Fall 2004 DVDR Roundup: Dual Layer and 16X DVD+R
by Anand Shimpi & Virginia Lee on November 1, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
The Test
We have decided to change the format slightly for this edition of our optical storage roundup. DVD recorders are a lot like graphics cards in some respects; we can simply analyze which burners give us the fastest burn and read speeds, but that is only half of the picture. The other half of any optical storage analysis is the write and read quality. Although many burners have no problems burning a disc at 12X or 16X, reading them back (even in the same drive) doesn't work! Furthermore, if a burner only happens to write and read correctly on one particular type of media, we cannot recommend that as a stable, worthwhile product.Thus, we attempted to answer these questions in a multipart analysis of many different types of media. First, we take the subject drive and write samples of test discs to several different media types. In the US, it is only common to see a few different types of DVDR media, almost all of which we have been tested in our analysis. We go out to retail stores before all of our analyses and buy media for the review. Almost all of our media is store-bought unless stated otherwise. The record speeds of all of these media are noted and displayed near the end of the analysis. We read the disc back in the same drive to make sure it wrote correctly. This read speed is also noted and placed into a chart at the end of our review.
After creating all of these media, we have to determine if they are useful or not. We read the media back in our highly recommended 12X Plextor PX-712A drive. This drive has the additional capability of reading back error data (our MediaTek drives also have this feature). Coupled with the Q-Tools software bundled with Plextor burners, we do two things: read the disc back to make sure it burned correctly, and use Q-Tools to determine how many errors the disc had. Both the read speed and the number of various errors are recorded and charted near the end of the analysis.
Since we record so much data, there are a lot of various graphs that need interpreting. Below is the graph of a poor write of one of our burners, with an explanation of what all the signs mean.
Click to enlarge.
You'll notice that the yellow line on the bottom is the speed of rotation as the disc spins. The green line on the top denotes how fast the disc is being written or read at. Generally, we look for spikes in the graph. Harsh spikes during a read generally indicate that the disc has a poor sector, and the burner is calibrating itself slower to read that particular segment better. Harsh spikes during a read may also indicate a poorly written sector; many burners calibrate speed down when they are starting to loose control of the burn. The exception to this is usually when a write spikes up and stays there - this indicates that the burner can write at a faster speed and is calibrating itself (usually in a step pattern) to do so. Drives that produce a lot of errors won't read back correctly - or at all.
After reading the disc, we run a test that actually counts the number of errors in the Q-Tools software from Plextor. A screenshot of what this software looks like is below.
Here, we see a disc with a moderate number of errors. DVDs use the Reed-Solomon error correction algorithm that allows the drive to detect/correct errors. For DVDs, the graphs indicate parity errors. Although, the PO (parity outer) errors reported by Q-Tools generally refer to uncorrectable errors that will most likely render the disc unreadable if they exist in the double digits. PI errors are generally correctable errors, which are mainly troublesome when there are a large number of them. A disc with a few hundred PI errors is close to a "perfect" while one with a PI error count upwards towards a few hundred thousand general means the entire burn was horrible. These PI errors could result from low quality media with shallow scratches or, more often, a burner with bad media compatibility. Usually firmware updates can fix these issues.
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yourdeardaniel - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
the PO graphs dont work for me.CrazeeHorse - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
Yeah, Belzer is right. NEC have not allowed overspeeding of MCC003 anywhere, your read transfer speeds have been mis-mentioned as your write speeds. MCC003 stays at 8X!Belzer - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
WTF. The write speed tables for 8x MCC DVD±R show the read transfer graph not the write speed.Here are the correct tables for some of the drives (pictures are missing for the LG and the rest are OEM versions so I don't bother to check them):
MCC 02RG20
Time Speed Drive
6:33 10.44x BenQ
6:33 10.22x NEC
6:49 10.01x Pioneer
9:29 7.05x Lite-On
MCC 003
Time Speed Drive
6:26 10.47x BenQ
6:46 10.01x Pioneer
8:11 7.96x Lite-On
9:47 6.72x NEC
And it's the time not the average speed that is interesting so for MCC 004 (again pictures missing for several drives in the zips):
Time Speed Drive
5:50 11.38x BenQ
6:04 11.68x LG
6:50 10.00x Pioneer
Also the BenQ does not cost $90, it costs $67 for the OEM version at Newegg (and you're taking the price of the OEM versions for other drives). Now if you also had bothered to update the firmware to the latest the BenQ would have had the by far best media support too making it the clear winner imo especially as a 4x DVD+R DL firmware update is expected to be released later this month for free.
Maverick215 - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
Ok now I can do even less... will check back tomorrow to see if its working thenMaverick215 - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
>I find that comment inaccurate. Pioneer USA's website is generally *months* behind the Japanese or European versions.I'm not sure what you're trying to say; and perhaps I wasn't clear since you don't seem to understand what I was saying. I am not familiar enough with pioneer's releases to really give you a certain answer. Though my experience with most of my personal hardware is that it is true one country will lag behind, but often times they end up posting the SAME exact firmware, unless there are language changes(do you really think pioneer USA is further certifying xyz firmware release or even recoding it from scratch? or did I miss you point all together?). Seems especially true for larger multinational corporations (left hand doesn't know what the right is doing) so you'll often see the earliest release on the "mother land" website. There will of course be a gradient of this effect since some companies are more tightly knit.
