review – Moisés Cardona

Burning a SpeedX BD-R DL 50GB Disc in the Pioneer BDR-2212 drive at 4x

July 25, 2021 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

Today, we will see how well the Pioneer BDR-2212 can burn the SpeedX BD-R DL 50GB Discs at a speed of 4x:

This drive can burn these discs at up to 8x but we will focus burning it at 4x this time:

The burning process was successful:

Data verification was also successful:

Here’s how the disc surface look after burning it:

SpeedX BD-R DL 50GB Burned in Pioneer BDR-2212 at 4x

The surface looks smooth and identical to the 6x and 8x burns.

Quality Scans

We’ll see how well this disc burned in this drive:

From the above scans, we can see that burning at 4x brings better results except on the layer break, which is worse than the 6x burn. The LiteOn and LG scans maintained good numbers on the first and second layer, but the increase in the layer break is unexpected. The disc, however, is still completely readable with no slowdowns.

Conclusion

While the Pioneer BDR-2212 can also burn this disc at 4x, we have to be careful about the burn quality around the layer break. It seems it is better to burn these discs at 6x in this drive to get an optimum burn.

Burning a SpeedX BD-R DL 50GB Disc in the Pioneer BDR-2212 drive at 6x

July 23, 2021 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

Today, we will see how well the Pioneer BDR-2212 can burn the SpeedX BD-R DL 50GB Discs at a speed of 6x:

This drive can burn these discs at up to 8x but we will focus burning it at 6x this time:

The burning process was successful:

Data verification was also successful:

Here’s how the disc surface look after burning it:

SpeedX BD-R DL 50GB Burned in Pioneer BDR-2212 at 6x

The surface looks smooth and identical to the 8x burn.

Quality Scans

We’ll see how well this disc burned in this drive:

SpeedX BD-R DL Pioneer BDR-2212 6x 13 — Scanned in the LiteOn iHBS112 drive

SpeedX BD-R DL Pioneer BDR-2212 6x 14 — Scanned in the LiteOn iHBS112 drive

From the above scans, we can once again see that the LG drive scanned the disc better. It did present a bit of elevated numbers once it was reaching almost the end of the first layer, and it reports a bit of high numbers at the start of the 2nd layer. The scan on the LiteOn drive also shows the elevated numbers in the layer break and the rest of the 2nd layer scanned good. The disc is completely readable with no slowdowns.

Conclusion

The Pioneer BDR-2212 can also burn this disc reliably at 6x. The numbers are a bit less than on the 8x burn which should make the disc work better on sensitive drives. The difference between the 6x and 8x burn is about 5 minutes, so you can choose this speed if you prefer a bit better quality burn over the 8x.

Burning a SpeedX BD-R DL 50GB Disc in the Pioneer BDR-2212 drive at 8x

July 22, 2021 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

Today, we will see how well the Pioneer BDR-2212 can burn the SpeedX BD-R DL 50GB Discs:

This drive can burn these discs at up to 8x. We will be burning it at that speed:

The burning process was successful:

Data verification was also successful:

Here’s how the disc surface look after burning it:

SpeedX BD-R DL 50GB Burned in Pioneer BDR-2212 at 8x

The surface looks smooth altough with the usual dark part of these discs.

Quality Scans

We’ll see how well this disc burned in this drive:

SpeedX BD-R DL Pioneer BDR-2212 14 — Scanned in the LiteOn iHBS112

SpeedX BD-R DL Pioneer BDR-2212 15 — Scanned in the LiteOn iHBS112

From the above scans, we can see that the LG drive scanned the disc better. The Pioneer drive always seem to do a better burn at the 2nd layer than at the first one. Regardless, the LG drive did report higher numbers just at the moment of the layer break. Even through the LiteOn drive scanned worst the first layer, the disc is completely readable with no slowdowns.

Conclusion

The Pioneer BDR-2212 can burn this disc reliably at 8x, but some drives may scan the disc worse than others, possibly due to its different optic mechanisms. An 8x burn takes about 25 to 30 minutes and the data verification takes about the same time. Overall, it takes about an hour to burn and verify these discs.

