Home > Consumer Reviews > Ridata DVD-R 4x 100-pack Spindle

I've burned about 100 of these without one error, either in the write process on my NEC-1300A, nor in playback on my computer or in my cheapo Toshiba dvd player. I use fast forward and rewind a lot, as I'm an impatient movie watcher, so these have gone through some hard work.

I had some problems with Memorex media, but then I read the reviews on videohelp.com. Hundreds of customer reviews are listed there, and you can match your exact burner to exact media for reviews of success and conpatibility. Ritek (or Ridata) G04's like these routinely get the highest ratings. They are in a class above any blank media you are likely to buy off a shelf in an electonics superstore.

My first spindles of 4x Ritek G04 DVD-R's were purchased from newegg and supermedia store. They have a great reputation for producing high quality, error-free burns and I found no exception with my first purchases. Of the 150 discs that I burned, every disc that I've watched through (numbering over 100) have so far contained zero read-errors, and I am confident that those other discs in that batch are flawless as well.

The discs pictured on amazon looked identical the high quality ones that I had purchased in the past, so I ordered some to save 5 bucks.

The packing of this product is the worst i've seen in any online order I've made. Upon receiving the spindle, i found that the spindle base was broken off in shipping, and the discs were rattling around loosely in the spindle-cap. There was clearly unsufficient packing material; the spindle, combined with the air-cushions, filled up only a little more than half the volume of the shipping box, so evidently the spindle base broke off in transit. I should have immediately returned these, but because of my great experience with these discs from other vendors, I was overly optimistic and made the error of assuming that the performance of the discs wouldn't be affected by a little rattling. Plus, these discs identified as G04's with dvdinfopro, so I thought I was safe.

After making a few burns, I saw that every single one of these burns contained skips and freezing. A surface scan with dvdinfopro showed unreadable sectors totaling as much as 10% on some of my burns. I started looking more closely at the discs.. I then noticed that ~25% of the discs have scratches in the pattern of concentric circles, particularly towards the outer edge. There were bits of dust sandwiched between most of the discs, which were absent in the spindles i bought from other vendors.

This is clearly not a problem with my burner, as I'm back to skip-free burns using supermediastore G04's and rima's 4x Taiyo Yuden DVD-R's.

This experience has left me very bitter. I should've stuck with my original vendors. The problem of insufficient cushioning has become more and more of an issue lately with amazon shipments. I had recently bought other electronics that shipped in boxes that had over 50% empty volume.

From now on, I'll stick to purchasing media and electronics from newegg, supermediastore, rima, and meritline.

I have purchased this media blindly for my TDK 440N and Sony DRU-530A. Fortunately the media works 100% on both my writers. They are very reliable too because I never had any coaster that people are talking about here on both my machines. Its well worth the money.

As a word of advise to those having coasters, check your writers, upgrade to the latest firmware, defrag your PC and as much as possible, when burning, dont do anything else on PC. I have burned close to a thousand DVD-Rs already and I can say I am quite an expert on coasters.

One cannot go wrong with Ridata. Same quality as the much more expensive Ritek.

I purchased these, simply to "try" them out. I'm really glad that I did. I use them with my Plextor 708 and they burn at a rate of 8X! What a pleasent time saving surprise. I liked this product so much, that I've ordered another spindle of 100's times two.

I have Sony DRU-500A, burn this media without a problem. The media still works after 1 year. Seems good to me :-)