My point was that nutech seems to have used plain vanilla OEM/Bulk firmware in their drive. So updating it with a newer firmware from the same line (not "forked" or otherwise customized) made by the same people would be the same as updating any other OEM'd drive with G series firmware. and the same as updating a retail drive with with the H series firmware.
Maverick215 - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
not letting me post large comments breaking them up:[ok I lied :)]
I thought as much on the 3 drives issue as soon as I posted, sorry I got on a roll :)
>>I think if it's official enough to be on the OEM's website that should be good enough to prove its quality.
Maverick215 - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
Odd...Bozo Galora - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
Well< I got back from BestBuy and what do you know - they had them. Three on the shelf, I scooped them up and paid and out I went. The whole thing took less than 5 min.Cool.
KristopherKubicki - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
Maverick215: You are correct, those dates are exactly the dates we worked on those images.There are a lot of things in the editorial process that take some time to wade through, although we did the best we could.
>I must also wonder why you chose 3 of the same drive.
Some of those drives we did not expect to be the same when we received them. The NuTech we obviously thought was based on a Sanyo chipset (this was detailed in the review). We had no knowledge of the MSI's chipset before we asked for a review sample.
>I think if it's official enough to be on the OEM's website that should be good enough to prove its quality.
I find that comment inaccurate. Pioneer USA's website is generally *months* behind the Japanese or European versions.
>BTW how did you accomplish bitsetting with the 3500..
The official firmwares past 2.16 (our tested version) support DL bitsetting automatically, anything past 2.26 supports SL bitsetting as well. Since the drives are OEM, they almost always ship with the newest firmware available, and we thought the review should reflect that. Obviously though, we could only test on 2.16.
Kristopher
Maverick215 - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
Thanks for the zips. I am obviously blind.
As I said I understand you can't TEST the latest and imediately post the review. But typing one or two sentances that outline updated firmware changes (esp if those changes occurred several weeks before your submission) wouldn't take much time (unless you type REAL slow) You obviously had to go back to look at the results of the drives that you already tested to do your final comparison. Wouldn't drastic differences warrant a little more investigation rather than to just say NEC/etc is more mature, end of story?
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These dates are the apparent test dates (yes I know modified != created, but it's the best we have)
Pioneer 10.13-10.20
NEC 10.13-10.21
BenQ 9.17-9.28
MSI 10.12-10.13
LiteOn 10.13-10.20
Sony 10.5-10.12 (pics of drive 9.27)
LG 10.20-10.21
Nutech 10.20-10.21
While I imagine you were busy with other things, that's quite a gap.
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I must also wonder why you chose 3 of the same drive.
From the review it seems BenQ, MSI and Nutech are all using the same hardware, differing only by firmware.
BenQ B7J9 9.24.04 (beta, from what I can gather)
MSI M1.4 (can't find directly but others say it's 10.12.04; harder to change this firmware but can still be done, I won't go into it here since it's beyond the scope and likely MSI is more likely to be altering the oem firmware compared to nutech)
Nutech G7H9 8.25.04 (first release solely for 1620 series drives, from what I can gather)
http://www.nu-global.com/1_english/3_products/01_i... no new firmware apparently; though G7H9 would correspond to B7H9 (G is an indication of OEM/Bulk drive supposedly no difference among same revision they also seem to post to benq's european website within a day or so of each other.
ftp://62.253.210.196/dvd-rw/firmware/dw1620a/
(this ftp is what you are redirected to from the official website, the ftp houses the older revisions though)
"retail"
b7h9.zip 8/25/2004
b7k9.zip 9/29/2004
b7l9.zip 10/13/2004
b7m9.zip 11/1/2004
"bulk"/oem'd
g7k9.zip 9/30/2004
g7l9.zip 10/13/2004
g7m9.zip 11/1/2004
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What the heck does all this rambling mean!?!?!??!
in short you could have easily upgraded your nutech to G7K9 (OEM released firmware) and tested it since you apparently didn't test it untill later in october, well after G7K9 was released, perhaps you might have even squeezed in G7L9.
Yes, you might say that it's not an "official firmware" it will void your nutech warranty!!
But when the manufacturer refuses to update their website, what choice does the consumer, who wants the most out of his/her hardware, have.
from nutech's website:
"This warranty is void if: (yatta yatta) If the unit is repaired, modified or altered, unless such repair, modification or alteration is expressly authorized in writing by NU.
(yatta yatta)"
I must say it is worth noting that none of the firmware downloads from NU's site that I looked at contained any such written authorization.
I think if it's official enough to be on the OEM's website that should be good enough to prove its quality.
On a side note, one might wonder "is such an upgrade a modification or alteration?" I'm inclined to call it a repair :)
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BTW how did you accomplish bitsetting with the 3500.. To my knowledge NEC hasn't released a tool to do this (when I say NEC, I mean dl'able from nec.com, not mdmm.com(oem'd)) and if done in nero I was under the impression that there is a limit to the number of times this can be done (an enforced limit, ie it's coded in like RPC changes rather than the memory "wearing out") just wondering.
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ok three very long posts that rehash the same thing.. unless there's something new I yield.