Burning a SpeedX BD-R DL 50GB Disc in the Panasonic UJ-260 drive

July 18, 2021 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

Today, we will see how well the Panasonic UJ-260 can burn the SpeedX BD-R DL 50GB Discs:

This drive can burn these discs at up to 4x:

The burning process was successful and reached the 4x speed:

Data verification was also successful:

Here’s how the disc surface look after burning it:

We can see the 2 regions: 2x and 4x, as this drive burns these using a Z-CLV method.

Quality Scans

We’ll see how well this disc burned in this drive:

SpeedX BD-R DL Panasonic UJ-260 Quality Scan LG LiteOn iHBS112 — Scan in the LiteOn iHBS112

SpeedX BD-R DL Panasonic UJ-260 Quality Scan LG WH16NS58 — Scan in the LiteOn iHBS112

From the above scans, we can see that both drives reported similar numbers. Overall, a great burn.

When the drive fails burning

It seems the Panasonic drive has some issues with this media code. Similar to the Philips BD-R DL 50GB discs, these may also fail sometimes. My experience was positive for the most part, but it may still do a bad burn.

Conclusion

While this drive is able to burn these discs, you may get a bad burn every now and then. It seems the drive doesn’t like these discs sometimes, but when it does, it produces a good burn. I’m not sure what may trigger the bad burns, but I guess it may be quality issues and the drive not able to do a proper power calibration. It may also be due to some dark spots in the discs, similar to the spots in the Philips discs. If you’re going to use this drive, keep this in mind.

Burning a Verbatim BDXL 100GB Disc in the Panasonic UJ-260

July 5, 2021 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

In this post, we will see how well a Verbatim BDXL 100GB disc is burned in the Panasonic UJ-260 drive.

This drive can burn these discs at just 2x:

I used ImgBurn to burn a disc to its maximum. It took 3 hours to get it burned, but it was successful:

Verbatim VERBAT-IMk-000 Panasonic UJ-260 1

Verbatim VERBAT-IMk-000 Panasonic UJ-260 2

The disc verification took 2 hours, as the drive switches between 2x and 4x while it reads. It was successful too:

Verbatim VERBAT-IMk-000 Panasonic UJ-260 11

Verbatim VERBAT-IMk-000 Panasonic UJ-260 12

The disc surface looks very smooth:

Verbatim BDXL Burned on Panasonic UJ-260

Quality Scan

The only drive that I currently have that is capable of scanning BDXL media is the LG WH16NS58. This drive reported an increase of numbers at the start of the 2nd layer and at the end of the 3rd one:

I burned another disc in this drive too, and the LG scan was similar, but the numbers on those 2 spikes were about the half:

Verbatim VERBAT-IMk-000 Panasonic UJ-260 Disc 2 Quality Scan

The disc is completely readable regardless of those spikes and no slowdowns occurs either.

Conclusion

The Panasonic UJ-260 can successfully burn these discs. It is very slow, at just 2x, taking 3 hours to fully burn a disc. The verification is a bit faster, taking 2 hours. This also means that whenever we want to read back the entire disc in this drive, it will take 2 hours to do so.

The quality scans are questionable, as the discs could be read back properly without any issues. This is the only drive that can scan these discs.

If you don’t mind waiting 5 hours in total for the whole burning session, feel free to use this drive for your backup needs.

You can buy these discs and the drive on Amazon at the following links:

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB Burned on LiteOn iHBS112 at 10x

Burning a ValueDisc 25GB Blu-Ray Disc in the LiteOn iHBS112 drive

July 2, 2021 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

In this post, we will see how well the LiteOn iHBS112 drive burn a ValueDisc 25GB BD-R disc:

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB 50pk White Inkjet Printable 1

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB 50pk White Inkjet Printable 2

This drive allows us to burn these discs at up to 10x:

I used Nero Express to initiate the burn at the maximum speed of 10x:

The disc was burned and verified successfully:

Here is how the disc surface looks after burning in this drive:

The surface seem to have a ring in it, and altough it cannot be seen clearly, more to the outer part of the disc, it has some clouds.

Quality Scan

Both the LiteOn and LG results would be great if it wasn’t for that spike at the 20GB mark. I’m not sure whether it is intentional or is related to the disc, but given how this drive seem to have a spike at 18GB on Ritek’s SmartBuy 25GB discs, I’m pretty sure this may be an issue with the drive not burning these discs properly. The rest of the scan is very good for the speed we used to burn it.

