Thanks to the independent members of disQworld who volunteered their opinions of these discs.


The Datawrite Printable 8x DVD-R

You can read Flash's review here, which contains testing and his thoughts on these discs.

flakie
Hardware used:
Intel P4 (Prescott) 3.00Ghz
Burner: NEC 2500A with Herries 1.07 Firmware.
Player 1: Panasonic SC-MT1 Standalone DVD Player.
Player 2: Alba 108 Standalone DVD Player.
Player 3: Pioneer 606D Standalone Player.
Player 3: XBOX
Player 4: Playstation 2.

Software used:
Nero Express 6.3.1.25
DVD Decrypter 3.5.0.0

First impressions:
Fairly standard fair, clean smooth printable surface, which has about 1cm in radius less printable area than what I would consider to be standard. The dye is what I would call a medium to light purple but looks good and solid (I’m not counting any flaws I consider to have been introduced by the sleeves).

Media ID:
00000000 00 AA 00 00 01 40 C1 FD 9E D8 52 00 02 85 0D 10 .....@....R.....
00000010 88 9A 80 00 03 4D 43 43 20 30 32 00 04 52 47 32 .....MCC 02..RG2
00000020 30 20 20 00 05 88 80 00 00 00 02 00 06 09 0D 13 0 .............

Test Results
Disk 1: (DVD Video 4GB)
This first disk was burned with Nero at 8 speed and took 8 Mins 40 Seconds to complete with no errors and no visible signs of banding or ghosting. The disc played back in all players with no problems whatsoever (more on that later).

Disk 2: (DVD Video 3GB)
Burned with nero at 8 speed in 6 Mins 58 Seconds. A carbon copy of the first disc here, Burned with no errors and played back in all players.

Disk 3: (DVD Video 4.3GB)
Thought I’d try something different, so burned this one with DVD Decrypter at 8 speed, it took 9 Mins 4 Seconds to complete and as before it produced a good clean burn which played back flawlessly in all players.

Disk 4: (XBOX Format 3GB)
For good measure I tried a different format and went for an XBOX game, burned with DVD Decrypter at 4 speed. The disc completed in 9 Mins 18 Seconds. Picked up and played on the XBOX no problems.

Disc 5: (DVD Video 4.1GB)
Burned this one with DVD Decrypter again, in a time of 8 Mins 42 Seconds. Shock Horror, this was the only disc burned to show something different. It had a banding ring about 2cm from the outer edge of the disc (the switch to 8 speed area I think??). Played back without problems though.

Conclusion
What can I say? Clearly from the above I have had some good fortune with these discs, they all burned and played back flawlessly, with one minor exception on the last disc.

The biggest surprise for me was the playback in the Panasonic, I have a HUGE amount of trouble with this player and the amount of time it normally takes to pick up some discs (even with the same media code as these test discs (or at least very similar my memory’s not that good)).

I have in the past waited a good 40 or 50 seconds for some discs to start playing, these however were picked up almost as soon as the drawer closed, words fail me on that one.

If I had to be picky it would centre on the fact that there is less printable surface than a standard printable, but for a disc which performed so well for me that doesn’t seem fair. And I have to say that the actual quality of printing to this surface was very good on my Canon i865.

All in all I don’t think I would hesitate in buying or recommending these discs, based on the five I have just tried.

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fruitloop
Hardware + Software Used
AMD Athlon 2400xp
Pioneer 108 dual layer Writer
Windows XP
Nero 6.6.0.0
Liteon Standalone 5005 dvd player
Dvd Shrink

Disc 1
Used Dvd shrink to backup Troy when it came to the writing stage the film was backed up at 12x speed on the 8x disc with no pixellation or stuttering

Disc 2
used Nero Express to copy Chronicles of Riddick on the fly...again copied at 12x and burned in less than 5 mins

Disc 3
Used to backup mp3 data from HD...again burned a full dvd in less than 5 mins at 12X

Disc 4
Backed up an ISO using Alcohol 120%...this burned at 8X full disc in 8 mins no problems on playback.

