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Data Storage Upgrades Hardware

An Exhaustive 16X DVD Burner Roundup 221

Posted by timothy from the you-must-be-exhausted dept.
CrzyP writes "AnandTech has put together an extensive roundup on eight, count 'em, eight 16X DVD burners capable of writing to dual-layer media. Some of the big names on the list include Pioneer, NEC, LG, Sony, MSI, and more. They explain in detail the current technologies implemented into the newer drives, like bitsetting and error control as well as run their reading/writing benchmarks on 16X and dual-layer media."
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An Exhaustive 16X DVD Burner Roundup More

An Exhaustive 16X DVD Burner Roundup

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  • But still no Serial ATA (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Oh well, maybe BenQ will get their DW1650 (16x DVD±R, 8x DVD±RW, 4x DVD+R DL) out by the end of the year.
    • Plextor PX-712SA SATA 12x DVD±RW http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/index.php?reviewid= 243

    • Re:But still no Serial ATA (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @01:50AM (#10697591)
      It's in testing and debug now. I doubt year end for a consumer release, though you may see it in OEM systems (Dell being th emajor customer) by then.

      16x -R is slightly flaky, for which you can blame the minus people for having a godawful way of locking onto the track.
      There's also the usual assortment of bugs (Today kiddies, we'll show you how adding a new entry to the speed table without first increasing the size of that table causes a buffer overrun!) which should lall be fixed pretty quickly. Its access time is greatly improved, too.

  • The future.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by pulitz ( 827217 )
    How long to go 'till we have media-cracking 52X DVD-burning?

    • Re:The future.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by delibes ( 303485 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @07:21PM (#10694637)
      Previous reviews on Anandtech and Tom's Hardware have suggested 16x is the DVD limit. Blu-ray and HD might given better performance by cramming more in the same space rather than spinning the disk faster. The media will probably still be expensive when it first appears of course.

    • Re:The future.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by wo1verin3 ( 473094 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @07:24PM (#10694665) Homepage
      You need to remember that 1x DVD burning is equal to approximately 8x CD burning.... We aren't going to get much faster then the current 16x...

      • DVD Speeds - Correction (Score:5, Informative)

        by ceeam ( 39911 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @01:35AM (#10697510)
        Actually, 1 DVD speed is pretty exactly equals to nine (9) CD speeds in data transfer rate and three (3) CD speeds in linear/rotational speed. IOW - you get 3x data speed from the same rotational speed. So - 16x DVD speed is 48x CD physical speed and we know how CDs start exploding at that (or a tad higher). OTOH - I read that DVDs are physically more robust (2 plastic layers instead of 1 for instance) but I wouldn't trust that. Also - 16x is about 22 megs/second (at max of course). I guess many users still don't have HDDs capable of providing that when translated to file system speed. I find 8x DVDs to be the sweet spot still - fast and _quiet_(!). Awaiting for cheap dual layer media.

  • As usual (Score:4, Funny)

    by RealAlaskan ( 576404 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @07:14PM (#10694559) Homepage Journal
    We just ordered a bunch of 4X DVD burners here at work. If we buy it, it's obsolete. I guess that's what you get for using computers.
  • The decision for me is being swayed towards the NEC just because it has some very nice hacked firmware.

    I wonder when the big companies will start catching on that they're not offering enough in their firmware, and sales are being lost due to that.

    Newegg seem to have some nice deals on the NEC and Pioneer.
    • Pardon my ignorance...

      What do you get from hacked firmware on a burner?

      overburn type stuff?

      • Re:What does hacked firmware get you? (Score:5, Informative)

        by BestNicksRTaken ( 582194 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @07:26PM (#10694688)
        Faster rip speeds (not limited to ripping movies at 2x instead of 16x)

        Region free (watch any movie)

        Better media compatibility (write at 12x to those pesky Riteks)

        Single layer bitsetting (DVD+R and DVD-R appear as DVD-ROMs)

        I expect someone to even turn on the DVD-RAM reading capability in the NEC's chipset.
        • My panasonic "superdrive" from newegg that I installed came with a DVD-RAM disk. The disk is a 4.7 GB disc, not in a caddy like they used to be. The package says you can read and write like a floppy, unlike DVD-RW which (AFAIK) needs the disc to be closed before reading on another PC. This format seems better than DVD-RW for data, why didn't it catch on? Too little too late?

