Blu-ray writers with quality scan option

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers
#1

Hello.

I’m about to buy my first bluray drive, read a lot about it but i hesitate just because of one thing… possibility of doing quality scans in the same drive/burner right after burning end to make sure its fine.
I had a lot of cdr/dvd burners before, and i know LG never had that option, so i guess it will never change.
I wonder is there any big difference between internal and external when there are no media x16, x12 or even x8, just x6 - which is usual for external and its highest available media on the market right now, and i’m not going to cross that speed for sure, no sense, quality matters for me so overspeeding is not an option.

I think of buying something of those:
Samsung SE-506BB / external / (minus is, its usb2.0, i’d prefer something with usb3.0)

LG BH16NS40RB - unfortunately not an option cause of no support for scans - besides that i would probably buy this one.

Pioneer BDR-208DBK - seems to be the best solution

I just need confirmation does samsung and pioneer above support quality scans. If you have any other model which you can recommend, go ahead i will consider this. I dont see much more alternatives here on the market but always i can search some other places if the product needs that and its worth it.
Thanks for help.

#2

The Samsung does quality scans, and it seems to be a pretty good burner and scanner, but it is an external slim drive after all, not a fully fledged desktop drive, with all the limitations that brings (lower read and write speeds).

The LG and the Pioneers cannot do BluRay scans. Burn quality wise I’m not particularly impressed with the LG. Pioneer drives are amongst the best burners around, but again they can’t do BluRay quality scans either.

The only other choice really is a LiteON iHBS112 drive or one of its many clones. They are good burners (not quite as good as the Pioneer ones in my opinion, but still good, and better than the LG) and also pretty much the standard choice when it comes to scanning.

#3

I am aware that the LiteON iHBS112 can do the quality scan (using Opti Drive Control or equivalent). But can’t the LG (LG BH14NS40 for example) and Pioneer BD drives do TRT (Transfer Rate Test)? Is there value in the TRT test?

#4

[QUOTE=texasjackson;2703478]I am aware that the LiteON iHBS112 can do the quality scan (using Opti Drive Control or equivalent). But can’t the LG (LG BH14NS40 for example) and Pioneer BD drives do TRT (Transfer Rate Test)? Is there value in the TRT test?[/QUOTE]

Any drive can be used to perform a TRT, but a TRT is far from offering the same level of information/detail about a disc’s burn quality compared to a quality scan.

The TRT is more of a crude global binary type of measure (along the lines of pass vs fail) while a quality scan gives access to the various shades of grey so to speak … it can offer useful information about the whole area of the disc and the ability to localise problem areas which otherwise might still pass a TRT. It also makes it much easier to compare burn quality between different burners and different disc batches/brands if the same drive is used to scan them, and usual caveats aside, it makes it much easier to roughly compare our own burns with other people’s burns.

#5

OK, so…
LiteON i would consider, but unfortunately after research its not avalaible here 112 & 312, or if it is, the price is extremely high in my country (equal about 140$)
anyway 112 is old, 312 is just rebranded and im not a guy who likes to buy old technology, usually i want it to be made the same year, or previous one, depends on product and its specs.

Now I was thinking of other alternatives - i mean externals with USB3 and higher speed + possibility of doing scans, but i found out in other post of yours, that
the only one high speed Asus BW-12D1S-U - is the same as Pioneer 206 so…
really there is nothing to buy with usb3/high speed/scans, just slow samsung and others like this 6x etc. (even if usb3 some are 6x…lacie buffalo rosewill).

I found out this:

which is interesting, the question is, scans and big ?

Anyway I think i must decide between pioneer without scans or samsung with them, price is almost the same. Liteon is expensive, same as external buffalo or asus, nevermind the scans. Of course I can consider using / buying normal bd drive for quality tests, but it doesnt have any sense, because of prices. That buffalo makes me wonder, but I cannot buy this here even if it can provide scan option…

#6

[QUOTE=cvs;2703459]The LG and the Pioneers cannot do BluRay scans. Burn quality wise I’m not particularly impressed with the LG. Pioneer drives are amongst the best burners around, but again they can’t do BluRay quality scans either.[/QUOTE]You may want to qualify your statement to what format discs you’re referring to. I don’t have any recent LG Blu-Ray drives, but the GGW-H20L certainly doesn’t fit your characterization. It is a much better CD burner than a BDR-206D or BDR-207M (I own both BDR’s). I haven’t burned too many Blu-Ray discs with the GGW-H20L, but there is some back and forth between the two depending on the MID of the blank on which one is better.

