I am a Noob to burning dvd's.

I have a Toshiba notebook, xp, 512 RAM, intel pentium 4, 1.9 ghz and an external BenQ 162I burner, dual layer 16X.
Am pleased with both and the results over the last couple of months when I use 1 Click Dvd Copy to make a simple copy.

I follow BenQ's support recommendation and use R+ either Sony, TDK, Imation, Maxell or their own brand of BenQ 4.75.

Here in Canada since I store shop there is a lot of limitations.

However, I now have a chance to buy Maxell at a very good price and used my Dvd Identifier and find that the media is manufactured by Ricoh, and the Mfr. ID is Ricoh Jpn and the media type ID: RO1 and the blank disc is 4.38 gigs.

Since I am new to all of this I wanted to know if this is a good manufacturer?? Then I will run out and buy more.

I would appreciate comments,

Regards (and I hope that I have posted in the correct spot!!)

(I am far from a tech expert and respect all of your advice!!!

Cheers

afaik Ricoh should be top stuff, but it is a while since i read any serious review about that...

check http://www.cdfreaks.com

Yes, RICOHJPN R01 has excellent reputation. Even though it is only rated at 4X, the BenQ should be able to overspeed it to 8X at least with no quality loss.

RicohJpn is OK, pretty much any genuine Japanese stuff is well above average. If you can, look for Fuji (made in japan) b/c they are almost always Taiyo Yuden T02.
Also, you can't go wrong with Verbatim (any 8x or 16x media) but any other Made in Taiwan (even Fuji) should be avoided.

There is good media made in Taiwan, too. CMC recent -Rs (commonly rebranded as Teons, HP and Memorex, among other brands) are very decent; and Sony's own media codes are comparable to TY in my experience.

Of course, TY and Verbatim are the best media money can buy, but that does not mean that less expensive alternatives are all bad.
<edit: changed + to ->

Some good media from the latest c't media review:

CMC DVD+R 8x (RITEK R02) - Emtec, Memorex

Ricoh DVD+R 8x (RICOHJPN R02) - Platinum, Ricoh

Sony DVD+R 8x (SONY D11) - Sony

Taiyo Yuden DVD+R 8x (YUDEN000 T02) - Plextor

Taiyo Yuden DVD-R 8x (TYG02) - Plextor

TDK DVD-R 8x (TTH01) - TDK

Mitsubishi Chemicals DVD-R 16x (MCC 03RG20) - Verbatim


Some others were ok as well, but there was also a lot of garbage media.

That seems in line with past history of 2x and 4x dvd media as well. Mitsu for -R, Ricoh for +R, TY for both. Nice that CMC is finally producing good discs. That was always a big groaner when I occasionally bought cdrs "blind". Not as bad as the real garbage, but a disappointment when you were hoping for some good stuff like TY or at the very least some Prodiscs.

You have it mixed up here. CMC does not use RiTEK MIDs, neither does RiTEK CMC MIDs. Did you mean CMCMAG.E01? Verbatim +R (e.g. MCC03) is excellent media, not a bit worse than TY. They certainly learned a thing or two producing some of MKM's media. I'd say CMC CD-Rs are better than Prodisc. I have dozens CMC CDR-Rs, most are 4-6 years old and all are still readable; many have some C2s but that could be due to the crappy HP burner I was using back then. If you want cheap CD-Rs of guaranteed quality, go for RiTEK.

I second that ... MCC003 @ 8x produced some of my best results ever ... even the ones that were made in India (by Moser Baer) ...

I have some 16x Verbatim +R's that are horrible. I'll try to dig them out and grab the code...

Heck, I get "worse" results on bulk TYG02 from Rima at 8X on my PX-712A than on MCC003 at 12X! I put worse in quotation marks because the Plex burns both MIDs with very low PIEs/PIFs; but in error scans the MCC003 gets the edge. Slightly lower PIEs; and the PIFs on TYG02 tend to spike to 5-6 at the very end, while with Verbatim they stay at 2-3 throughout.


Only two reasons I can think of:
- your burner's firmware does not have proper strat for 16X media
- media damaged during shipping/handling
16X burning (I assume you burn them at 16X) is still a very finicky matter, few drives do it properly. But Verbatim 16X is about the best DVDR media you can buy.

<edit: removed redundant word>

DVD+R burning at 16x seems to be much more tricky than DVD-R @16x, and indeed the Verbatim DVD+R 16x fares much worse than it's -R 16x counterpart in the c't review.

According to the research c't did on this issue, this is likely the cause:

+R and -R have different wobble frequencies. Wobble is the "waves" in the walls of the groove that tell the burner (via phase shift keying) at which position of the disc it is. With +R, the waves have a frequency of 817 KHz at 1x speed, whereas with -R it's only 140.6 KHz. The specs of +R take account of this by allowing a jitter of 9% (instead of 8% like -R).

With slower media/burn speeds, this high wobble frequency doesn't have negative effect, even the opposite: +R media is easier to manufacture, because you don't need land pre-pits. But with 16x burn speed, the higher wobble frequency apparently leads to the worse results of the +R media.

For almost all media, c't doesn't recommend higher burn speeds than 12x. Only use 16x if you don't care much for your data.

It's right the contrary actually. The position on the disc for DVD-R
is not given by the wobble itself but by prepits, which are much shorter
than the wobble period and therefore much easier to miss. Which is why
burning on + is easier than burning on - at high speeds, as the earlier
introductions of 12x and 16x drives proved. This is not the first time
you post wrong claims from these C'T people, they should really do
something for their optical storage articles :/

Well, who says you're right and they're wrong? All their test results seem to match their claims, and they were in contact with Audiodev, BenQ and Pioneer (who also supplied them development drives) for the test. And of course they mention prepits for DVD-R. What makes me think they're right is, their statement matches the results, yours would contradict them.

The + and - standards, signal processing theory and the experience
of all drive developers I know (me included). And generally speaking,
it's safer to trust engineers over journalists for technical topics


Great, but did they ask these companies about their theory or
did they come with that explanation all by themselves afterwards ?
I did ask when I explained -R high speed issues in my article
(http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/113), and this one has
been reviewed by Pioneer and Philips engineers. All agreed.


"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple,
neat, and wrong". Likewise, for any finite set of test results there's
an large number of wrong explanations which will match them.
However, when an explanation is based on wrong facts it doesn't
matter if it matches experience or not. You can't find your position
on a -R disc just from the wobble, that's just a fact, and from there
their frequency argument falls apart. Feel free to bring a C'T guy
here and I'll happily discuss that claim with him.

I don't really want to get into arguments about articles i didn't write, so maybe it's best if you write a mail to hag AT ctmagazin.de and ask the author himself and post the correspondence here. I would be interested in the outcome.

BenQ 1620 with both V and T firmwares.

I have the same burner and i only burn up to 8x. In fact, i didn't buy it for 16x burning at all, only for good quality at 8x. By the way, i have the bulk model, and i flashed it with the retail software back when it didn't check the versions yet (nowadays you can't cross-flash anymore). Of course now i can't use the bulk firmware updates, only the retail ones. BenQ was very evasive and wouldn't tell me the changes between the bulk/retail firmwares. I now believe that it's only the drive information, "BENQ" instead of "ATAPI"...

spath, i must apologize, it seems you were right. I just received the new issue of c't, and under "corrections for the previous issue", they write the following statement: