YAMAHA DISCONTINUES CD-RW RECORDER PRODUCT LINE

[Halc]

Yamaha and/or Ian,

I have a final request to Yamaha to consider.

Even though Yamaha has exited the CDRW business, there are still many users who have bought or will buy more Yamaha burners (still in the retail chain).

In fact, I have just ordered two more F1 drives for myself today.

However, I would find even more use of these drives, if Yamaha would release some information about how to implement the AMQ (AudioMaster) burning features in various burning programs.

I'm especially thinking of Andre Wiethoff (programmer of EAC) and some other authors of useful CDRW utilities.

Also, if Yamaha has implemented special commands in their chipset (for example C1/C2 error reporting) that are not publicly known, I'm sure MANY software makers would be eager to implement these in their software, if they were available.

Is this information easily availble, could you please point me to it? If it is not, can you please consider making this kind of information available (even under NDA) to software makers?

I know it may not be in the best business interest of Yamaha Corp, as it probably wants the whole channel to be clear from Yamaha drives as soon as possible (along with all outstanding warranties).

While this is understandable from the point of view of saving on support and managing write-off costs, I think Yamaha could still consider releasing this information and extending the useful lifespan of their products to their former (and current!) loyal customers.

At least to me, this would be a sign of a company that I can trust with my purchases in the future as I have been able to do in the past.

Best regards,
Halcyon
(real name available on request)

[cfitz]

Thats good to know. A question for all of you who have an F1 what is the best media to use for the tattooing. Thanks in advance for any help

A little off topic, but...

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... 0239#50239

Note that the recommendation to "start out with that Fuji/TY 100-pack" at the end of the post was a general one directed at pkd7423's initial question and based on the hot deals available that week. For best T@2 performance, stick with the AZO discs as described.

cfitz

[Ian]

Halc,

Those are some good poings. I'm sure Mark will have an answer for you.

I've also suggested that Yamaha should license some of their technologies like Audio Master and DiscT@2. I'd hate to see these technologies go to waste.

Ian

[hoxlund]

Ian now that is a good idea, like Lite-On picking up tattoing

haha, i know that comment is going to cause hysteria

[Halc]

Hoxlund,

on the contraty. It'd be great, but I'm not sure that LiteOn is even interested.

I'm sure Plextor could squeeze it into their profit margins though.

regards,
Halc

[hoxlund]

jus as long as someone picks it up, that was a breakthrough technology

[Yamaha]

Hi Halc,

Thanks for your comments. Yamaha has always done our best to work with developers to add support for Yamaha CD-R/RW products, as well as any special features they may employ. With the 3200 and CRW-70 series, this included the Audio Master technology. With the CRW-F1, we worked/are working with developers to add DiscT@2, as well as Advanced Audio Master. (As a side note, Microsoft and several other developers use the CRW-3200 as their Mt. Rainier test bed, as it was the first drive to deliver this technology.)

So, to answer your question, yes, Yamaha will continue to provide command set information to CD-R software developers.

Best regards,

[Boy_Wonder]

What the He** is this. I just bougt a F1 and now their telling me this!! So much for future support..lousy company (grumble). I'll never buy a yamaha writer again!

[cfitz]

I'll never buy a yamaha writer again!

I think they beat you to the punch on this one... Was the joke intentional?

cfitz

[NeilPeart]

Boy_Wonder,
You are either joking or a complete retard. This whole post has been dedicated to Yamaha's withdrawal from the CDRW market, but they specifically stated their continued support for current writers. Obviously you will never buy another Yamaha again since they have left that market (that is why I suspected the post was made in jest). I am also the happy owner of an F1 (as well as a Teac 540E, Plextor 12/10/32S, among others), and it ranks up amongst the others as a quality burner. Yamaha will support their loyal customer base as they have done in the past. Thanks again Yamaha. Goodbye.

[cfitz]

To be fair, whenever a situation such as this occurs, there will be unhappy customers who are taken by surprise and who may have made different buying decisions had they known the true facts earlier. Boy_Wonder may be one such person. But Yamaha has indicated that they will continue to support their products for their remaining lifetime, and if Boy_Wonder is truly that unhappy and just did buy his new drive, he may be able to return it to his retailer.

cfitz

[LoneWolf]

Thats good to know. A question for all of you who have an F1 what is the best media to use for the tattooing. Thanks in advance for any help

I find that blue CD's work the best. Which is fine with me, because Verbatim Datalifes with the blue emulsion have proven to be the most reliable blank CD's for me as well.