Disc 4
put a lot of data on this disc including backups of Divx and Apps...burned at 12x with no probs.

When using Nero I verified data after writing and all was fine.

Checked DVDs on Liteon 5005 standalone and they loaded very quickly

Conclusion
I would recommend these discs very highly...Thankyou for the chance to try them Very Happy

one point worth noting is that during transit the discs had gained a few marks but STILL wrote perfectly

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Servo
All the disk were scuffed, but hey, they are only for testing. The dye is a very light purple with the Manufacturer ID: MCC 02RG20, all 5 disks are the same. The printable surface looks and feels the same as a Ritek.

Hardware
Pioneer 108
Pioneer 107 Usb 2 Hacked Firmware
Pioneer 106 Usb 2 Hacked Firmware

Players
Scan 2000
Ronin P215F
Yamada DVX6600
Dansai 852
Proline
Xbox

Printer
Epson photo 900

Burning Software
DVDDecrypter_3.2.3.0
Nero V6

Because of the marks I decided to do only 1 movie and the rest a mix of xbox games, data disk and a pc game. The movie I will use Nero speed app to check the burn, and DVDDecrypter_3.2.3.0. to rip them back to Hd.

Disk 1
PC game, I wrote the disk at x8 with 1.5 gig of data. The burn went well, and the game booted up vey fast, the install was so quick. I used nero speed check and the graph was a superb curve. (Best I've seen)

Disk 2
Xbox game 1 : 3 gig of data, this time I used x12 write. After the burning I ran downstairs and tried thhe game in the xbox. It booted and played the game without a hitch. Nero speed check again showed a great graph. So far I'm very impressed with these dvd-r's.

Disk 3
Xbox game 2 : 4 gig of date. This is getting boring now Smile, burn't at x16, again the results were first class, booted first time, and a very nice curve in the graph, reaching read speeds of 16.5.

Disk 4
Data Disk : 4.3 gig of data, using nero, all speeds were selectable and so I picked x8. Again the finished article booted very fast in the toshiba, and going through all the folders was almost instant. Nero again showed the graph as a very nice curve, this time it left the top of the graph Razz

Disk 5
Movie : Using nero again, I burn't a full movie at x12. again all went well. The graph again was very good, even though the disks were badly marked. Ripping the movie back to hard drive was quick. Speeds of 16.5 were hit and a average of 11.2. This movie played in all hardware. The graph again was superb.

The printable surface looked great and the results using the 900 were quite good. I think the next time I order some dvd-r printables these will be top of my list. 1st class product.

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vgopal
First impression, discs came packed well etc. but those sleeves used to hold the discs are very bad!! - they scuffed all the discs and all are damaged by the closing tab.

For the disc tests a better option would be to send in those double cd cases with the cloth in the middle. They have never caused a problem for me when sending discs.

Now with that over, time for the tests!

The tests may not be as reliable as they would be with discs that were not damaged in any way but I will test these the best way possible.

Manufacturer ID: MCC 02RG20
This seems like an excellent dye, it’s also used by verbatim on their discs.

Disc 1
Burnt san andreas ps2 game.
It streams a lot from the discs and is a good test for the disc.
Also here is a read graph from my drive.



All I can say is im amazed at this graph!! My liteon combo is speedhacked and other discs cant keep up to the pressure but this disc shows amazing read speeds and even at high speeds the disc does not fault.

And remember this is with a scratched/scuffed disc!

Disc 2
Burnt san andreas ps2 game.
It streams a lot from the discs and is a good test for the disc.
Also here is a read graph from my drive.



WOW I am really beginning to like these discs, even though I received slightly dodgy ones this discs are absolutely amazing!!

Disc 3
A movie.
Heres the read graph and its perfect again!



I'm not going to post the read graphs for the last 2 discs but as you can expect from the ones above they show consistant results.

The discs were consistantly good in all the dvd players i tested it in and also in the ps2.

also i printed on 1 disc in my r200, had to set the margins right but the print quality was great..

Conclusion
I cant recommend these discs enough, simply the best discs ive had in a very long time!

Added:  Thursday, November 04, 2004
Reviewer:  Ed

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