#7

[QUOTE=Stereodude;2703507]You may want to qualify your statement to what format discs you’re referring to. I don’t have any recent LG Blu-Ray drives, but the GGW-H20L certainly doesn’t fit your characterization. It is a much better CD burner than a BDR-206D or BDR-207M (I own both BDR’s). I haven’t burned too many Blu-Ray discs with the GGW-H20L, but there is some back and forth between the two depending on the MID of the blank on which one is better.[/QUOTE]

I haven’t burned a CD in years, and not many DVDs lately either, but when it comes to BluRays burn quality any model above the BDR-203 (and the BDR-203 itself) is in my view miles ahead of the GGW-H20L. BDR-205 and above is where Pioneer really shines.

I remember at the time the GGW-H20L (which I still have somewhere) making a mess of many of my expensive TDK & Verbatim BD-Rs (the good old stuff, not today’s rubbish) which the Pioneer BDR-203 (and any of the following models, particularly from BDR-205 onwards) burned very nicely. The 8x LGs were also rather poor in my view. I’ve got one of those around as well. The 10/12x LG models were much better. I’m still using one of them in my secondary PC. The 14/16x LGs are not as good in my view. I’ve only burned a few BD-R discs with my BH16, but those discs burn much better in my iHBS112/212 class burners and in the Pioneer ones as well, so I’ve got little incentive to use the LG other than perhaps testing to see if newer firmwares improve things now and then.

Ever since the BDR-203 days I became a Pioneer convert, and as a result I’ve got all desktop models since BDR-203 (except the 207D and 208D models, because I preferred to grab the 207M and 208M models instead). I do not regret buying any of them. Quite the opposite. They are good and dependable BluRay burners. The GGW-H20L got better with the YL05/07 firmwares, particularly for some media, and like any drive likes some MIDs better than others, but overall in my view as a BluRay writer it is not in the same league as any Pioneer BD desktop model.

The situation might well be different for CDs and/or DVDs, but then I’ve got dozens of DVD writers from the good old ND-3500 onwards (and some older ones as well) which I can dig up and use to burn CDs or DVDs should I need to :smiley:

But I’m going rather off-topic really …

@pcus3r

That Buffalo looks like a BH16NS40 clone. There aren’t any other 16x drives around, so that must be it. If you see any 14x drives around, those will also be LG drives, using the same hardware as the 16x ones. LG is the only manufacturer who do 14/16x drives. Another give-away of this LG family would be Mdisc support (only LG drives have that as far as I know).

If you see a 15x drive, that would be a Pioneer drive/clone. No other manufacturer sells 15x drives.

Regarding the LiteOns, yes they are older than most and they’ve been around for a few years, but no other desktop BluRay burner can do BluRay scans, so there is very little choice.

Another possibility would be to buy a BD-Combo drive for scanning purposes, such as the iHES112, but that might not be that much cheaper compared to an iHBS112 burner.

#8

ok, i found out Lite-On iHBS112-115 OEM avalaible for almost the same price which is for samsung external or pioneer (equal about 105$ here) and Lite-On iHBS312-33 BOX for 135$.

I remember from dvd-s or even liteon cds burners from the past that code number xx-numbers, but what that really means, a batch or ?
asking because there are few of them:

  • ihbs112-115 (avalaible to buy)

  • ihbs112-29

  • ihbs212-08

  • ihbs212-32

  • ihbs312-31

  • ihbs312-33 (avalaible to buy)

  • ihbs312-98

Also makes me wonder, some opinions that 312 is worse than 112, which is funny for me, but whatever… just trying to pick up the best possible bluray writer and scanner. If its possible to crossflash this to any other model like i did in the past with other liteon burners then fine - no problem, i will probably buy this 112.
Even access times are worse in 312… lol.
Liteon seems to be dying, just like teac more than a decade ago.
So what would be your choice 112/312 and what about 112-115 numbers etc.
once again thanks for help

#9

[QUOTE=pcus3r;2703561]ok, i found out Lite-On iHBS112-115 OEM avalaible for almost the same price which is for samsung external or pioneer (equal about 105$ here) and Lite-On iHBS312-33 BOX for 135$.