          • Too expensive too long. It didn't offer enough of a price/performance bump over CDRW and now we have DVDRW which is not as convenient as DVD-RAM but it's basically functional.
          • I dont get why DVD-RAM still isnt taking off. Both of the -RW +RW technologies like a CD are limited to 1000 read/writes but the -RAM can be cycled *millions* of times, which means you can use it like a floppy (and reliably).

            I also believe that the +rw disks dont need to be closed as the whole disk surface does not need to contain data (a -RW disk needs formatting to the edge). +RW is also superior technology in the way data can be written in multiple sessions/burn recovery/random access/etc. yet it is als
    • You can also get some very nice hacked firmware on the Pioneers...

  • NEC rules of course (Score:5, Informative)

    by dwgranth ( 578126 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @07:17PM (#10694594) Journal
    according to the review its at the top of the list... the drive is only about 65-70 bucks and it has very hackable firmware, and I personally (since i own one) have never had any coaster from the drive ... btw.. use Riteks
    • I've heard (on several web boards) that the nec is great for writing, but not the most reliable for reading.

      ymmv,
    • what does hackable firmware do?
      i'm wondering whether to get a drive, i dun really need one...but
      • The advantage there is that you could get region-free firmware for your drive.

        From what I hear, most drives have a set number of times you can change the region, and it automatically changes when you put in an alternate region disc. Then, when the number of changes are up, it locks the drive into a given region, so if you're using various different regions, you're up a creek.

        I don't know if all drives do it this way, but installing region-free firmware can get around this.

        There are probably other interes
      • well... here is one firmware hack for the NEC-3500 that supposedly lets you write slower media at a faster rate... i could see some benefit in that ;) http://www.justcdr.net/modules.php?name=News&file= article&sid=247
    • btw.. use Riteks

      Ritek? Ritek is alright, but no where near as good as TY.

      Buy Taiyo Yuden. Or any brand made in japan. Might pay a tiny bit more, but its worth the amazing quality of the media.

      Use The DVD media database [videohelp.com] to search for media and see what problems with any others had with the media and read their comments. Has pretty much all media in it, so no worries there.
  • OK, I looked through all the drives, and their features are largely identicle. But why is it that not a single one supports Mt. Reiner? I've NEVER seen a DVD(+/-)R(W) drive that supports it. Can someone tell me why?

    • Re:Mt. Reiner? (Score:3, Informative)

      by syousef ( 465911 )
      But why is it that not a single one supports Mt. Reiner?

      Its Mt. Ranier, and at the moment its pretty much vapourware. Check this [cdfreaks.com] out. (Not authoritative but well put).

    • Re:Mt. Reiner? (Score:5, Informative)

      by HyperCash ( 768512 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @07:39PM (#10694802)
      I was going to ask why none of these drives have Mt. Reiner.

      There is at least one DVD burner that supports it: the Plextor PX-712 although thats only a 12x drive. Its also one of the few drives that support SATA. I've heard that the PX-716 that Anandtech couldn't get in time for their roundup will also have it. Should also have an 8MB buffer instead of the 2MB that all the other drives have, too. The price on Plextor drives is always a bit steep but they have the very best media support and features. Hope that helps.

      --HC

      • Re:Mt. Reiner? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by doc modulo ( 568776 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @08:28PM (#10695282)
        Thanks for the info, it helped because I was waiting for Mt. Rainier (Easy Write logo) on DVD drives.

        I want to use DVD's for backing up. I'm going to use DVD+RW because they'll keep their info intact longer, they've got a phase change recording layer instead of the more unstable dye recording layers of DVD+R. But even then, stability will be even better with Mt. Rainier because it's got redundancy as part of the specification. Extra safety in return for less recording space.

        Apart from that, Mt. Rainier has background formatting (start recording immediately) and a standard way of accessing it like a HD/floppy drive. None of that stupid "burning" shit. Just the OS drive access like it's supposed to be.

