Holiday Shopping Roundup: Eight Dual Format Recordable DVD Drives
by Kristopher Kubicki on December 11, 2003 10:54 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Nu Tech DDW-081
The Nu Tech DDW-081 became one of our favorite burners instantly because of the incredibly attractive price. We just finished a review on the unit back in October, and from our benchmarks, you can see that performance was quite high. Of course, the enormous selling point of this drive was the $140 price tag. Complete with bitsetting book types and stable burn speeds, we couldn't have been more pleased with our DDW-081.Unfortunately, the DDW-081 is not capable of burning DVD-R format discs. However, since it can burn 8X DVD+R (even on most 4X media), we were able to accept the deficiency in features. Interestingly enough, Nu Tech has made numerous claims that its DDW-081 will become dual capable via a firmware upgrade available around the 15th of December. We were not able to get a beta copy of this firmware, so during its actual release, we will include additional DVD-R(W) tests to this roundup. It is interesting to anticipate how Nu Tech does this on the existing Philips Nexperia platform.
Below is a quick overview of specifications on the drive. The Nu Tech website has the specifications listed as well:
| Nu Tech DDW-081 | |
| Interface | IDE |
| CD Write Speed | 40X, 32X, 24X (CAV) 16X, 12X, 8X, 4X (CLV) |
| CD Rewrite Speed | 10X, 8X, 4X (CLV) |
| CD Read Speed | 40X Max (CAV) |
| DVD+R Write Speed | 8X, 4X, 2X (CLV) |
| DVD+RW Rewrite Speed | 4X, 2.4X (CLV) |
| DVD Read Speed | 12X Max (CAV) |
| Supported Modes | DAO / DAO-RAW 16 & 96 TAO SAO / SAO 16 & 96 Packet Write Multi-Session |
| Supported Formats | DVD+R (DAO, incremental, seq) DVD+RW (random) CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-ROM XA, Mixed Mode, CD Extra Photo CD, CD Text, Bootable CD, UDF |
| Access Time | CD: 120ms DVD: 120ms |
| Buffer | 2MB |
Obviously, the 8X DVD+R write speed is the big eye catcher for this drive. Like the champion Plextor 708A, the Nu Tech DDW-081 is able to burn 8X on most 4X media. Nu Tech has released several new firmwares for its drive, so we will be retesting all of the media with this new firmware.
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Icewind - Friday, December 12, 2003 - link
Wait, so in the Avg Write Column in your XLS sheet, thats TIME not The actually speed of the burner itself?Ok, looking at it, the way you have it labeled it looks alot more like the average speed the burner BURNED at, not the actual time.
KristopherKubicki - Friday, December 12, 2003 - link
I apologize if there was a bias away from the LiteOn drive. It was unintentional.PXC, alexruiz: The DD0203 was originally supposed to be in this roundup, but I severed the cable taking it apart to look at the chipset :) It will be in the next roundup.
Kristopher
pxc - Friday, December 12, 2003 - link
What's up with the anti-LiteOn bias in the article? It didn't fail any tests like the NEC 1300A did, but it's trashed from first mention and in the conclusion.#15, I can tell you why the DD020x wasn't included: it's junk. I've had one for over a month now and it has the worst media compatibility of any dual format drive. Even the media that generally works will also fail 20% of the time. It would do Optorite no good to have it's buggy drive compared to working drives.
KristopherKubicki - Friday, December 12, 2003 - link
My contacts at Plextor told me dual layer media is going to cost upwards of $10. Ill pass. I am more interested in BluRay anyway.Kristopher
artifex - Friday, December 12, 2003 - link
I'd be willing to pay more than double the then DVD+R price for DVD+R dual layer media, assuming that hard drive prices haven't gone down much before then.KristopherKubicki - Friday, December 12, 2003 - link
Belzer: Thank you for the feedback. I do appreciate your thoroughness and I have corrected a number of errors.I do digress concerning the MCC 003 Media, however. Not only does DVD Info Pro identify the media as 4X write, but the Verbatim box art also identifies the media as "1-4X".
I have all of the images from CDSpeed, so it looks like i will be spending the rest of my friday uploading them and inserting them into the article. :)
Good to be done with finals ;)
Kristopher
alexruiz - Friday, December 12, 2003 - link
A little surprised to find that some other available burners were not included:1) One of the most popular dual burners WAS NOT included (Optorite DD0203/DD0201) Furthermore, there is already available the 8x "+" version (DD0401)
2) Another one is the BTC 1004IM, or the big brother, the 8x 1008IM that is supposed to write DVD-R at 8x also...
Chistpher, can we include the Optorite DD0401 AND the BTC 1008IM for the next review?
Alex
michec - Friday, December 12, 2003 - link
When was this review done? The 8X dual-format Lite-On drive is not a drive that is being anticipated - it's already available. I got mine on Nov 30th at a local computer show. Why bother with reviewing 4x drives when there is a 8x version that is available? What a waste of time and energy reviewing the 4x Lite-On.LoneWolf1 - Friday, December 12, 2003 - link
In regards to #8. You may download our entire burn time spreadsheet.http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/storage/roundu...
Icewind - Friday, December 12, 2003 - link
Heres a linkhttp://www.cdfreaks.com/news2.php?ID=8051