I remember from dvd-s or even liteon cds burners from the past that code number xx-numbers, but what that really means, a batch or ?
asking because there are few of them:

  • ihbs112-115 (avalaible to buy)

  • ihbs112-29

  • ihbs212-08

  • ihbs212-32

  • ihbs312-31

  • ihbs312-33 (avalaible to buy)

  • ihbs312-98

Also makes me wonder, some opinions that 312 is worse than 112, which is funny for me, but whatever… just trying to pick up the best possible bluray writer and scanner. If its possible to crossflash this to any other model like i did in the past with other liteon burners then fine - no problem, i will probably buy this 112.
Even access times are worse in 312… lol.
Liteon seems to be dying, just like teac more than a decade ago.
So what would be your choice 112/312 and what about 112-115 numbers etc.
once again thanks for help[/QUOTE]

I would go for the iHBS112, because that can be easily crossflashed into a multitude of other models. The iHBS312 doesn’t give you that flexibility.

Ignore all the -xxx numbers at the end. They are all the same model but come with different packaging, OEM, Retail, with or without software, etc.

LiteON is very much alive and have quite a portfolio of new models (not desktop BluRay drives though). They sell a lot of stuff to the OEM market and many smaller companies rebadge their drives. When it comes to BluRay writers they seem to have adopted a very pragmatic view: currently anything above 12x is more or less a gimmick (which is pretty much true) and they don’t seem to be bothered to release a faster model. There are a lot of iHBS112 rebadges out there though, so when it comes to iHBS112 sales they are doing quite well I would think… so I guess “if ain’t broken, don’t fix it” works OK for them :bigsmile:

#10

yea, maybe they learned this after dvd x16 when we saw new models up to 24x every few months, but there was no media for x24, and there is not such media even now…
ok i will order 112 now, damn i never thought i will end up with another liteon, again…

#11

Ok its ordered, will be delivered tomorrow or friday, we’ll see.
I ordered also platinum bdr sl 10cake,
and will order and probably use for good traxdata x4 (ritek, see attachment),
cause of the best price (equal 7$ for cake10) - hopefully the quality will be good enough. Dont know which MID they use, i will search for some info about this.
I had very bad experience with traxdata dvds from ritek, every burned from cake 100 was giving a CRC and a lot of red color, tried on multiple writers back then.
Those bdrs are the cheapest and i will use a lot of it - if the quality allows. Since past few years, i quit burning dvds, cause it took too many time for me (huge amounts of data, few 100cakes each month), and i was just adding external drives, every few months.
Now when bluray became that cheap maybe i can afford to change that pattern. My calculation shows that its way better to buy cheap/est blurays than to buy new hard drive, if you have time for burning, ofc.
Time will show.


#12

Hello.

Delivery was delayed until today.
Unfortunately I am not satisfied with current results.
It is LITE-ON iHBS112-115 2
Manufactured March 2013
with PL06 firmware.
The first bd-r sl (platinum ritek x6) disc was burned x6 with nero 10 as udf.
It contains 21,5gb.
Burning process is fine for me - it took 15mins with 6x speed which is totally fine and
acceptable, 10x speed was avalaible for this media though.
Reading disc (verification process with nero and quality test later) killed me.
It took 30mins to read whole disc, and another 30mins to make quality test.
Reading speed is 1.7-3.0 up to 50%+ of the media. Then I left computer.
As u can see quality is horrible.
I will try to burn this media with x4 from now on, bought 10cake of it.
Please see the attachments for more details.
My first impression with bluray standard is very bad.
Biggest disappointment for me is reading speed, is this normal?
It says up to 8x. I’m writing disc with 6x - it takes 15mins,
reading it with 8x takes 30mins. Irrational, or rates are different for writing and reading?
I mean the same value means different mb/s.
Quality is another thing, this is “premium” media - platinum’s were very high standard since i can remember. I will order traxdata’s x4 now because of the price. Hopefully it will be much better than this.


