Are these reliable TY scan results?

Arizent 2005-07-21 09:41:44 UTC #1

Hi, this is actually a simple question, but just written with a lot of detail for your fine tuned nit picking pleasure, so bare with me here!

I recently purchased a LG GSA-4163B due too many good reviews and recommendations. I also purchased a supposedly genuine unbranded (purple die)100 Spindle of Taiyo Yuden 8X DVD-Rs. (The Base is bigger at the bottom than at the top, but I cant find a â€œMade in Japanâ€ label anywhere like some people have reported)

All purchased from www.SVP.co.uk a few days ago. I decided to buy from them due to many positive reviews from people on the internet saying that they do indeed sell genuine TY mediaâ€¦

However, Iâ€™m wondering if you could help me work out why Iâ€™m getting (what I consider) inferior K-probe scan results from my burns on my Sony CRX320E (Rebadged LiteOn SOHC-5232K combo-drive, with the latest official Sony NYK5 firmware)

I'm hoping its just the drive I'm using to scan. I realise that a proper LiteOn DVD-Writer is better for doing K-Probe scans but unfortunately I do not have one, neither does anyone else I know, so sorry

Iâ€™ve tested about 6 discs so far from this spindle, with various types of data at a 4X burn speed which is the next speed-step down from what these disks are certified to burn at safely. (8X)

The first 3 disks where burned using the drives A104 firmware, and the latter 3 disks were burned with the newest A105. (Both were official LG firmware, not moded)

It appears that updating the firmware had no effect. All the 6 scans have pretty much identical results.

Iâ€™ve run the discs through all of the popular media identifying software and they all report the MID as being: TYG02

Ok so here is what every one of my scans look like on average... these kind of ranges:

My system specifications are as follows if they help:

Windows XP Pro + SP2
ASUS P4C800-E Motherboard
Pentium4 3.4Ghz
2GB - PC3200 DDR RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
.

rdgrimes 2005-07-21 11:01:27 UTC #2

You really can't draw any conclusions based on scans from combo drive. Also suggest you verify you have real TY, consult the fake TY thread for serial numbers and such.

But based on past posted combo drive scans, that one looks about what one would expect.

TimC 2005-07-21 11:10:05 UTC #3

There are varying opinions on what burn speed to use. I've always burned at media rated speed (or above) & so far found no reason to change that view. Try the rated speed & you should find that the scan will be no worse.

Arizent 2005-07-21 11:40:08 UTC #4

Yes, sorry, They seem to come out worse at 8X :a

Quema34 2005-07-21 11:52:57 UTC #5

hm. I can only say those aren't typical TY results for me. Typical would be around 10 max PIE values (18K-28K total) and 100-250 PIF total--burned at 8x and 12x for the yuden000t02-00. Where those mid I have can be overburned, the 12x burn is slightly better or the same to the 8x burn. If I coudn't burn that batch you had at 8x, I would suspect the media isn't what it claims to be from my burn experience with it.

rapid_fire 2005-07-21 12:02:03 UTC #6

I think the same :iagree:

Arizent 2005-07-21 12:15:12 UTC #7

I've also noticed that for some reason I canâ€™t perform PIE / PIF scans with the LG GSA-4163B drive, regardless of which software I use.

Is there anyone else who has one, and is unable to do certain tests? Is there a workaround? Iâ€™m starting to loose trust in my Sony combo drives scanning abilities.

Would be cool if anyone with an LG GSA-4163B could tell of their experiences. (excluding the official cdfreaks review, I know about that, thatâ€™s what made my buy it in the first place!)

Quema34 2005-07-21 12:19:27 UTC #8

Won't the LG do PIE/PIF scanning with a registry mod? However, I don't have the link handy, nor do I remember if I'm correct in saying it will scan after the registry mod... I would think that info would be in the LG forum

Arizent 2005-07-21 13:10:38 UTC #9

I done a bit of searching on here, Google and MSN, and I canâ€™t find anything about any registry mod for LG drives to allow PIE/PIF scanning. Are you be able to elaborate about it?