[LoneWolf]

What the He** is this. I just bougt a F1 and now their telling me this!! So much for future support..lousy company (grumble). I'll never buy a yamaha writer again!

I'd repeat my CRW-F1 purchase even if I'd known at the time it that Yamaha was leaving, and I'd still recommend this drive to every one of my friends. I won't choose another manufacturer of CD-RW drives than Yamaha, so I guess the next drive will be a Sony MultiRead/Write DVD writer down the road.

Yamaha has pledged continued support and has always supported their drives well. Your knee-jerk reaction does not become you.

[Tall Texan]

I'd repeat my CRW-F1 purchase even if I'd known at the time it that Yamaha was leaving, and I'd still recommend this drive to every one of my friends.

I would agree to the point im tryin to find as many F1s as i can afford and put them in the other 4 systems in the house. I love the one we have already and its a rock solid drive. the only thing i dont like is the black one is $20 more lol lol but no big deal.

[socheat]

So, to answer your question, yes, Yamaha will continue to provide command set information to CD-R software developers.

Any chance that includes open source software developers? It'd be great to have DiscT@2 capabilities in Linux... As long as we have this info, I don't think it would be too difficult to patch cdrecord...

Socheat

[Reg-da-Ripper]

Thats good to know. A question for all of you who have an F1 what is the best media to use for the tattooing. Thanks in advance for any help

Someone has already mentioned using the Verbatim DataLifePlus 16X (yes, they must be 16X; higher speeds use the Super Azo dye and not the metal azo dye).

If you having difficulty finding those (I believe that Verbatim has stopped making the 16X DataLifePlus CD-Rs), try Verbatim's Digital Vinyl CD-Rs (they use the same metal azo dye as the DLP 16X).

Note: Using either Verbatim DataLifePlus CD-Rs with the Super Azo dye or any Taiyo Yuden-manufactured blank CD-R will work with disc T@2 (it just won't show up as well).

[Reg-da-Ripper]

I'd like to say that while some may regard the disc T@2 feature as a gimmick on the CRW-F1, I used it as a selling point to some of my co-workers (all "techies"). No, I don't work for Yamaha (or any other optical drive company for that matter) :D

Three of them recently purchased a CRW-F1 because of disc T@2.

I can understand -- from a business point-of-view -- why Yamaha is leaving the optical drive market, but I'm still saddened (figuratively speaking) by their impending retreat from the market.

I'm now looking to purchase additional CRW-F1s for backups in case the one I currently have fails (which I think will be years from now).

[Scour]

LiteOn is 'good enough' for many, but not to all.

And in the future there will be two or three big OEM companies to choose from and there will be even greater pressure to cut costs and make lesser quality here and there and hope it doesn't matter.

This is the reason I'm sad to see Yamaha go and I'm afraid Plextor will be the next to make the exit.

Pretty soon will have only LiteOn and a couple of other competing for the title of 'make the cheapest, sell the most, obsolete the quickest' title.

Based on the quality of discs and writers people use today, I wouldn't bet my money on that data surviving the next ten years.

That was a look in the future, wow

Yeah, actually I know 3 manufacturers which are still active. LG, Liteon and Pioneer.

All 3 are produce cheap, so they survive.

I was in earlier never a fan of Liteon because my experiences with their 12x-24x-CD-RW-drives were awful, not very reliable and very loud. My Plextors, Teac and LGs were much better, especially in writing-quality. Plextor and Teac were also very reliable

Plextor survived longer as many ppl thought in the past. While Yamaha left in 40x CD-RW-days Plextor made own dives til 18x DVD-writers. Still have a 16x, the 755, which was/is a great writer for older, good DVD-media. Later Plextor rebadges the drives of former biggest enemy, Liteon.

I´m still using DVD-drives at work, these drives have much work to do. Our dealer uses LG-drives, actually GH24NSD1, as standard-drives. These drives are extreme noisy and none of them survived the 2-years-warranty. In this times LG is my new Liteon . And I don´t like the limited speeds at writing.

