Infiniti "Samurai" Red/Yellow/Orange discs

[jase1]

Without getting into a debate as to the quality of these discs (I'm not particularly interested in that side of things at the present), does anyone know what the MID info is for these discs? Just before I buy a few that's all.

[Lazza]

Hehe, a few have asked this at other places and I'm interested to know myself after I saw them at ebuyer. :)

AFAIK they come up as unknown in most DVD identifying software and someone who bought from ebuyer phoned up Media International to enquire if any of the discs were using a Ritek dye and found out they were not but they still would not tell him who makes the discs either. I wonder why?!?! Strange.

[geobon]

Got a couple via a trade and the info comes back as unknown, although the dye looks very like the sony dye, Just a tad lighter than the G04's. One was fine but had problems reading the other so burnt to ritek using the writer to both read and write.

[jase1]

Sounds as if these discs may be coming from the same plant as the Infiniti 2x media I got a couple of months back cheaply. If that is the case, these discs worked very well for me (was able to burn at 6x reliably with Pio 107) so I might give them a go. Thanks for that.

[jase1]

According to some reports on ebuyer.com these discs are Longten (shudder).

So my advice is, don't bother.

I'll get a spool of 50 for tests next time I buy something from ebuyer.com but I don't expect much :(

[Lazza]

OMG - No wonder Media International would not own up! lol :laugh:

[jase1]

The strange thing is that I know a couple of respected industry people living in Canada who swear by this media as one of the best budget discs. It seems Longten isn't a company but a loose umbrella organisation of small media manufacturers who pool resources -- so some Longten discs might be very good, it's hard to tell. There are also some other HK factories churning out unlicenced fake-Longten media would you believe.

Apparently Longten are a bit notorious -- they were responsible for the cheap 25p Market cassette tapes you used to get (Kaytapes and the like). They were nasty :sick: But the same companies were also responsible for making tapes for the like of Woolies, Argos and Bush.

Russian roulette basically. There might be some excellent Longten media out there, who knows? To be fair, the only Longtens I've had were poor >3.5Gb but really pretty good up to that point and they've held up OK over the last year.

[scorer]

I used infiniti white top all the time, a perfect disk for me. i decided to try these samurai disks, and they are terrible. They seem okay if you can get them to burn, doesn't matter which burning program I use 8 times out of ten it will throw them out with errors. I emailed infiniti about this but have so far failed to responed.

[jase1]

Well I acquired some of these out of curiosity, and can give some results.

With Pioneer writers, PI error rates are quite high (around 2-400 across the disc, standard spec is 280 so they are slightly out of spec). But the discs are readable in *most* readers, though by no means all.

On the NEC 2500A, the errors are much lower (about 30-50 across the disc, shooting up to 400 in the last 100Mb which isn't that bad). Again the discs are readable in the majority of devices.

So, if they are cheap enough, for things like storing data, and movies with a better DVD player, they're, well, OK I suppose. They seem reliable enough but performance isn't very good. They're better than a lot of discs out there, but that isn't saying much. Similar grade to Princo in all honesty.

One interesting little fact is that with hacked firmware, they burn at 8x successfully on both the 107 and 2500A. And readability is no different when burned at 8x. So for cheapass discs for burning at 8x and using for short-term data backup, they might suit the bill here.

So, for most people, I'd avoid these discs. From a curiosity standpoint, they're reasonable, but don't expect them to be readable on a lot of DVD players.

[Lazza]

Thing is though now, when you are paying only 38p for Grade A Ritek G04's (Ridata) is it really even worth bothering trying to save 2 - 3p a disc? :D

[jase1]

Absolutely. But I bought 100 for £24, and can sell the other 50 on ebay for £20, so 50 discs have cost me £4. I make that 8p each, and from that perspective they're a bargain :D

[Lazza]

At 8p each I'll be buying them too! lol

[Jesterrace]

A good thing there are suckers out there in this world. I can't believe people buy media off of ebay. :laugh:

[jase1]

Hey don't knock it, it sold in 4 hours!! lol

[jase1]

That said, although the aforementioned Red/Yellow/Orange discs are Longten, and hence pooh, the newer Blue and Pink discs are manufactured by Acer/Daxon for Sony and are in fact very good indeed.

Between myself and 2 work colleagues we've just got through 400 of them on various LiteOn, BTC, Pioneer and NEC writers without issue.

Bizarrely, we did get 2 coasters. One was a totally different disc (made by Optodisc and scratched to hell, most odd), and in the same spindle, a copy of "Monsters Inc" had been put in there somehow.

So clearly the QC is all over the place at Medea but it doesn't alter the 398 other discs that worked faultlessly....