Problems with Ritek DVD-R quality, archived article (2004)
I noticed today that Flash's dvd-recordable.org is now gone, replaced by geeks.org.uk -- meaning all of the valuable information on blank DVD media once found on that site appears to be gone. I'm hoping archive.org still has some of it.
Anyway, it's referred to numerous times in another article on 2004-2006 issues with Ritek media, which is an important historical situation to remember for those that follow blank DVD media business practices. Be sure to read my commentar below the quoted interview... Quote:
What's amusing is that RitekG01, RitekG02, RitekG03 and RitekG04 were really not all that impressive, in terms of being a good disc for both burning and playing/reading. Much of the love for RitekG03 and RitekG04 was misplaced, and often based on a comparison to the utter crap made by Princo and others at the same price point. Mitsubishi (MCC), Maxell (MLX), Pioneer (PVC), TDK (TDK), and Taiyo Yuden (TY) was always a far better choice. What I find even more amusing is a company seeking "top quality" has traded up from Ritek to CMC, which has proven itself equally unreliable amongst users, even if it does use Mitsubishi AZO dye on some of its discs. It's like exchanging a dog turd for a cat turd -- you still have a turd. If you want chocolate mousse, get TY or MCC! (I will, however, cut Ritek a break -- their RITEKF1 DVD-R oxonol-dye based media is not bad at all!) Again, information archived for it's historical significance. :) |
I wasn't paying attention to the blank media industry at the time, but I'm surprised that anyone though Ritek made Grade A media. It was well known back in 99-2000 that Ritek media (then CD-R) was pretty much a "bottom of the barrel" brand. Sure, quality could improve with companies over the years, but brand perception from past experience is hard to change.
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You're not wrong.
The problem was all the newbies who had only been burning discs since about 2003-2004, from the time drive prices fell to under $200. These were folks who never really burned their own CDs, never used early generation DVD burners, knew nothing about the "format war" of DVD-R vs DVD+R, and were otherwise in the dark about pretty much everything. At that time, you could buy Apple, Maxell, TDK, Pioneer or Verbatim discs for about $5 each -- or you could go online and buy something called Princo or Ritek for under $2. The ad said the media was "Grade A" and "certified" (nevermind that neither term meant a thing), so they were bought in piles. DVD burners had also come to a point where drives would just push through crappy discs. The Pioneer 103, by contrast, would barf and eject a disc at the first sign of burning issues. So all these newbies had discs that "burned good" (meaning it wasn't kicked out of the drive during the burning process) and then stowed away in a wallet. Between the lack of testing and the poor storage, the people never realized they had bought and burned poor discs. In the meantime, however, they were posting all over the internet in forum, professing their love for RITEKG03 and RITEKG04. The discs were not "bad" like Princo or Infosmart, but they were also undeserving of the flowery praise that (in some circles) ranked them right alongside Maxell (MXL), Pioneer (PVC), Mitsubishi (MCC) and TDK (TDK). Can't say I was a big Taiyo Yuden fan during the 1x-4x discs, hence my omission. Some time later, these folks -- mostly idiots copying movies (so-called "DVD backups") from Netflix or where-have-you -- found their precious flicks to be a pile of coasters. Rarely did I see somebody who professed their undying love for Ritek use the media for homemade projects, data backups etc. When I did, I felt really bad for them. It wasn't until RitekG04 media started to perform really poorly that the old myth of "disappearing data" reared its ugly head around mid/late 2004. Prior to that, the idea of "laser rot" or "disc rot" had long been debunked as crap for the CD-R crowd. That had been fixed long, long ago, due to lacquer coatings being applied during manufacturing for CD-R. The term itself was borrowed from Laserdisc. However, the newbies from the DVD-R/DVD+R generation had not been around in the 1990s, and therefore missed the memo. Thus a stupid myth was reborn. It was around 2005 that somebody with ties to IBM (a magnetic, not optical, media vendor) wrote a piece about "discs dying in 2-5 years" that was pure baloney. Sadly, it's stuck with some people who seem to believe anything they find on page 1 of Google, and the myth simply will not go away. The only thing that has really changed for the better, in terms of Ritek, is the use of Fuji oxonol dies for RITEKF1 DVD-R and RITEKF16 DVD+R. Those discs do seem to fair decently. Maybe still not as good as Mitsubishi et al, but still a vast improvement of their earlier G01-G05 lines. This is really a case of ignorance spreading. :( |
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