Introduction

Several months ago, we took a look at eight DVD dual format burners and threw a barrage of media at them to see who came out on top. We were very happy to crown the Plextor 708A as champion for its ability to recalibrate 4X media on the fly with an 8X write descriptor. Since then, we have had several new drive introductions.

This time, we will approach our roundup slightly different than the previous roundup. As it is a generally accepted fact that there are only a few significantly different designs and chipsets for DVD recorders, we have taken the liberty of mapping which burners are based on which chipsets; you will see similar performance between many drives based on the same construction and chipset. In the case of many of these drives, the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is the same.

Today, we have five very widely used chipsets on six popular designs. As you will see, these six design variations encompass almost every 8X dual drive on the market to date.

NuTech DDW-082
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  • mkruer - Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - link

    Stupid question but i must ask, is there a firmware update to the Plextor 708A that allows us to burn dual layer DVD's? I remember there was quite alot of talk about the new drives supporting the feature, but that it was not enabled.
  • deadseasquirrel - Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - link

    "Why wasn't the Plextor 8x drive included in this comparison?"

    didja *read* the article??

    Page 5: "Alas, our award winning Plextor 708A, which is also based on the LC897490, is not capable of 8X DVD-R, so we could not include it in this roundup."
  • moktaw - Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - link

    Bought the NuTech 081 several months ago. Firmware upgraded to a 082(at least that's what Nero and DVDInfoPro say with B370 Firmware). This is my first DVD burner. Outstanding product, especially at $80. Burned about 25 discs so far without any coasters. I would love to find the B372 firmware upgrade talked about in the article, Checked NuTech's website this morning and couldn't find it. A typo or do I need to look elsewhere? Thanks for the great discussion. Looking forward to the 16x dual layer burners this summer.
  • Booty - Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - link

    Why wasn't the Plextor 8x drive included in this comparison?

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