Reading back the data is successful on different drives regardless of this spike.

The LG drive read it back successfully.

The Panasonic UJ260 also read the disc back fine without any read errors.

Conclusion

The LiteOn iHBS112 seem to have very good results at burning these discs at 10x, but presents us with a spike at the 20GB mark. This spike is present on both drives, meaning that it wasn’t burned properly, altough the data can be read properly on my drives.

You can purchase these discs on Amazon at the following link:

Burning a ValueDisc 25GB Blu-Ray Disc in the Pioneer BDR-2212 drive – Part 3

July 1, 2021 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

In this post, we will see how well the Pioneer BDR-2212 drive can burn a ValueDisc 25GB BD-R disc at a speed of 4x.

I used ImgBurn again to do the burn process:

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB CMCMAG-BA5-000 Pioneer BDR-2212 4x 1

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB CMCMAG-BA5-000 Pioneer BDR-2212 4x 2

The disc was burned and verified successfully:

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB CMCMAG-BA5-000 Pioneer BDR-2212 4x 8

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB CMCMAG-BA5-000 Pioneer BDR-2212 4x 9

Here is how the surface looks when burned at 4x in this drive:

ValueDisc 25GB BD-R Burned Surface on Pioneer BDR-2212 at 4x

The surface, once again, looks very smooth. No rings are present in the disc, similar to the 6x and 12x burns.

Quality Scan

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB CMCMAG-BA5-000 Pioneer BDR-2212 4x 13 — Scan in the LiteOn iHBS112 drive at 4x

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB CMCMAG-BA5-000 Pioneer BDR-2212 4x 14 — Scan in the LiteOn iHBS112 drive at 4x

The disc scanned better in the LiteOn drive than the 6x burn and definitely way better than the 12x burn. On the LG drive, the results are mostly similar to the 6x burn, and similarly to the latter, it is an improvement over the 12x burn.

Conclusion

At 4x, we get a burn that is similar to the 6x results. The LiteOn drive tolerates it better now, while the LG drive seem to consider it similar to the 6x burn. Both scans are better result than when the disc is burned at 12x. The time it takes to burn the disc at this speed is 24 minutes or less. Given that the LG drive didn’t show an improvement, we can be safe to use the 6x speed on these discs without a quality penalty, but the LiteOn drive still agrees this is a better burn.

You can purchase these discs and the Pioneer drive on Amazon at the following links:

Burning a ValueDisc 25GB Blu-Ray Disc in the Pioneer BDR-2212 drive – Part 2

June 27, 2021 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

In this post, we will see how well the Pioneer BDR-2212 drive can burn a ValueDisc 25GB BD-R disc at a speed of 6x.

This time, I used ImgBurn to initiate the burn:

The disc was burned and verified successfully:

CMCMAG-BA5-000 on Pioneer BDR-2212 6x 10

CMCMAG-BA5-000 on Pioneer BDR-2212 6x 11

Here is how the surface looks when burned at 6x in this drive:

ValueDisc 25GB BD-R Burned Surface on Pioneer BDR-2212 at 6x

The surface looks very smooth. Overall, this drive seems to burn Blu-Ray discs with really smooth-looking surface.

Quality Scan

CMCMAG-BA5-000 on Pioneer BDR-2212 6x 18 — Scan in the LiteOn iHBS112 drive at 4x

CMCMAG-BA5-000 on Pioneer BDR-2212 6x 17 — Scan in the LiteOn iHBS112 drive at 4x

The disc scanned better than the 12x burn. The numbers are lower, but still not at the amount that the Panasonic drive can offer for this speed. We can also see that the LG tolerated it better than the LiteOn drive.

Conclusion

At 6x, we get a better result than when the disc is burned at 12x. The time it takes to burn the disc is increased by about 5 more minutes, taking 15 to 18 minutes to burn it (This compilation had several .mpd files so the drive was stopping frequently while the buffers recovered, taking a bit more to burn). If you don’t mind taking a few more minutes, you can reliably use this speed with these discs in this drive.

