Mine arrived on Saturday. Unfortunately the Royal Mail had done their best to stop me testing them, as one was cracked (along with the cd case).

I tested the remaining one to burn a Men in Black II. This fills the entire disc as it was reduced to be an exact fit using DVD2ONE.
It plays perfectly from start to finish, with no breakup or voice sync problems.

As long as Bulkpaq can keep the quality up on these then I will consider buying them.

Test Equipment:
Pioneer DVD-A04 with 1.40 2xAll firmware
Sharp DV-740 standalone DVD player
Samsung SD-616T DVD-Rom using PowerDVD XP
Windows XP with Nero as the burnign software


Vince Marsters

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pioneer 105 firmware 1.3
athlon xp 2.1 processor
windows xp
pioneer 444 dvd
xbox with evo on

i finally got disks in cracked double case.
looked all right.

burnt at 4 speed using stomp record now software.
burnt full dvd film .15 mins
operation went smoothly
i was quite surprised as i had trouble with bulkpak before.
tested on pioneer 444 and xbox great not one glitch.

next burnt at 4x a compilation of music and films for xbox
same as previous disk no problems.
i could live with these disks no problem.
_________________
rmsspecial

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tested on pioneer 105 firmware 1.3 2xAll final

recorded 1 data disk at 4X and worked fine

recorded 1 movie disk at 4X, tested on my dansai 852 fine

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I received the discs about 5 days after the list was published. Here are my findings:

First Impressions
I was disappointed when the 2 test discs arrived in a standard brown envelope, in a standard double-cd jewel case. There was a lot of scope for breakages and disc damage here, but as it was, everything appeared in order.

The first thing I noticed on removing the jewel case from the envelope was the bright orange disc label. Now, don't get me wrong, if you are going to use discs for archiving a lot of data on a regular basis, say daily backups, these coloured labels may come in handy for cataloguing your discs, but being the kind of straightforward bloke that prefers a plain silver or, more preferably, white label on my discs I have to admit to being more than a bit disappointed with the colour. But hey, here are 2 free discs for me to do with as I will, so who's complaining. And anyway, they're nowhere near as bad as the bright yellow Datawrite offerings.

A pale purple dye, evenly dispersed, completed the disc.

System Addict
My main system comprises an Abit KX7-333 motherboard, Athlon 1800XP processor, 512Mb DDR memory, 40Gb system HDD, 60Gb working HDD, 64Mb GeForce2 AGP graphics, Asus E616 DVD-Rom, Pioneer A104 DVD-R/RW drive and Yamaha 2100s CDRW.

Author, Author!
Next, I wanted to burn these babies and see if they lived up to Bulqpaq's assertion that they are their most compatible discs to date. Previous experience of Bulqpaq discs has left me feeling a little bit, well, cold towards the brand. I found the purple tops to be so-so, but the green tops were, in my opinion, one of the worst discs ever produced. I regard Ritek and Infiniti as the best "budget" discs on the market, so would this latest offering from Bulqpaq make me change my mind?

An (Extra)Ordinary Disc
First up, it was the Irish DVD release of Christy Moore Uncovered, an RTE-produced retrospective of the Great Man's work. Unfortunately, the original disc was too large to fit on a dvd-r and DVD2One generated an error everytime I tried to downsize it. So it was left to the "old faithfuls" to author this disc.

First, Smartripper was employed to rip all the video and audio tracks. The audio was in RAW PCM Stereo which can be a real pain to work with, so Smartripper was used to rip the audio to .wav files and these in turn were transcoded to AC3 stereo using Sonic Scenarist's excellent AC3Enc program.

Rip It Up And Start Again
Then I discovered that the latest version of DVD Decrypter could rip the video tracks and patch the M2V files with a 00:00:00;00 timecode. Excellent, no need to go through the DVD2AVI - VFAPI - CCESP process. So I ripped the video tracks again using DVD Decrypter.

As the menus were included in the Video Title Set (VTS), I only needed to create menu backgrounds, so I did this by taking snapshots of each menu using Photoshop and increased the contrast so the black level for the active menu buttons would be high.

Then I set about recreating the entire disc from scratch with Scenarist. This in itsel was no mean achievement as each sub-menu on the scene selection menu had a video transition. Altogether, the disc had 27 PGC's in 1 VTS.

After 2 days (okay, it was half an hour here and there) the disc was authored (the resemblance to the original was uncanny) and ready for burning.

The Long Road To Perdition
My second project was straight copy of Road To Perdition, starring Tom Hanks. For some reason, both my DVD-Rom drive and writer do not work in iso mode with DVD Decrypter, generating errors. If anyone can shed some light on why this is, please drop me a line. Anyway, I've found that ripping all the files to my hard disk and burning them back to disc, in the correct folders of course, works the same anyway. So I just did it that way, with no problems.

