PIONEER DVD RW DVR-107D
Firmware Rev. - 1.05
Firmware Date - 03/12/26
Manufacturer - PIONEER
Drive is in normal mode.

Additional Drive Information:
Serial number - DADC246980WL
Interface type - ATA
DVR generation - 0007
Kernel type - MEDION
Normal type - MEDION
Kernel version - 0001

Firmwares and Drive type mismatch
Continue because force option was specified
Are you sure you want to flash this drive (y/n)?



NOTICE THE KERNEL IS MEDION, THATS THE SH!T BIT AND THATS Y IT ASKS ME TO FORSCE IT.

so has anyone had this with there 107 drive where they have to force it.
MEDION has not released a FW upgrade for this but i'm pissed off thatits not a proper pioneer drive that will enable me to FW upgrade.


what do you think i should do

force the FW upgrade or back it to svp for selling me a **** drive.
its as if medion or whatever buy then from pioneer stick there own FW in and sell it as pioneer.

thats what it looks like to me and it sucks.

Looks like grey imports for sure under another brand name, I've been told by a couple of media retailers that they were offered these drives that let's face it are NOT Pioneer 107 drives period. Even if they are similar and in theory the same mechanics etc. Just the same as you would not sell a Teac as a Pioneer even though they are very similar and hold to the above line too.

Hmmm :saywhat:

[jase1]

Interesting.

The drive I got from SVP was a genuine 107, but that was a couple of months back. They are genuine 107 drives but destined for sale under a different badge. I'm surprised that this wasn't mentioned on the website, although strictly speaking the "OEM" tag is technically enough to cover this (similar to if you bought a LiteOn OEM drive and it turns out to be a Tx or similar). A bit sharp though I must say. This practice is commonplace it has to be said; I've bought a Philips drive from ebuyer that turned out to be a Traxdata, and so-called Mitsubishi OEM DVD-Rs that were in reality Vanguards, really horrible media at that. This is naughty but not in the same league.

I think a lot of the problem is, that when there is so much pressure to bring prices down, distributors will cut corners, and there are a lot of distros out there who would sell their own mother to get a sale. It's possible, though unlikely, that SVP themselves didn't even know about this.

It's making me wonder now where the NEC2500A drives have been dug up from at such a cheap price; I just bought two of these to replace a couple of 105s that are on their last legs.

As for Aritas, it's been generally known for a long time that Arita are Ritek's "budget" brand... the discs are not the same quality as the discs that go out to the major OEMs such as TDK, Philips etc, but there is generally nothing to worry about. Aritas are of a higher standard than the landscape discs, which are branded as such specifically to stop their sale as grade A media.

[jase1]

Something fishy going on here with the description given by SVP...

The description has appeared word-for-word the same, on Digital Promo's site now. This suggests that the text may have been worded by everyone's favourite Scottish-based distributor.

This sets alarm bells ringing as far as I am concerned. There could be some really horrible rejects mixed in with these batches now. My advice is to avoid like the plague.

[Lazza]

If those Jocks are putting them out then forget it, as you say jase some real crap will be amongst those batches guaranteed. :t_down:

[geobon]

Thats what happens when you buy oem drives its just your luck who there made for and being medion they provide their own firmware updates, Just like they did with the 106 & 105 before that, The force flash put them to geniune pioneers, Don't know why grey imports and fake drives is even being mentioned here, Pioneer provides OEM drives for medion in fact it wasn't long ago aldi were selling them, They aren't any more fake than the re-badged teac drives made by pioneer.

[svp.co.uk]

Hi Jase/Lazza

Just saw this thread and thought I would add some info.

1) Graded media.
We wanted to make the market aware that the Landscape discs being sold were graded media. The best way to do this was to put it on our website and give it an honest description.
The description was written by myself and I note that large chunks of this were copied onto some other vendors websites later the same day. This does not bother me in the least as it just shows that even other vendors respect our opinions.

2) Medion oem BLACK Pioneer 107s
We bought some BLACK Pioneer 107s. When they arrived we quickly assertained that they were Pioneer 107s that had been made for Medion and had a Medion firmware. From there we took the following action:
Tested the drives with a variety of media to make sure they worked to the same standard.
Used our contacts at Pioneer to get a firmware update to flash the Medion drive to a normal drive making any other firmware update a formality. This is available on our download page at http://svp.co.uk/helpdesk/?_a=downloads.
This issue only affected the BLACK Pioneer 107s we sold. Using this firmware update does not affect the SVP warranty or the SVP 30 day no quibble returns policy.

Steve

[Lazza]

Thanks Steve for coming on and telling us.

I've used several packs of the G03 Arita's myself now which I bought from you and not a bad disc ... so far. I think what really concerns people, myself included, is the continuity of certain brands of media and their reliability/quality. Take the Datawrite Red's for instance when they first were launched and then the quality goes pear shaped. From my travels around the web it seems quite clear that many users do not put much trust in a certain Scottish media outfit beginning with E and the grading of discs that end up on the shelves, heard all sorts of stories and OK maybe some of them are exagerated but it can leave the customer not knowing whether to trust them or not. You might have a great batch of discs one week and be in coaster city a month later.

Thanks again for popping in and clearing that up for us. :)

[jase1]

Yeah thanks Steve. As i noted previously, the landscape discs look as if they're generally acceptable (well the ones I got were anyway, 100 of 100 OK for me), so by describing them as you have (and others have followed) it's a fair way of letting the punters decide.

BTW Lazza I can't see any reseller of the nice Scottish company's wares having anything positive or negative to say about the company on a public forum ;)