Bitburners take a look at Ricoh 16x DVD-R

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Our friends over at Bitburners have taken the new Ricoh 16x DVD-R media for a spin and have published their results online.

"The results are a mixed bag, and once again we can point at the DVD recorders' manufacturers to upgrade their firmware. Pioneer showed some odd PIF spikes, while LG was only able to use a 4x recording speed, which is iedicilous for a 16x media. However, the results with Plextor and Pioneer could suggest that this media has slight problems when approaching the highest recording speeds above 12x. On the other hand, BenQ has issues in the beginning but finished quite nicely at 16x. The test results suggest that this is a decent quality disc, but for optimal you should consider recording at slightly reduced speed."

After seeing the results, it looks like a pretty decent media when supported properly. We used the Datasafe version ( same dye, different brand ) in our NEC ND-4550 review and found pretty similar results when recorded at 16x. The PIF spikes shouldn't normally be an issue shorterm but it is unusal for this recorder. A transfer test should confirm this.