Hunka Hunka Burning Roms
Now I was ready to burn my 2 projects. I fired up RecordnowMax and put in my first blank. The record speed defaulted immediately to 2x (my first disc to do this), I selected the Christy Moore folders to burn and 30 mins or thereabouts later, the disc was burned. Road to perdition was up next. Again, it burned at 2x no problem.

The Proof Of The Pudding...
Now to test the finished product.

First up, Christy. This disc played flawlessly in my Asus and Pioneer drives. It played with the usual glitches on my Samsung 709 Set-top player, but as this player was not designed to play recordable discs of any type, this was hardly surprising. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, Ritek and Infiniti discs appear to be the only types that play no problem in this player. The disc also played flawlessly in my Cyberhome AD-L528 set-top player and Toshiba laptop.

So far so good, thinks I. But then things started to go horribly wrong. Road To Perdition refused to play in ANY of my players, full stop. In fact, the only player I've been able to get it to play on at all is my parent's £54 Naiko player. It plays flawlessly on this. Memo to self - buy a Naiko player.

In Conclusion
All in all, these discs are what I've come to expect from Bulqpaq - flashy, promises of great things and, in the end, they just don't live up to the hype. Looks like I'll be sticking with Ritek for a while longer.

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Thanks for the oppurtunity guys,
Windows xp pro
Pioneer dvd-rom
Sony dru-500a 1.0f firmware

Tested both discs (on the fly) one burnt with nero 5.5.9.17 and one burnt with record now 4.5 both attempts failed to burn at 4x, they actually burnt at 2x both played fine tho on pc and dansai 1010 and scan sc-2000

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well i returned home from my holidays to find my 2 test discs waiting for me.a big thanks to disqworld & bulkpaq. so here goes first of all the disc's arrived in exellent condition. first impression was i dont mind the orange colour & nice purple dye with no noticable inconsistencys or defects.on to the
test machine this is an amd athlon xp 2000+ with 512 ddr xphome edition & a pioneer ao5. first test disc was done with dvd decrypter version 3.1.5.0 in iso mode a 3.5 gig movie i noticed that when writing the speed dropped alarmingly at about 33%before picking upagain back to 4x the burn took about 20mins in total so not 4x all the way but resulting disc played back perfectly. test disc 2 another movie this time a full 4.37 burnt with recordnow dx this time i didnt notice any speed fluctuation about 16min burn time & the disc plays back perfectly in all my test players ps2 smartmedia xwave & also manhattan also i had better not forget my xbox
in conclusion as long as blukpaq can keep the batch quality up to this standerd then i would be quite happy to use these discs again keep up the good work bulkpaq
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only here for the beer

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recieved disk in good condition kids liked look of disks beeing Tango orange:)
these disks were tested on a Sony 500ax and i used RecordNow DX
the first disk i used i burnt a Ps 2 backup to it at 4X as i hadnt tried 4x media before on the sony result Perfect backup no glitches on loading
or during usage.
the second cd was burnt using nero as a basic data cd for a load of small files i had laying about on me drive for way to long. once it had finished i copied the contents of the dvd back to hard drive to make sure that there were no errors i could have used varify under nero but thought copying it across to me hdd was a better real world test of the disks.
in reality both disk cut perfect without errors at 4x which is was pretty impressed with i bought a stack of 25 and none of these have either gave me a problem at last BULKPAQ you have got it right cheers for letting me test the media and im prepared to test and future offerings there might be.
best regards to all MrHackit

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Disks arrived fine, thanks!

Test one, burnt a film using nero and an a04 at one speed, played perfect on my dansai 852 and X-Box (yay, makes a change for bulqpaq as my dansai has never liked bulkpaq)

Sorry but test two, fcuked up when the PC crashed halfway though the burn

I cannot really comment on just one disk but hopefully Bulkpaq finaly have a good disk!!!
_________________
ONLINE POKER TIPS AND TRICKS! (CLICK HERE!) - URL STRIP SHORTENS UNWEALDLY URLS (CLICK HERE!)

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Waited a few days until I had a real reason to try them. I had made a backup of a DVD film, by ripping onto hard disk and testing that it played OK from DVD-RW. Then tried one of these attractive orange 4X DVD-R disks using the same file set.

Equipment was Pioneer 104 with 1.32 firmware, and Nero 5.5.9.0. First surprise was Nero told me that maximum speed was 1X. Expected 2X, perhaps a firmware update on Pioneer would have resolved it but not keen on 1.33 firmware personally. OK, so burn at 1X, no problem.

Popped resulting DVD-R into my trusty old Pioneer DV-525 mains machine, which will seemingly play anything that is round and shiny. I couldn't believe it, the player spat the disk out after some ugly noises, having failed to find the menu. Convinced I must have made a mistake somewhere, I put the DVD-R into my cheap and nasty DVD-Rom from SVP, and it played perfectly. This proved the DVD to be recorded OK. The DVD-R was not playing on my mains machine, even though an identical file set on DVD-RW was fine, and other brands of DVD-R play fine in there.

So, no, sorry, I can't say that this is a useful disk for me as it stands.

NEW INFO: Tried second disk, that worked fine on my PIoneer DV-525. Also tried both disks in a Yamada DVD2100 and Acoustic Solutions DVD551, both played fine. But still, with one disk not playing in Pioneer DV-525, I can't recommend this media.
_________________
Reply: colin99@bigfoot.com Web:(Hillman Avengers, Hifi, BSB/Squarials, Betamax)
http://www.staddiscombe.freeserve.co.uk

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wanted to test these discs but mine never came in the post

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Well i received my bulkpaq 4x sample about 10 days ago, i must say im very impressed, despite people always moaning about these brand, these are the first bulkpaqs i used, burtn em on at 4x, but then it started slowing down and took about 35mins to burn but it came out A ok, and was fine on ps2 and my sony dvp ns700 player, i burtn a film and a game, no errors whilst burn, no abnormailites witht dye o anything, hope to order these soon, i was using pioneer 105

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I was away for a few days, love bank holidays The discs are a nice bright colour and easy to write on.

I have a pioneer a04 and i burnt a dvdr film on one of the discs at 2x. With the other i burnt a ps2 game also at 2x. For both i used stomp record max now.

The dvdr film plays fine in my limit dvd video without any glitches. The ps2 game also played fine and had no problems with loading times etc.

Both discs burnt and played fine at 2x. At 0.99p per disc, and a 4x disc, these do seem to be a good release from bulqpaq

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Hi everyone, hope Easter went well.

I got back from my hols to find these discs waiting, in all their tango orange glory.

Popped them into my Sony DRU-500AX (firm 2.0f) and tried to burn an xbox image and a DVD movie backup.

Both times the disks were listed as 4x, but both dropped to 2x.

Stuck with the recommended media list it seems. Shame, since these are great discs, and cheap too! Especially for a 4x.

Both discs turned out fine btw.

Thanks for this test!

Ash

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Hello!

First, I would like to thank Disqworld and Bulkpaq for leting me enter the test.
The disks arrived last wednesday, but because of Easter, wasn't able to post the results until now.
The disks arrived in a double jewel case, that was a little cracked, but the disks were in excelent condition.

My system:
AMD Duron 1.0 Ghz
256 MB DDR PC3200 Samsung
Asus A7V333
Sony DRU-500A (2.0e)

In the first disk I burned Mr. Bean: The Movie Portuguese R2, that is about 4.0 GB. I used Record Now Max 4.5, and the disk was listed as 4x, but unfortunately burnt only at 2x.
For the second disk I burned American Pie 2 (4.37GB). I also used Record Now Max 4.5, but this time I flashed my Sony drive to firmware 1.0g to see if it would do any difference. The disk was also listed as 4x, but started at 2x, and at about 4 ou 5 minutes later it dropped to 1x .
Both disks played fine on my Pionner 444, my sony DRU 500A, and my Hitachi GD2500 DVD-ROM drive.

This seems to be a good disk for 2x burn, but definately it's not a 4x, at least for my Sony drive, and it seems for most of the Sony's drives.

A word to Sony: What about a good firmware that lets us burn at 4x????
I payed for a 4x drive, not a pseudo-4x one.

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I received a pack of 2 disks for testing but have been away for 2 weeks so have just got round to testing these disks. Like the 2 x Bulkpag disks I was not too impressed with the colour being a orange in a semi matt finish that is easy to write on. The printing on the disk is fairly bright so may show through on some printed labels and is similar to other Bulkpaq disks. Comparing the dye to the 2 x Bulkpaq disks it appears to be the same light purple not as dark as Ritek dye disks.

Now how good do they perform my Test burn was a full 4.3 gig disk encoded with DVD Decriptor and the program DVD2one and burnt using Nero 5.5.15 on a Pioneer DVD105. The media was detected as 4-x speed and burnt in a little over 15 mins. Playback was first tested on my Panasonic DVD reader using PowerDVD it was detected immediately and played well excellent definition right up to about an hour into the movie and then the picture froze not allowing me to progress any further. The next playback was on my Formax DVD player which is particular with some media especially skipping chapters again it was recognised immediately and played seeming OK until it got an hour into the movie and again froze as in my PC dvd player. The disk was again played with the pioneer writer but the same results were achieved. This performance was repeated using dvd decripter to read and write in ISO mode but it yielded the same results the media freezing after about an hour playing.

This disk appears to give the same performance as the 2 x Bulkpaq disks these would only play for an hour or so and never complete a viewing of a movie but at a faster speed. Unfortunately the Bulkpaq disks maybe cheaper than other disks but I have never been able to obtain a satisfactory playback. Whether this is a fault with the media or my DVD writer being a bit selective with media type I don?t know, but the disk does not work for me.

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