I am almost at a loss for words. The kprobe scans I am getting from BeAll 4X DVD-R media on this drive are abysmal. US0F produced a poor burn at 8X, a useless burn at 6X (only readable at 2X), and a borderline burn at 4X. US0A produced a useless burn at 4X (only readable at 2X) -- I have not tried other speeds with US0A.

My ND-1300A was burning these discs just fine, and kprobe scans of those discs in the 812S show PI/PO errors in the single digits.

I'll post the scans after I've tried burning with US01.

I'll try to hunt down some RICOHJPNR01 media tomorrow (it looks like Fuji is a good bet), and if that sucks too, this burner is going back to NewEgg.

BeAll 4X DVD-R @ 4X, Firmware US0F

BeAll 4X DVD-R @ 6X, Firmware US0F

BeAll 4X DVD-R @ 8X, Firmware US0F

BeAll 4X DVD-R @ 4X, Firmware US0A

The NEC ND-2500A can also burn these discs with great quality!
Those 812 scans don't look so good

Unfortunately my ND-1300A's (I have two) won't read the discs they burned. That's why I bought the 812S. Someone else burned the same mediacode with their 812s @ 8X with near perfect quality. I either have bad media or a bad burner.

BeAll 4X DVD-R @ 4X, Firmware US01



Arrgh!

And so can the 812S. There's a scan here showing a 812S burning (at 8x, too) BeAll media with terrific results (PI/PO avg of 4.7/0.17).

The results that Bicster are getting are horrible compared to this other scan, and they differ too much to be attributed to random error. I would venture a guess that either this is a a bad batch of media (if the BeAll media that burned well on his 1300A are from the same spindle, I guess we could rule this out) or that Bicster got unlucky and just got a defective 812S, in which case, I think it may be worthwhile returning it and getting a new one.

BeAll4X-R recorded w/ NEC ND-1300A @ 4X (From the same spindle):



The NEC won't read the discs toward the end where the error rates jump. Everything else will. But I think this must be a case of bad media. I'm going shopping tomorrow.

I tried a second SOHW-812S and got the same poor results with the BeAll 4X DVD-R media.

I tried one Memorex DVD+RW disc and also got unusable results. The disc would not read all the way through. However, I did a quick erase, and not a full format, so I will avoid passing judgement on this media yet. I will try again with a virgin disc.

I picked up a 50-pack of Fuji 4X DVD+R media and confirmed it is RICOHJPNR01. I burned it at 4X and got reasonably good results. I burned it at 8X and got even better results.

I will try to post this scans this evening.

Has anyone tried to return a partially used spindle to Meritline? They claim to offer a 100% money-back guarantee on the BeAll media.

Unfortunately this +R media is somewhat useless to me without a booktype setting utility. I need the discs to work in my XBOX!

Yea, sounds like you got a bad BeAll batch.

If you really want bitsetting, you could flash your 812S to a 851S. Then bitsetting would work. The downside is that you'll lose 8x -R, but this would be only temporary. As soon as a 812S firmware that properly supports bitsetting comes out, you could flash back to a 812S and regain your 8x -R. There are a number of people on this forum who really want bitsetting and are doing the 812@851 downgrade.

Just use LDW851FP (the tool used for 451@851) on a 851S firmware, and you'll be able to flash your 812S to a 851S.

code65536,

Thanks for the tip!

Is there any reason not to use a tool like ltnflash and a .BIN firmware file for the 851S? I have just been using the "generic" flashers so far.

Since I don't have any 8X -R media at the moment, this is not a loss for me.

I've just heard that it's recommended to use the LiteOn XFlash flashers (or patched versions of them) when possible. I'm not entirely sure what the rationale for that is, but I've used both methods before. I would use LtnFlash to backup your EEPROM just in case (isn't necessary, but it doesn't hurt to be paranoid), but otherwise, I'd use the patched XFlash flasher.

In the spirit of learning by doing dumb things, I went ahead and backed up the EEPROM, then flashed with a generic flasher. The drive decided to just blink orange at me. I didn't try using it. It ID'd itself as the 851, but it wasn't happy. Using the patched Lite-On flasher worked. I'm about to try burning a disc.

All the official FWs contain a check to make sure that you're using the FW on the right drive type. The patch disables the check... But it seems that you have gotten it working now... let us know if everything was successful.

The generic flash utilities have no such checks, so there must be something else going on. Maybe it touches the EEPROM too.

In any case, 8X +R burns work fine, and booktype setting works too. I'm just now burning my first full disc. I'm going to watch the movie on my XBOX and post a scan later

I bought a 50 pack of DVD-R discs from Meritline once. There was a mixture of discs in the package and about 30% would not complete a burn. They exchanged the discs and sent new ones
no problem at all.
I have been looking at buying another recorder, but none of the new 8X drives seem to be perfect. Almost went with the new LiteOn, but decided to wait. Hope Toshiba releases their 8x dual format drive soon....

Hi,

I am also getting really bad Kprobe results with BeAll 4x media in my HS0P/Q 811 burner (PI 400, PO 6). However, if I scan the media at 2x, then results are much-much better (PI 60 PO 0.04).
This leads me to belive that the burn is in fact, good. It is only that for any reason the 811 has some trouble reading the disks at high speed. ... note that this disks read perfectly in my 3 other DVD readers...

Regards
FTC

VS0B has made great improvements in burn quality with this media! I guess I can start using it again! Burned at 4X:

What about 8X
Its like they fix half and break the other half that used to work before.. Soon, nothing will work.

Actually, I had some success with that media in the past using a swapped strat @ 8x, but I don't remember which strat I used.