        Anyway, thanks again.

        • Re:Mt. Reiner? (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Mount ranier (MRW) does *NOTHING* except for automatic bad sector remapping.

          That's ALL it does.

          Packet writing, background formatting - those are all parts of the basic DVD spec.

          Everything MtRainier does is already done for you at the OS level by tools such as DirectCD. And yes, DirectCD is godawful.

          The reason MRW is not being pushed is the delay in longhorn. MS promised, basically, to support the DVD format that supported MRW. Then they got cold feet, delayed longhorn twice (so far) and talked about

          • Re:Mt. Reiner? (Score:2, Insightful)

            by 6th time lucky ( 811282 )
            It does a tad more than bad sector remapping.
            Yes the DVD spec has all of those features, but nothing *implements* them.

            MRW allows you to put in a new disk, and withing a few seconds/minutes you can start putting data on it. None of this messing around with compiling and burning data. Opps i forgot a file, lets do it all again, another 10 minute burn. With MRW you just put the file there and its there. If you didnt want the file, delete it. Simple, and 'it just works(TM)'.

            Easywrite and MRW (the same?) is h

  • SATA drives (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cortana ( 588495 ) <samNO@SPAMrobots.org.uk> on Monday November 01, 2004 @07:27PM (#10694701) Homepage
    Where are the SATA drives! Finding them to buy is difficult enough, finding decent reviews of them on today's comparison-shopping-infested Web is next to impossible. :(
    • Most SATA drives that do exist are still just the PATA drives with a SATA interface. To a first approximation, the PATA results apply to the SATA drives too. With a few exceptions, the only reasons to buy SATA optical drives are if you're triying to abandon ATA drives completely and/or want the cute thin, LONG cables. My upgrades have actually remained SCSI, but it is becoming harder and harder to find SCSI drives that are excellent and reasonably priced.
      • yeah, but SATA cables are just so much cleaner. And since almost all modern motherboards now have onboard sata connectors, why not SATA? They should have SATA drives with backwards compatibility to IDE, not the other way around. Sure you can get a fat IDE-to-SATA converter, but who wants one?
    • From what I have heard, the SATA drives are identical to ATA drives save for the different connector. The burners aren't even close to maxing out the ATA bus so any extra speed is unecessary. These SATA drives would really only be good for a system out there (if there are any) with no ide-ATA controler/ports on the mobo, in that case obviously having SATA burners on the marked would be a good thing.

      -kaplanfx
  • I would have liked to have seen how the Plextor drives performed and the use of Taiyo Yuden media as this is what I would use for high quality burning.

  • pioneer dvr-108 is great (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Chemist ( 62398 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @07:35PM (#10694772)
    The cpu/workstation setup is critical to buring reliably at 12x t 16x which I do all the time

    I use a dual 2800mp workstation,a tyan 2466-2m mobo, 2 gigs of DDR 2100,, a 128 mb visiontek card ($373 and the bees-knees 2 years ago), a 64 bit MegaRAID SCSI 320 2 ch HBA with 128 mb on board, and 4 seagate 15000 rpm U-320 36 gb drives running raid 5.

    I run 2 partions on the raid 5 drive, each with windows 2000.
    The 1st partion is for normal everyday use; and has all the normal crap on the drive.
    The 2nd partition is for burning dvd's quickly.

    Problem is all those programs you install and run sometimes have lots of crap running in the background. The way around that is a very simple OS setup; so that nothing runs except what you need.

    In my case I use a program from www.litepc.com to modify the windows 2000 setup, so that I can eliminate lots of junk Bill Gates says has to be installed; like internet Exploder. Suffice it to say that by turning off WFP then uninstalling the parts of the OS you dont want, then re-enabling WFP you get a slim rock solid and very fast OS setup.

    I use a pioneer dvr-108, which has been flashed with the latest and greatest firmware from links found at www.cdfreaks.com pioneer device forum
    they link to:

    http://pioneerdvd.rpc1.org

    look for the correct firmware for your dvd device, in my case for the dvr-108 it was the file;

    DVR-108 v1.14 - RPC-1 + 12xRip + nx4all

    using the flash program DVRFlash 2.0 from this forum
    http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=10754

    as you'll see they have a lot of other firmware available. Look through the forum, and search for results on your device; then follow the instructions.

