Stay away from Princo if u own LG-GCE8525B

I bought this drive a few days back (after i killed sony crx225e1 )
Now i had those old princo 2X-56X CD-Rs which used to cause some problems on my sony drive as well but in this drive they simply refuse to work .I mean the LG burns these CDs at 48x but from about 12 min mark these cds are simply unreadable upto about 25min mark.Coasters

The problem seems to be with those cds only.Moserbaer pro 52x(MBI) & Benq 48x Gold(DAXON) burn perfectly at 52x on this drive.

It is my sincere advice to all those out there AVOID these cheap quality discs . LG drives seem to work best on the recommended Discs.EVEN BETTER THAN LITEON DRIVES.I mean it.

I can confirm LG's not a friend of Princo. (That was why I once intervened.)

Who wants to be a princo friend. I've read about people who lost hundreds of movies using princos after a few months hardly playing them without having to do anything with LG.

On the 4082B i've tried cheap media however, G04, Verbatim data life plus and phillips works great for me.

With An32 and Fortis i got good results once then terriblee results the second time (AN32 depending on the spindle, Fortis - depending on the disc). Who wants to use cheap media when you can get G04 at a price which is not much higher? Naturally you also have to be carefull with G04 these days, but with what i got i am perfectly happy.

As for the recomended DVD discs from LG, prices here are quite high. I would sure love to use TY or maxell but who can afford it?

What you say is true for cd's and cerainly even more true for DVD's.

I meant manufacturers, not individual end users. Usually drive manufacturers and media manufacturers work together. Taiwanese drive manufacturers usually work well with Taiwanese media manufacturers. Often government intervention exists, at least in South Korean and Taiwan. Princo's not completely bad. That many people had bad experiences with Princo does not automatically mean it. I still have good Princo DVD media with me. For my purposes, they are not much different from Ritek and BeAll. I also had good experiences with Princo CD-R and CD-RW.

Not only LG but also many other drive manufacturers recommend media made by Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Taiyo Yuden, and other important Japanese media manufacturers, and that's just natural as all important DVD media technologies are invented there. TY-made DVD media are not expensive, unless compared with Princo-grade media.

I intervened between Princo and LG because the media were good enough but LG was not releasing firmware updates to make them work at the right speeds. NEC worked well with them already. It took about one month to be solved though not completely. They, including the LG drive, were all outdated already so I was not much interested either.

If TY discs are too expensive in Israel, the importers are just charging too much for their own profits. TY charges about the same price as Ritek. Princo's far cheaper, sometimes by half. TY retail, not OEM, 8x DVD media are cheaper than Ritek's RiDATA 8x media in Seoul by 20-50%.

Not only Princo, LG CD burners usually do not work well with many Taiwanese media simply because they, the companies I mean, do not work well together. LG ignores them. Lite-On, of course, worked a lot differently.

I agree with what you say, however, one of the greatest problem with cheap media is repeatability. Therefore, going for extremely cheap media is dangerous. The closer you get to a certain dump price, the less margins you have and then comes the moment in which to meet the price you start altering dye formulations, top varnish thickness, spread speeds, etc... I used 10 AN32 discs, printable - all was great. So i got from the same importer 50 discs in a spindle all AN32 to save 15%. I got a bunch of crap. why use crap media? I've read a forum of princo users. one burned 100's and is still very happy, the other burned 100's, was great during burning but dead after a few months although well stored(perhaps bad top coat). why take the risk?

That's why I recommend Taiyo Yuden for most users. I recommended Princo to certain users I know, the ones I myself imported because I made sure that worked well with Pioneer, NEC, LG, Sony, at least. Many kinds of media from CMC, Ritek, Gigastorage, Nanya, Infodisc, Lead data, BeAll, SKC, and a lot of less known makers present such problems. The risk is probably the lowest with TY among the top ten most widely distributed DVD media. Princo may be the highest.

Kenshin,

You have included ritek in your list. I understand that 01 and 02 were problematic, however, many users and experienced users highly recomend G04. What's the catch if at all? I understood that Ritek did a good job with G04 making a reliable disc at a reasonable price.

I talked about brand names that manufacture their own disks. Is "G04" a brand name at all? How many users in the world buy DVD media with the knowledge of G04? G04 disks are not always cheap and not everywhere. TY 4x DVD-R's sometimes cheaper. I prefer TY 2x DVD-R to 4x Ritek G04 DVD-R.

If there are any members here having read my posts at DVDplusRW.org forum back in early 2002, they'll know what I talked about Ritek. I was one of the very few guys recommending Ritek then. Most people at VCDHelp.com and many other places were praising how good DVD-R format is and criticizing against the Alliance saying how DVD+R is not a standard primarily on basis that there are cheap DVD-R media made by Princo, Gigastorage, Lead Data, Infodisc, etc. but not similarly priced DVD+R media. The one company making cheap DVD+R disks was Ritek, and Ritek only. At that time, most people around the web recommending Ritek didn't much know about Ritek at all. I was the one recommending Ritek DVD+R and DVD+RW disks and introducing Ritek's new media displayed at various computer exhibitions most enthusiatically because most people then wanting DVD+R and DVD+RW media seem to support only HP, Ricoh, Philips, and other such luxury names.

I do not recommend Ritek if the data to be recorded is really important and the person does not want to browse the web for endless stream of information as to which media is burned at which speed with which firmware in which writer drive and the person also needs to know when the media was made and in which country and has which media code. Simply mentioning "TY or "Taiyo Yuden" does in most cases.

Ask media importers, resellers, and manufacturers at various countries, including those working at Ritek. They worked hard, but I just object to the idea that says one Taiwanese media manufacturer is good and another is bad. I am saying they do not differ that much.