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#13

For a bluray disc the quality is good. And use Opti Drive Control to scan.

#14

My first reaction: the media you’ve got is not what I would regard as of particularly high quality. Just like with DVD media, RITEK MIDs can vary in quality quite a bit. Traxdata also tend to use RITEK MIDs, so you’ll probably be in the same boat. Traxdata and Platinum are by no means premium brands. They are part of the cheaper end of the spectrum.

Having said that, your scan is nowhere near as bad as they can sometimes be with RITEK based media. The LDC values are nothing to worry about but the BIS values are a bit too high towards the end of the disk (from the 18GB mark onwards).

Burning this media at 4x might give slightly better results. Also, for reliable quality scans, make sure that you use a 4x or 6x scan speed. Higher scans speeds should be avoided, as they typically show the scans to be much worse than they actually are, and since they push the drive to its upper reading limits they tend to be much more drive dependent than scans carried out at lower speeds. Your scan will probably look better if you scan at 4x or 6x.

In general finding good quality media nowadays is not very easy, particularly if you don’t want to spend ridiculous amounts of money on it. Quality of BluRay media nowadays in not what it used to be a few years back. TDK who used to sell good and reliable quality media exclusively based on their good quality TDK MIDs are now selling TDK branded discs based on the cheaper and lower quality RITEK and PHILIPR MIDS which are nowhere near as good.

Discs with TDK MIDs are generally good if they are the real thing not 2nd class ones repackaged and sold cheaply by cheap/no-name brands, discs using the INFOMER MID burn rather nicely too, but so far nothing seems to beat Made in Japan Panasonic 6x BD-Rs with a MEIRA1 MID (they cost more and might not be the easiest to find, but the burn quality is brilliant). These are the highest quality and the most dependable discs I have ever used.

In terms of brands, the 4x Falcon BD-R discs based on the TDKBLDRBB MID normally give good results (particularly the PRO ones, but even the ‘VALUE/CORPORATE’ range can give pretty good burns). I’ve got a bunch of 6x Digistor BD-Rs with a TDKBLDRBD MID and they burn very nicely, particularly on my Pioneer drives which love them. I also got some 4x FORTIS BD-Rs based on the INFOMER30 MID which the LiteOns are burning very well. You have to make sure though that their MID is the right one, as in many cases cheaper brands vary their MID from batch to batch quite a bit, and you might end up with rather unpleasant surprises.

Finally, media quality even for the same MID can also depend quite a bit on where these discs are manufactured. Made in Japan media is normally of very good quality, Made in Taiwan or UAE can be good, Made in India not so good, etc. Basically, have a look in the forum and see what new media people are buying and using with good results and try to get the same.

#15

I had 90% great experience with dvds of ritek, f16/f1.
Yep, they can vary, depends on batch, and traxdata/platinum is not a top notch quality, but i consider them as a good brand.
Maybe premium was not a good word to describe it, but platinum’s quality (cmc’s or ritek’s dvds) was way higher than a standard media with some fake id, usually mcc004.
They are very popular in Germany, and the middle of Europe.
OK, so basically green is good, yellow is acceptable but red color above value of 8 isnt acceptable as usually eh?
I get used to green and nothing besides that, green and empty space, yellow from time to time, but that was dvds…
I’m about to go and use the cheapest option with good quality as it goes about the media, cause of huge amounts of data to burn.
These are the results of 2nd platinum burned x4 (23786mb) (25mins),
and reading operation x8 was now as it supposed to be ~15mins.
I really dont know why the last time it took so long ~30mins.
The one and only explanation of such slow speed is bad quality of media/burn, which we
saw on the last pictures. Or new writer issue / calibration / learning to burn etc.
Anyway I will try next one x6 and see will this happen again with reading operation, if yes, then we know the answer.