    A list of media is here:

    The following 8X media can be burnt faster than the rated speed

    MCC003 \
    MCC02RG20 \
    RICOHJPNR02 ---- These can be burnt at 12X
    RITEKG05 / These were 100 stack for 40.50
    TYG02 /

    CMC MAG. E01 \
    YUDEN000T02 / These can be burnt at 16X

    MCC003 is Verbatim Datalife Plus DVD+R 8X
    MCC02RG20 is Verbatim Datalife Plus DVD-R 8X
    RICOHJPNR02 is RiTEK eXCELLENCE 8X DVD+R
    RITEKG05 is PioDATA 8X MULTISPEED SUPER GRADE A (silver top, no other markings)
    TYG02 is JVC DVD-R 8X

    CMC MAG. E01 is Shintaro 8X DVD+R
    YUDEN000T02 is "That's DVD+R for premium inspection 8X"

    Now the HOW-TO:

    I have used xcopy Platinum, but until I flashed my DVR 108 to this firmware it was non-functional with a dual layer burner. So I sometimes use this as well.

    I have used DVD FAB, but found it didn't work everytime.

    I currently use DVD Shrink 3.2 (freeware). However you'll find that if your I/O (ie HDD system is too slow) is slow, DVD Shrink will throttle you down to the rate the data is delivered at. If this happens, uninstall it, then delete the folder, then reinstall. The use of the firmware allows the display in Nero to show from 1x to 16x. Same in DVD Shrink. Normally you dont get these choices, if the media does not support them.

    So for me it was a case of having the trial and error. However a combination of the above allows me to burn the ritek g-05 media at 12x or 16x all the time. In dvd shrink, it takes 18 minutes to encode and burn a backup of any 4.5 + gb dvd-video project..ahem..

    Since this workstayion will install windows 2000 or xp pro in something like 8 min 25 secs, I'm sure that has a lot to do with the encoding rate, which truly blazes along.

    Hope that helps,if you want to burn at 12 to 16x?? Other than that just direct everyone to the forums,

    as the truth is out there...

    • The installation of (most) Operating sytems is disk based, not so much CPU based. So your encoding rate is likely not tied to well to how fast you can install Windows.

      At the risk of sounding like a Linux Zealot (not that I am not one of course :) ) ...

      If you are going to have a second OS just for burning the image to the disc, you could save yourself a great deal of headache by installing a small Linux partition on there instead.

      You could even install X with a minimal window manager such as Blackbox or f

  • Good luck (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dusanv ( 256645 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @07:37PM (#10694790)
    I'm still trying to get my 8X to burn at 4X. I'm at my third stack of media (all from different manufacturers) and all I can do is 2.4X. Only coasters at 4X (except for Maxell media which I ran out of early on).

    • Re:Good luck (Score:3, Informative)

      by zakezuke ( 229119 )
      I'm still trying to get my 8X to burn at 4X. I'm at my third stack of media (all from different manufacturers) and all I can do is 2.4X. Only coasters at 4X (except for Maxell media which I ran out of early on).

      I had the same problem my self on my liteon 812s(832s rom). At first I plugged in my drive into my Promise UDMA/100 controler and the results were less than stellar. My burn speeds were limited to 2x and Nero would not fuction at all. I changed cables and plugged it into the motherboard and I've
  • Hmmm, those PlexTools for detecting errors are very interesting.

    Is there open source software that does something similar? Does Anybody know.

  • Not that interesting anymore (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @07:59PM (#10694986) Homepage
    I have a drive capable of writing DVD:s as well as CD:s. Thing is, I never do anymore. I have never actually tried to write a DVD (the media is pretty expensive), and the only time I've written a CD lately was for Fedora 2 when it appeared, and the Ubuntu install CD. Similarily, I hardly ever read CD:s or DVD:s anymore either.

    For backup I have an external USB2 HDD, as well as mirroring essential work data between my available machines at work. For media, well, the external HD is 200Gb, which I have yet to fill after a year - and when I do I'll just get a second one. It's quite a bit cheaper than buying reliable CD blanks anyway.

    • Burning optical media is still often faster and sometimes cheaper than transferring it over the network & storing it on hard drives, especially if several countries separate your gigs of data from where they need to be. They are and will continue to be highly utilized by scientists and others whose needs match this.
    • I agree. I used to burn audio CDs all the time and storing them became a pain. Then I bit the bullet and bought an external HD. Once the info is in MP3 form, I can access my entire collection on a single hard drive, instead of having to swap DVDs constantly. I just bought another hard drive as a backup.

      Is burning to DVD cheaper? Possibly. But when you have 60 GB of music files, would you rather deal with a single external HD or 13 DVDs (or 86 CDs).

  • Eight, huh? (Score:4, Funny)

    by the pickle ( 261584 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @08:11PM (#10695095) Homepage
    Lessee...eight...16x...that makes this a review of, what, 128 burners, according to the MPAA?

    p
  • I must be psychic/psychotic.

    I had always been told that Sony was the best by friends. I had been debating one to replace my nice yet newly slow Pacific Digital 4x dual-format burner which I got for $23. (Side note: Older, cheap DVD burners will be hot Christmas gifts this year.)

    Just today, about 2:30PM, I was looking at new dual-layer drives. I had a crazy scheme (younger brothers, 11, 10, and 8) would like a cd burner for Christmas. I'll do one better - I'll give them a barely used DVD-burner which costs
    • ill give you a hint for the future. sony never makes the best products on the market. but they are almost always (more often than any other manufacturer) decent. maybe a little expensive, ie not always the best deal, but its ok. anyone who thinks sony makes the best shit out there likes to spend too much money.
  • So, if DVD burners are so cheap, why are DVD recorders, those used to replace the aging VHS, so expensive? If you can get a DVD player for $50, lets assume we replace the DVD unit with a burner, wouldn't the price for a DVD recorder be around $120 instead of the $300 they sell now? Surely its not the software for recording that is so expensive...

  • When will Toast come out of the dark ages? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @10:13PM (#10696149)

    Bleh. When will Toast come out of the dark ages and support even half of the advanced features that burners can do these days?

    Image-on-media? Kinda dumb, but no, can't do it. Media compatibility check? Nope. Report on confidence of burn success? Nope. Accurate time estimation? Nope. Statistics on disk readability? Phbt, dream on.

    I will say this- Toast used to be the best burning program around, PC or Mac. Now, it's quite clearly been eclipsed. In fact, nothing on the Macintosh platform comes close in terms of support for advanced features on todays' drives.

  • Poor review (Score:5, Informative)

    by code65536 ( 302481 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:16PM (#10696643) Homepage Journal
    To be blunt, Anandtech should stick to reviewing CPUs. In my experience, reviews of optical drives by those who don't specialize in them (such as Anandtech or Tom's) tend to be very poor. They look at the wrong things (put emphasis on things that are not important and not put emphasis on things that are) and their testing methods are not always accurate.

    For example, there are many who feel that the BenQ is actually a very excellent drive. The active OPC produces *better* results (not worse, as the reviewer thinks). Though slightly slower, it has the ability to overspeed media (burn 8x media at 16x, for example) with excellent quality. It also doesn't help that the review used a very outdated firmware for the BenQ review.

    And to answer another question that someone had, none of these firmwares have DRM.

    A better place for reviews:
    http://www.cdrlabs.com/

    And a review of this Anandtech review:
    http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.ph p?t=18064

  • Media Compatibility/Error Checking (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dusty123 ( 538507 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @03:59AM (#10698090)
    What I really would like to see is a feature that checks the quality of the recording while burning.

    I own a Nec ND2500-A and although this is one of the better DVD-Recorders it once in a while produces coasters - and I only use quality media.

    You won't recognize this beforehand, you try to read the DVD's back and recognize that your data is lost due to read errors.

    This is _very_ annoying and I still found no solution to this.

    So to anyone who uses DVDs for backups: Use a burner that supports readout of PI/PO errors and check every DVD you burned afterwards. At least I have not found a better solution to check if you are burning coasters.

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