Ricoh 16x DVD+R media review

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Posted on 9 Mar 2005 by SirQUK

Conclusion

Our initial testing with the Ricoh 16x DVD+R media started off very badly. Out of 5 posible review recording devices that claimed to support 16x DVD+R capable media, only 2 actually had this 16x speed available with official firmware at present. The media has been out for over a month and we would like to think that both Ricoh and the R&D departments of the unsupported writer companies could do a better job in getting support introduced quicker. Ricoh has always been a trusted high quality brand of media with their 8x DVD+R media being capable of reliable over speeds of upto 16x in certain devices. It has filled the gap for many users until the eagerly awaited release of the new 16x media from Ricoh.

We are not sure as to why only the Liteon-IT 1653S and BenQ 1620 had 16x support while both NEC drives and the Pioneer drive only showed 4x. Later this month we will see new firmware for the NEC drives and hopefully this will include 16x support for the Ricoh 16x DVD+R media, but for the time being we are very grateful indeed to Liggy and Dee-27 for their excellent support of the Ricoh 16x DVD+R media at its rated speed of 16x in our NEC drives. If it wasn't for these kind folk, this review may only of included two writers with 16x support. Furthermore, the results on the NEC 3500 and 3520 drives with the modified firmware from Liggy and Dee-27 showed just how good these drives can record to the Ricoh 16x DVD+R media, so we are confident that a new firmware from NEC themselves should resolve this issue.

Due to the fact that the NEC drives showed only a 4x maximum recording speed available by default under current firmware, I ended up using 9 pieces of this Ricoh 16x DVD+R media before a working 16x strategy was found for them leaving only 16 pieces to do the review at 16x with. And it could of been much worse too, but thankfully Dee-27 also had the same bacth of media which reduced the amount of media I needed to ue in testing to get 16x and left more pieces for the review. To add to this dismay, the Pioneer DVDR 108 also only had a 4x maximum recording speed available under present firmware and has no way of achieving a 16x recording was possible, it was left out of this review until such time as a 16x recording strategy can be used.

We are yet unsure as to when the Pioneer DVR 108 will support the media. As a result of this only 4 review recording devices have been used for this review instead of the now normal 5 devices we use for wide compatibility.

While looking at the results from the Disc Quality tests you may notice some rather low scores on some results on the NEC writers used in this review and may be wondering how come CDR-Zone.COM are giving the Ricoh 16x DVD+R media a good rating. This can best be explained by first explaining how CD Speed comes to its Quaity Score. It is based soley on maximum reported PIF errors as of version 3.70. So if single spikes similar to what have been reported by the Liteon-It 1653S whilst scanning the discs recorded on the NEC drives are found the Disc Quality score really does take a beating.

Although the Quality score has to be based on something, it does not take into account the known bug in the MediaTek chipset used by the this particular Liteon and hopefully the transfer and playback tests are proof enough that these single spikes really do not effect the final recording. If you ignore this 'bug' and remove these spikes from the equation, the Quality scores would be in the 90's. It has also been reported by the author of CD Speed that these single spikes will ignored in future quality score calculations as they do not seem to have any long term effect on the playability of these recordings.

As with our review of the Verbatim 16 DVD-R media, we did actually scan our recordings in the BenQ DW 1620A where these single spikes are not noted and the Quality score was indeed in the 90's. We have used the Liteon as its scanning method most closely matches official standards that would be used in an industry CAT scanner which is what the industry uses to determine similar errors as the Disc Quality test in CD Speed shows.

The best recordings to the Ricoh 16x DVD+R media seemed to be with the NEC 3500 and NEC 3520 using the modified firmware with the BenQ 1620 coming a close third with all 3 drives showing very low levels of PI Error and PI failures and a smooth transfer test carried out at a maximum read speed of 16x on the NEC 3500. The NEC 3500 has proven to be a highly reliable device for reading at speeds upto 16x, only ever slowing down if the recorded media shows high levels of jitter or the media has become unbalanced during recording.

We must point out that using these modified firmwares will render your warranty with NEC void but I have found them to be highly reliable with no more risk to your NEC than an official NEC firmware and more often than not actually recording certain media such a this Ricoh 16x DVD+R better than the official firmware would allow.

The Liteon-IT 1653S recording to the Ricoh 16x DVD+R media although showing us a very good Disc Quality test result exhibited these slowdowns during its tranfer test on the NEC 3500 at 16x but passed at a lower reading speed of 12x. A similar slowdown during recording to our recent Verbatim 16x DVD-R media also exhibited these slowdowns until a new firmware was released which fixed this issue. We hope the same can be done for the Ricoh 16x DVD+R media too, although only users with a drive capable of reading at 16x will see these slowdowns at all under the present firmware.

About Ricoh:

Ricoh is a leading global manufacturer of office equipment, including advanced multi-functional devices, (colour) printers, copiers, digital duplicators, scanners, faxes, CD-Recordable and CD-ReWritable drives and media, digital cameras, related supplies and services.

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