The other side of the story is, these awful LG-drives are still good at writing-quality, especially with DVD+R DL. But not for a long time, some of it start to burn (almost) unreadle media.

At work I start to buy Liteon x24F-drives which are real quiet if I compare with LGs actual GH24NSD1. And the x24F are much more reliable, only my most used 124F show weakness, the eject-button have to pushed hard to open the tray. Now I use Wineject to make it easier

Next time I try to get Pioneer-drives, but I dunno if I can get it because Pioneer have only BD-drives and one Pioneer costs ~ 5x of a 124F. Pioneers last DVD-drives, DVR-S21 (QSI-OEM) is actually not to get via the dealers I have to disposal. And newer S21WBK are rebadges LG GH24NSD1.

Still have some CD-R-media from year 2000 which works 2018 perfectly; also my DVD-Rs from 2004/2005. I have HDDs which worked not so long

[Dartman]

OLD thread but I gave up on LiteOn after also trying to get several burners to work consistently even with the help of Zebra who used to modify the firmware to make them burn better. Everything I own now is at least DVD burners and I have a bunch.My main 3 drives are two LG, H20l that reads HD DVD and still works fine, 16ns40 because it burns newer BD media very well and can rip and burn blue ray movies and UHD disks, and my old BenQ 1655 to test quality on DVD burns. My other box has 3 other drives that were well thought of and did quality burns back in the day plus I have some of my favorites I don't use anymore stashed away just because they did new ground breaking things like being the first drive that could burn dual layer DVD media. Their were a lot of player back then that tried to make drives that could do new things and make high quality disks with very low error rates but now it's mostly just cheaper and faster, plus blank media quality isn't what it used to be. I bought up all the Verbatim 16x DVD media I could find in 100 cake boxes back when they went to the new low quality life series and all the office stores were blowing out the old high quality stock they had cheap. Now I'm trying to find good cheap BDR media to play with but I hardly burn anything anymore what with a networked setup and Plex media player with a bunch of big external and internal hard drives cheap.
Good to see you still hop in here from time to time Scour.

[Scour]

Hi Dartman, nice to see you still active


Don´t know the H20L you have, it is a GGC? I´m also have a BH16NS40 and I like it much more than my BH16NS55. The NS55 looks cheaper, is more noisy and burns MBIR06 awful. Maybe not a problem in the USA, but here in Germany MBIR06 is to find often. The burn results LDC and BIS are not that good, but the media I burned 2013 is still in good shape while my RITEK-made BD-Rs getting unreadable after 3 years.

Benq-drives I also use sometimes for quality-scanning but rarely for burning. Even with scans I´m not sure what Benq drives do sometimes, it shows sometimes POF @8x scans but read at full speed the whole disc without errors.

If you don´t have actual LG DVD-writers like the GH24NSD1 you can´t know how bad these drives are . Hope the BH and CH-series still uses other hardware-design (not only the BD-OPU) in the future. Liteons actual DVD-writers seems to be much more reliable and much more quiet (! my old Liteon were the most noisest drives I had).

Verbatims DVD-media is actual very mediocre, that´s right. No matter if -R or +R, if from India or Taiwan. You can still burn it good with the fitting drive, but I had the experience that Verbatim-media is more critical than cheap MBIs own media.

Verbatim -R: Unreadale or nearly unreadable if burnt with Pioneer DVR-S21 or LG Slim DVD-drives
Verbatim +R: Unreadale or nearly unreadable if burnt with Liteon x24F-drives (older batches works with these drives)

Stable results I have if burnt with actual LG Half Height drives and Pioneer BD-drives. But with PIF total mostly >3000 the results are far away from old batches of these media. 004 have mostly less PIF than MCC 03RG20, but you won´t feel a difference at readability.

MBIPG101 R05 and MBI 01RG40 is bad media if I take a look at PIF total, but it works reliable in every drives I burnt it and a transferrate-test showed it can be read without problems at highest speed. But MBI is out of business.

