1) Can A05 burn at 2X on 1X DVD-R? 2) media price hike???

[VEFF]

1) Can A05 burn at 2X on 1X DVD-R with firmware 1.21?
It seems Ritek 2X can, but not Ritek 1X-2X...???
I ma only reporting this based on other's reports, since my burner is due to arrive today and I don't have the media either.

2) It seems shop4tech has raised prices for Ritek 100 packs by 10 bucks?
I know one of the news stories here reported a shortage, by saying that the supply of DVD-Rs couldn't keep up with current high demand.

[boblx2]

It has been my understanding that without some trickery a drive can only burn what the media is rated for. If you want 2X burning you have to buy 2X rated media, etc. I too have the Sony and the A05 but I only bought the A05 to burn 4X, the Sony burns 2.4X out of the box with any + media so burning 2X should not be an issue with you. I have not been able to get my Sony to burn 4X though.

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[VEFF]

It has been my understanding that without some trickery a drive can only burn what the media is rated for. If you want 2X burning you have to buy 2X rated media, etc. I too have the Sony and the A05 but I only bought the A05 to burn 4X, the Sony burns 2.4X out of the box with any + media so burning 2X should not be an issue with you. I have not been able to get my Sony to burn 4X though.

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Thanks for the feeback boblx2.
I know that the DRU-500A can burn Ritek 1X media at 2X with firmware 1.0f.
Pioneer's own web site lists several different 1X media that can be burned at 2X with the A04 and A05, without any trickery.
I think Pioneer didn't bother to certify Ritek for 2X burning for whatever reason (maybe financial?)

[Kennyshin]

1) Can A05 burn at 2X on 1X DVD-R with firmware 1.21?
It seems Ritek 2X can, but not Ritek 1X-2X...???
I ma only reporting this based on other's reports, since my burner is due to arrive today and I don't have the media either.

2) It seems shop4tech has raised prices for Ritek 100 packs by 10 bucks?
I know one of the news stories here reported a shortage, by saying that the supply of DVD-Rs couldn't keep up with current high demand.

1) Pioneer DVR-A05 cannot write at 2x DVD-R speed even with firmware 1.21 to many 1x DVD-R media by CMC, Princo, Ritek, BeAll, etc. Other drives like Pioneer DVR-A03, DVR-A04, and Sony DRU-500A can.

2) The DigiTimes news is usually just the industry reports inside the Taiwan industrial parks and Taipei. Many of the news stores are from some Taiwan-Chinese language newspapers and websites. Not everything there is correct. Ritek has a serious shortage problem even though they are using 100% of their production capacity right now. If I order Ritek DVD-R disks (to South Korea), the shipping will be in the middle of or late February. Even worse for the Ritek DVD+R and DVD+RW disks. So the smaller importers and dealers might have more problems. The overall demand seems to have multiplied in the past several weeks.

[sabujo]

the a05 even has problems writing 2x media at 2x. good luck.

[lusec]

I just bought a 100 pack 4x Ritek from shop4tech for $179 last week. Its a pretty good deal considering they are 4x and do burn at 4x(for the Pioneer drive anyway).

[boblx2]

We tried the DVD-ON version of Ritek 4x media on the other Sony drive that we bought at the same time we bought mine. It has not been downgraded to 1.0d, it is still at 1.0f. It burned that media at 4X! Quite a shock to me. It is on a P4 3.0 sysem but otherwise it is pretty much the same as my P4 2.4 system. However this system could not burn the Meritline media at 4X. According to ADVDINFO this is the same, identical media. Don't know what the deal it but there is something strange about either these Sony drives or the Ritek 4x media. Mine, which has been dowgraded to 1.0d, will not burn any of it at 4X. We are researching the difference between the setups. The next thing to do is to put my drive in that system and see what happens.

Thought you might like to know.......