Quema34 2005-07-21 13:32:14 UTC #10

I've been searching, but can't find it either (I don't always bookmark things unless they relate to my burner or something I've needed explanations for)... I'll have to do some more digging

All I'm seeing right now in the LG4163B Quality Scans thread is people using Liteons and BenQs to test for burn quality. However, I thought the LG could be made to scan PIE/PIF values (although that would be it)...

tehGrue 2005-07-21 13:59:49 UTC #11

Pretty sure scanning with an LG is impossible... There is a registry key CDSpeed has with a list of manufacturers that were not supported, but changing it doesn't help for any of the affected brands. You can go from not being able to push 'Start' to pushing 'Start' and having nothing happen, I believe.

rapid_fire 2005-07-22 02:11:32 UTC #12

That's it!

1969 2005-07-22 05:59:28 UTC #13

I have burned a lot of TY on my LG 4163 and they are good media for this drive. I did find that the 103 firmware was better for TYG01 but otherwise there are no surprises. The total PIE with LG is very low, generally under 10,000.

You cannot do a quality scan with LG drives, as suggested above, but you can use CDSpeed to do a transfer rate scan if you want to get some measure of the burn readability. If you want to scan for errors, I would suggest adding a Liteon 1693. ROM drive scanning will just make you pull your hair out and is not worth it.

While I am sure there are exceptions, I generally found that +R media was not very good with my LG so I avoid it. Most -R I tried was good.

uart 2005-07-22 07:41:32 UTC #14

Well somebody above has already seconded this so let me third it. I've tried the same thing and I know first hand that the liteon combo drives give really bad scans.

The first time I wanted to do a PI/PIF scan I tried it on my liteon combo drive and got really terrible results. I then took the same DVD's to my friends place and scanned them on his liteon burner and the results were very different, much better.

As for whether that LG burner can do scans, I've tried and never been able to make it go, it's not supported.

Arizent 2005-07-22 13:11:29 UTC #15

Thanks for all your help so far everyone, most appreciated. Iâ€™m hoping itâ€™s just my Combo-Drive thatâ€™s giving bad scans, and that they are really indeed good burns.

I have an interesting development though:

I tried using Prassi's / TXâ€™s burning software called â€œONESâ€ which was recommended to me on another forum for its better UDF ability and here are my results so far, burned at 4X like the others:

Better, but Iâ€™m still not totally happy yet. What do you all think? Any suggestions for what could be going on here?

In addition, Notice I seem to always get that high peak on both graphs near the start at about 5% intro the scan on every disc, what could be causing that?

Any other recommendations of superior burning software are most welcome.

rdgrimes 2005-07-22 13:30:49 UTC #16

Burning software has no impact on burn quality, apart from the burn speed. You will never get consistant scan results with that combo drive, so there's little point in comparing them.

Arizent 2005-07-22 13:56:29 UTC #17

So why are combo drives so bad at scanning then?

uart 2005-07-22 22:16:50 UTC #18

I'm not exactly sure of why, but I know from experience that media scans are very much relative to the scanning drive. Some drives/models consistantly give better looking scans than others even when you are comparing the same actual disk. The DVD/combo's I've tried in the past have all given terrible scans, that's just how it is.

Wizzu 2005-07-23 01:04:50 UTC #19

"Burning software has no impact on burn quality"

This conflicts with my own experience and I find it very difficult to believe.

When I started burning video DVDs, I used both Nero and Decrypter to burn the ISOs (all generated by Shrink at the time).

I performed about 16 scans on the discs and the ones burned with Decrypter gave me consistently better scans than the ones burnt with Nero.
The ones burnt with Nero didn't really have higher errors, but the scans were full of spikes, the ones burnt with Decrypter gave smooth scans.
The difference was more dramatic on 4x medias (G04) than on 8x medias (MCC02RG20).

I first thought it was because Decrypter used SPTI, but then I tried on a Win98 system (no SPTI, thus Decrypter used ASPI) and the results were similar....

Maybe I missed something in these early testings, but what then?

Quakester2000 2005-07-23 02:15:30 UTC #20

Have you got firmware A105 for the LG-4163B