The best bang for the buck for me atm:

BD-R: CMC MAG BA5. Works good in every drive I used, hope it´s also reliable. No probs with media I´ve burnt 2013 if I store it in the right places (NO CD-wallets, BD-media hate it)
DVD-R: I´ve ordered some Piodata Red Logo with OPTODISCR016 from USA and have great results Q95 if scanned with a Liteon and PIF total <1000, Benq advanced scan with Class 2, if burnt with the LG BH16NS55, Samsung SH-224DB/GB, Liteon ihas 324f, LG GH24NSC0
DVD+R: Ritek F16 have good results with Pioneer BDR-209, Pioneer DVR-215 and S21, Plextor PX-755, LG GH24NSC0, Samsung SH-224GB
Also AML 003 can be good but the vary of quality is higher

[Dartman]

It's a GGW-H20L BDR/HD DVD drive that burns bdr at 6x and can read HD DVD. I had both formats during the HD media wars so I wanted a drive that could do it all. The WH16NS40 seems to burn BDR media nicely and I wanted a faster burner that could copy ULHD disks which it can. I've had a few LG DVD burners and they were OK but never got updated much and then just dropped and on to the next newer drive for them. My other Tower has the rest of my old burners in it, a Samsung s203 and a Sony I think or something. The Verbatim media I bought was all UAE made AZO stuff so it is great quality and burns well in most of my drives. I don't have any of the newer Taiwan or India stuff as I wanted their quality stuff they used to sell before they cheapened out. I pretty much stopped buying burners seeing how nothing new is high quality and I wanted to burn all the flavors of BD media quickly so unless something new and way better comes out I'm good for now and I still have those old legacy drives I liked put away.

[Scour]

Actual is no need to buy a new ODD if you still have good drives. Maximum Speed didn´t change in the last years, no new features, no higher quality.

Funny thing is, I still have some 8x-media and my older writers are faster with it because of 8x-Z-CLV or faster starting P-CAV. My old 4163 writes 16x P-CAV!

UAE-made MCC Single Layer I never had, I guess, only +R DL. And it looks like newest batches are also not so good as older ones.

I dunno where the market of optical media will be in the next years.

Ritek says in 2020 will be a high demand for optical discs but only in the business-class. Some companies started to make backup on high-capacity ODs and Ritek expect many companies will follow to use also ODs instant of tapes

https://www.thenational.ae/business/mar ... 4-1.736672

Dunno if this technique will be available in the consumer-market and if it will be whether the prices are OK, but it would be nice for me if I can backup one 2TB-HDD on 7 WORM-media

[Dartman]

Yeah, I used tape drive for a bit back in the day. They were slow and unreliable. When one of my first machines crashed I figure, great, I have some backup tapes then my program refused to read them. I had some later tape machines that were better but it's still tape and as drives got bigger and bigger it took to many tapes and too much time if needed to restore something. I think most places use big hard drives now they cycle out and store off site and like that but some of the pro tape and Tape/DAT ideas were pretty good if you had the money. I mostly depend on system restore now and just try to be careful as 10 seems to be pretty forgiving and tends to self repair if things are setup right. Of course just about the time you need it you'll find out system restore was turned off or doesn't have a restore point you can use and other fun things like that. Right now I have my old boot SSD in place and disconnected so if something blows up I can boot from it and get going.

[Scour]

I have some PCs and Notebooks, so I always have a 2nd option to boot a machine and keep going

Backups I make often, especially if I have new real important data

The last time I used tapes were at my C64

Maybe backup on tapes are not that bad 2day but I guess if someone want a restore it would be slow

BTW, Facebook uses this 300GB-ODD for backups

[Dartman]

I Still have my old Win7 Ultimate box beside this one so if it completely kacks I have a whole other functional box. My sister has a machine as well and I also have a nice older but very high end Samsung Android tablet with a octa core cpu and OLED display so I have plenty of other ways to go online or do things too. This morning and today I was swapping over my new I7 3820 board with 32 gig of ram and a 2tb boot drive my buddy gave me for helping him as he got a bunch of them back from a old customer who no longer needed them after a few years. Hopefully its a bit faster then the i7 980 we built for me a few years ago with 16 gig. Just shoved in my 480gig ssd with 10 pro 64 and it booted up fine but will need some driver updates for the new board. I did try my old boot ssd to see if it would boot as is and it did so I started swapping parts over. Now I have a spare I7 980 board so MAYBE I'll swap it to the 7 box and see if it will boot.