You can purchase these discs and the Pioneer drive on Amazon at the following links:

Burning a ValueDisc 25GB Blu-Ray Disc in the Pioneer BDR-2212 drive

June 24, 2021 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

Today, we will be burning a ValueDisc BD-R disc in the Pioneer BDR-2212 drive:

This drive is able to burn these discs at up to 12x. This will be the speed used on this post:

Burning a disc in this drive at its maximum speed takes less than 12 minutes:

CMCMAG-BA5-000 Burning on Pioneer BDR-2212

Disc verification is successful:

CMCMAG-BA5-000 Verifying on Pioneer BDR-2212

CMCMAG-BA5-000 Verifying Complete on Pioneer BDR-2212

Overall, it takes less than 23 minutes to burn and verify a single disc at 12x.

Here is the disc burned surface:

Quality Scans

I scanned the disc in my LiteOn iHBS112 and LG WH16NS58. While the disc is perfectly readable, we can see how the numbers are huge as the disc progresses toward the end:

CMCMAG-BA5-000 Pioneer BDR-2212 12x LiteOn iHBS112 — Scan in the LiteOn iHBS112 at 4x.

ValueDisc CMCMAG-BA5-000 Pioneer BDR-2212 12x Scanned in LG WH16NS58 — Scan in the LiteOn iHBS112 at 4x.

It does seem, however, that the LG drive numbers are less than the LiteOn drive by about a half.

Conclusion

Burning these discs in the Pioneer BDR-2212 drive is really fast, taking less than 12 minutes for just burning it, and less than 23 minutes for burning and verification. However, while the time it takes to burn a disc is small, the disc quality suffers at this speed. There are no negative consequences when reading back the disc in none of my drives, and the data is all readable. Whether to use this maximum speed in this drive is up to you, according to the above images.

You can purchase these discs and the Pioneer drive on Amazon at the following links:

Burning a ValueDisc Blu-Ray Disc in the Panasonic UJ-260 drive

June 20, 2021 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

Today, we will be looking at the 50-disc spindle Blu-Ray Recordable discs from ValueDisc and burning it in the Panasonic UJ-260 drive.

These are White Inkjet Printable discs, so they have a printable surface:

The data side from these discs are dark grey colored:

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB 50pk White Inkjet Printable 3

Here is a quick comparison of the disc compared with the previously-reviewed SmartBuy BD-R discs:

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB 50pk White Inkjet Printable 4

As you can see, there is a significant difference in the data surface.

The media code of these discs is CMCMAG-BA5-000:

Burning in the Panasonic UJ-260

We will be burning these discs in the Panasonic UJ-260 drive:

This drive can burn these discs at 2x and 6x. I burned a disc using Nero at the maximum speed, to which it was successfully doing, although it burned it at 2x instead of the 6x speed it should have burned:

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB Nero Panasonic UJ260 1

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB Nero Panasonic UJ260 2

The disc verification was also successful:

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB Nero Panasonic UJ260 4

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB Nero Panasonic UJ260 5

Here is the disc burned surface:

ValueDisc 25GB BD-R Burned Surface on Panasonic UJ-260

Both my LiteOn and LG WH16NS58 drives seem to agree in that this is a great burn:

ValueDisc BD-R Quality Scan LG WH16NS58 — Scan in the LiteOn iHBS112 drive

I burned another disc again, and on that one, the drive decided to burn at the full 6x speed:

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB Nero Panasonic UJ260 6x 1

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB Nero Panasonic UJ260 6x 2

This disc also verified correctly:

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB Nero Panasonic UJ260 6x 5

ValueDisc BD-R 25GB Nero Panasonic UJ260 6x 6

My LG drive also thinks this is a great burn:

ValueDisc CMCMAG-BA5-000 Panasonic UJ260 6x Scanned in LG WH16NS58

For this disc, I forgot to scan it on the LiteOn drive, but we can see in the above image that the disc has burned fine, with a bit of increases in the numbers as it progresses but nothing worrying.

Conclusion

The Panasonic UJ-260 can successfully burn and verify these discs at up to 6x, altough it may sometimes burn a disc at just 2x. The quality seems to be very good. Another Media Code that the drive can handle with great results.

In the next posts we will see how this disc burned in the LiteOn iHBS112 and in the Pioneer BDR-2212 drives.

You can purchase these discs on Amazon at the following link: