I was holding off on buying a DVD burner until now. One reason was that my 6-year-old Yamaha 6x4x2 SCSI CDRW drive was still working. The other was that I didn't want to be on the bleeding edge of technology. I had bought my first CD burner in 1995 and suffered through a year or so before the software and hardware was stable and reliable.
A few considerations factored into the decision to buy a burner. The drives are now under C$100 and blank DVD-Rs are under $1. The kids recently scratched up one of their movies enough to make playback unreliable. Jen called the publisher and found it would cost >$10 to get replacement media. I had successfully backed up a few of the kids movies to VCD format, but some of them were > 80 minutes, meaning I couldn't fit them on one VCD.
I decided to buy a LiteOn 451S retail package. The price was $97 at Supercom. It came with PowerDVD 4.0, DVD X-Copy Express, Sonic RecordNow DX (burning software) and some media authoring software. I started off just burning some CDs. The burn times of ~4 minutes are about 5 times faster than the old Yamaha.
The first DVD I tried to backup was Leapfrog Letter Factory. I used X-Copy to copy it to the DVD-R that was included with the drive. The copy took less than 5 minutes to burn. Looking at the bottom of the disc showed most of it was unused, so I thought there may be a problem. I popped the copy into the Apex AD-1200 DVD player and it started playing. The first part was a DVD X-Copy copyright warning message (I made a mental note to find a new way to copy DVDs). After the FBI and Interpol copyright warnings that were on the original, the playback stopped. It seems X-Copy didn't copy the main content of the DVD :-(
I decided to install DVD Shrink. I tried backing up a test DVD-ROM to hard drive. The interface was simple to use and the program took only a half hour to rip and recode a 5GB DVD. Next I had to get some more blank DVDs.
OEM Express had spindles of 50 generic DVD-Rs for $37, so I went to the Kanata store and bought some. The guy at the counter didn't know the manufacturer, but I figured I'd take a chance. I wanted some RWs too, but they didn't have any in stock. The cheapest I could find after going to a few retail stores was Verbatim discs at RadioShack for $6ea in jewel cases. I bought 2 of them.
The cheap disks caused lots of problems. Intermittent playback on the AD-1200 and failed burns were the most common problems. I found KProbe and used it to test some of the disks. The generic disks had a media code of YiJhan. The media scans were really bad. I started to think that when it comes to DVD media you get what you pay for, so I went back to OEM Express and bought a 50-pack of Ritek DVD-R blanks for $60. The media scans were much better.
Things have changed significantly in just 6 months. Ritek 8x DVD+R disks now sell for as little as $25 for a spindle of 50. I checked out the BenQ 1620 after seeing it at OEM Express for $69. The CDFreak review was encouraging, especially the sucess writing to low-quality disks. I also considered the ND-3500A, but the lowest price I could find for it was $84 from a wholesaler in Toronto. So on Jan 14, I bought the 1620.
After installing the 1620, I found out it is the generic version. That means the front of the drive doesn't have the BenQ logo, and it has the generic firmware (G7H9). It came with a BenQ software CD. It includes a newer version (7.1) of Sonic RecordNow DX than I had from the LiteOn drive. It also has a booktype utility. I didn't have to use it since the firmware default is to use a booktype of DVD-ROM for DVD+R disks.
One of my first test burns was with one of the cheap crap disks that I bought about a month ago from OEM Express. They sell for $10 for a cake pan of 50, and have a media code of AN32. After comparing other markings on the disk, they appear to be the same manufacturer as the YiJhan disks (or perhaps just the polycarbonate top and bottoms are from the same manufacturer). The media scan says it all. The first Ritek I burned turned out pretty good.
I decided to upgrade the firmware and went to benq.com. The newest I could find was G7P9. I downloaded and installed it. I later found out that the newest firmware is B7T9, which can be found from support.benq.com. The generic 1620 won't take the B version of the firmware, but supposedly downgrading to the B5G9 1600 firmware works. From there you can upgrade to the 1620 B7K9, and from that to the B7T9. I'll probably try it later this week. With the G7P9 firmware the AN31 burns were better, but still not good. The Philips-branded CMC 4x DVD+R disk I tried burned at 8x, and the results were very good.
I continued to have problems with the AN31 disks, particularly I/O errors while burning causing a failed burn. I had 3 coasters in a row trying to burn a 2GB data DVD. I burned it to a DVD-RW, and then extracted the disk as an ISO. I did a test-only burn with DVD decrypter on another AN31 that passed. However trying a real burn failed again. I tried burning the ISO on another AN31 disk with the LiteOn burner and it succeeded. So it seems the 1620 has problems burning the AN31 disks, at least with G7P9.
I could try upgrading to B7T9 for writing the AN31 disks, but I won't. Instead, I'll burn the last few I have with the LiteON drive and stick to better quality disks from now on. FutureShop has a box of 200 BenQ DVD+R for $60. They're advertized as 4x, but people are actually receiving 8x rated disks. These are probably the 8x Daxon disks tested in the CDFreaks review, which will burn at 16x in the BenQ drive.
I did some kprobe read performance tests for the LiteON 451S and the BenQ 1620A. The scan reports the LiteON as a 812S US0Q since I had upgraded the firmware with Omnipatcher. The disk used was a CMC F01 +R. The BenQ is only slightly faster than the LiteON. These same disks will burn at 8x, so it seems a bit strange that the drive reads the disks slower than it will write them.
I tried using the BenQ disk scan utility QScan. It wouldn't work because I have the generic firmware - it reports that it works only with BenQ drives. I decided to cross-flash the B7T9 firmware. After downloading several different firmware versions and flash utilities, I found a way that works. I used WinDWFlash and a B7T9 CVT image from here.
I bought a box of 200 BenQ disks from futureshop. The rumors that the disks are actually 8x is true; they came as 2 spindles of 100 in a retail box labled 8X DVD+R. Interestingly inside each spindle was a FutureShop coupon, so these disks are packaged specifically for FutureShop.
The box says made in Taiwan. The media code, as expected, is Daxon AZ2. The BenQ drive will burn these at up to 16x. I popped the first disk in the spindle in the drive and loaded up QScan. It said not recommended for not only 16x and 12x, but 8x as well. I plan to do some test burns and scan the disks with kprobe on the LiteOn drive.
Recenly I've been using DVD Decrypter for copying and burning disks. I tried to read an ISO from a Mandrake 10.1 DVD, but got a read error 40MB into the disk. It was a cheap AN31, and I could see uneven die rings on the disk. I tried a movie on a Ritek G04 disk, but that wouldn't read either. However the AN31 disk copied fine with Sonic Recordnow Deluxe. This is with the latest DVD Decrypter; 3.5.2.0. I think the disks I copied before were all DVD+R, so I'll have to do some more tests to see if DVD Decrypter has problems with -R disks in the BenQ drive.
DVDInfoPro and Nero CD Speed both scanned the AN31 disk without errors. At the part of the disk where DVD Decrypter got a read error there is I high amount of parity errors. After 2 more tries with DVD Decrypter I was able to get it to read past the problem area. I plan to do some comparison scans with the same disk in the LiteOn.
Today I found CDRInfo's review on the 1620A. I also found their LiteOn 167T review. Since it can be hacked to read DVD +-R disks at 16x, I'll probably buy one (and it is only $27 at Supercom).
I decided to go back to the generic firmware since I was getting what I felt was too many bad burns with the BenQ disks. About one in 10 would fail in the first minute of the burn at 8x speed. With G7P9 I can use all the same software (such as QScan) as with the B7T9 version.
I found an old DVD compatability test that provides some clues about playback issues in stand-alone players. My suspicion is that most of the difference between DVD-R for authoring and general is the booktype (DVD-ROM for DVD authoring disks) and not the optical differences (650 vs 635nm). Therefore to get maximum playback compatability, using DVD+R with booktype set to DVD-ROM should be better than using DVD-R. I have not seen any specific tests about this, but looking at the metadata supports this conclusion. Existing compatability tests for DVD players made before 2004 show fewer players able to read DVD+R than DVD-R. For players in which no DVD-R disks work, the reason must be due to the booktype. For players in which some DVD-Rs work and some don't, the compatibility must be due to the disk quality. So ignoring potential differences in disk quality, DVD+R disks burned with a DVD-ROM booktype must have better playback compatability than DVD-R.
G7P9 has been working pretty good, but I have still run into a couple bad disks out of the last 25-30 of the BenQ (Daxon) disks.
XBitLabs did a good review of the 1620. What I particularly like is testing the same brand of disk at different speeds. Other sites generally use just one disk of a particular brand, which is not enough to give a reliable indication of the general quality of the disks.
I found the G7T9 firmware release and flashed it. So far so good.I obtained a Ritek 16x DVD+R 25-spindle (thanks Rob!). With counterfeit disks being found locally, Rob wondered if they were genuine. The price of CAD$17 was good, but not too-good-to-be-true. Upon opening the pack I immediately recognized the smell of the lubricant used to keep the disks from scuffing. It was the same as the first pack of Ritek 4x DVD-R disks I purchased in June 2004.
I ran QScan on the Ritek 16x disks - media code R04. They look very good. For comparison I scanned a few of the BenQ disks - none passed at 16x and one even required droping the speed to 4x.
I just had 3 of the BenQ disks fail to burn at 8x. I had scanned each of them with QScan, and all had passed for 8x burning. The burns all failed within the first 30 seconds, leaving only a small circle near the center of the disk burned. I have found a Local store that sells Ritek 8x +R disks for $25. I will probably go with those in the future.
The second spindle of 100 BenQ disks seems worse than the first one. I had 5 disks fail to burn out of the last 12-15 I tried. Even one I tried burning at 2.4x failed.
I upgraded to B7V9. The 1620 Pro specs indicate the drive reads DVD+R and DVD-R at 16x. However the 1620 with B7V9 still only reads DVD+R at 8x. The firmware seems to do a better job burning the BenQ disks though. The color of the disks after burning looks more consistent with less banding.
After 4 burns on the BenQ disks with B7V9 there have been no failures. With 2 of the four disks, the write speed dropped down to 4x. This bodes well for getting through the rest of the BenQ disks with a minimum of failed writes.
On the fifth disk, which dropped down to 4x writing, the write failed around the 4GB point. I will be glad when the BenQ disks are all gone...
I just went through 4 bad BenQ disks in a row. The 4x CMC +R and 16x Ritek +R disks are burning fine, so I gave away the 60 BenQ disks I had left. Good riddance.
I picked up 2 50-packs of Ritek 8x +R disks at Cas-Tech. The media code is R03, and they burn at 12x in the 1620 drive. In QScan the tracking errors are very high for the first 1-2GB of the disk - often off the scale. Focus errors are low however. Despite the high tracking errors, the burn quality seems fine - Nero quality check shows a PIE average of 35 on a scan of the first 500MB. PIF is a bit high at 0.5, but still good. For comparison the 16x R04 disk I checked had a PIE average of 160 and PIF average of 0.32, and a CMC F01 had a PIE and PIF averages of 14 and 0.35 respectively.