I have 2 options on the market right now, which fits for me.
Its the traxdata’s and fortis, which both cake 100 costs equal 71$.
I’m about to order c50 of traxdata and c50 of fortis to see which are better for me and this writer. Probably fortis… but we’ll see.

btw. my calculations:
3tb hard drive costs equal 130$ here
cant buy it any cheaper
amazon sells 3tb for about 105$, and 4tb for about 140$
3tb = 2,70gb of space
120 bdr 25 x 23gb gives about the same - 2760gb to be exact and it costs 85$,
at least those traxdatas/fortis one’s, i compared the prices of blank media and
they are almost the same, no big difference.
as for me its 45$ saved that way, monthly.
for people who need to save a lot of data its a way,
those who can buy hard drives cheaper (amazon for ex.) bd-r is still not a way to go.
nowadays it became good solution for me cause of the prices,
hard drive and other hardware costs way more here than its price avalaible at amazon for example.
so thats it, i will post results of fortis/traxdatas when i get it.

thanks for helping out

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#16

[QUOTE=pcus3r;2704386]
They are very popular in Germany, and the middle of Europe.
OK, so basically green is good, yellow is acceptable but red color above value of 8 isnt acceptable as usually eh?
I get used to green and nothing besides that, green and empty space, yellow from time to time, but that was dvds…

thanks for helping out[/QUOTE]Heed what kagula suggested:

[QUOTE=kagula323;2704353]And use Opti Drive Control to scan.[/QUOTE]

CD-DVD Speed wasn’t designed for BD media, and the “coloration” differs from what OptiDriveControl displays (which gives a better idea).

Flip through the pages of BD-R scans and you’ll get an idea of what’s good. :slight_smile:

#17

[QUOTE=pcus3r;2704386]I had 90% great experience with dvds of ritek, f16/f1.[/QUOTE]Those are not good quality media. Very few drives can burn them well, and even the drives that do the best job still don’t hold a candle to how well they burn good media.

#18

[QUOTE=pcus3r;2704344]It says up to 8x. I’m writing disc with 6x - it takes 15mins,
reading it with 8x takes 30mins. Irrational, or rates are different for writing and reading?[/QUOTE]CAV vs. CLV. Burning is probably CLV. CAV is usually used for reading.

However, your 8x read isn’t 8x if it takes 30 minutes. A 4x CAV scan of a completely full Blu-Ray disc takes 31:15.

#19

[QUOTE=Albert;2704388]Heed what kagula suggested:

CD-DVD Speed wasn’t designed for BD media, and the “coloration” differs from what OptiDriveControl displays (which gives a better idea).

Flip through the pages of BD-R scans and you’ll get an idea of what’s good. :)[/QUOTE]

yeah sure, old habits.
will try with opti later, and we’ll see.

[QUOTE=Stereodude;2704389]Those are not good quality media. Very few drives can burn them well, and even the drives that do the best job still don’t hold a candle to how well they burn good media.[/QUOTE]

Oh yea, they were/are very good media, at least for me, i got about 10k of them, 90% of it are maxells. Got about 10 dvd writers around, usually lg are the best choice for them, liteon was worse from my experience, but thats off topic :slight_smile:

[QUOTE=Stereodude;2704390]CAV vs. CLV. Burning is probably CLV. CAV is usually used for reading.

However, your 8x read isn’t 8x if it takes 30 minutes. A 4x CAV scan of a completely full Blu-Ray disc takes 31:15.[/QUOTE]

Maybe, that was weird, i explained that in my last post

These are the results of 2nd platinum burned x4 (23786mb) (25mins),
and reading operation x8 was now as it supposed to be ~15mins.
I really dont know why the last time it took so long ~30mins.
The one and only explanation of such slow speed is bad quality of media/burn, which we
saw on the last pictures. Or new writer issue / calibration / learning to burn etc.
Anyway I will try next one x6 and see will this happen again with reading operation, if yes, then we know the answer.

It was 1st reading from this brand new drive, maybe that is a reason, or really no idea, i will figure this out for sure today

#20

Platinum BD-R25 6x with the Mediacode RITEK BR3 aren´t really good media.
Maybe writing them with 4x will give You better results.

If Platinum is the only option, try to get Platinum BD-R 4x (Mediacode RITEK BR[B]2[/B]) printable in a 25 spindle.
They burn excellent on my LiteOn with PLxx firmware.

Of course I can´t tell, how long Ritek BD-R will last, nobody can.
The rumours of early attrition are spooking the web like an urban legend for years.

The fact that Panasonic has chosen Ritek as a manufacturer for a batch of their Panasonic BD-R 25 4x makes me hope the problem is overvalued.:rolleyes: