Ricoh Japan announced on the 28th that upgrading existing DVD+RW drives in order to support DVD+R media is impossible. Ricoh will soon start selling on April 12th, the "MP5125A" that supports both DVD+R and DVD+RW media. The upgrade is not possible due to different firmware, pickup design and LSI chipsets. Existing DVD+RW drives could support DVD+R only via hardware upgrade from certified service centers. That would cost a lot of money and wouldn't be possible for all Ricoh customers.

Our comment: That news was already known to our visitor from our reviews. Several manufacturers, including HP, kept promising DVD+R compatibility to existing DVD+RW drives, when they knew this couldn't become true. Ricoh, (the only DVD+R/RW manufacturer), had admitted: "...The present drive (5120) cannot support DVD+R. The next generation drive will support DVD+RW and DVD+R, however whether this can be done by firmware is still unknown..." as we had posted in our MP5120A review.

Some websites were participated in the "+R support with firmware upgrade" campaign. We hope next time both companies and press to be more responsible towards buyers...

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