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
NuTech DDW-163
Taiwanese NuTech (Quanta's retail channel) surprised us all a little with their DDW-081/082 drives. They were great for the price and deserved our Editor's Choice Award back when 8X was the best speeds that you could obtain on a DVD recorder.However, things have changed a lot since six months ago when we conducted that roundup. Most contenders in the optical storage sector continued to improve and refine their write descriptors and firmware while NuTech stayed relatively quiet. The DDW-163 never received a full fledged press release and just began to trickle onto the online marketplaces this week.
| NuTech DDW-163 16X DVD-/+RW Drive | |
| Interface | PATA |
| CD Write Speed | 40X, 32X, 24X 16X, 8X, 4X |
| CD Rewrite Speed | 24X, 16X, 10X, 8X, 4X |
| CD Read Speed | 40X MAX |
| DVD-R Write Speed | 8X, 4X, 2X |
| DVD-RW Rewrite Speed | 4X, 2X, 1X |
| DVD+R Write Speed | 16X, 8X 4X, 2.4X |
| DVD+RW Rewrite Speed | 4X, 2.4X |
| DVD+DL Write Speed | 2.4X |
| DVD Read Speed | 16X MAX (ROM) 10X MAX (-/+R, -/+RW) 5X MAX (RAM) |
| Supported Modes | DAO / DAO-RAW 16 & 96 TAO SAO / RAW SAO, RAW SAO 16 & 96 Packet Write Multi-Session |
| Supported Formats | DVD+R (DAO, incremental, seq) DVD+RW (random) DVD-R (DAO, incremental, seq) DVD-RW (restricted overwrite) CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-DA, Mixed Mode, CD Extra Photo CD, CD Text, Bootable CD, UDF |
| Access Time | CD: 125ms DVD: 145ms |
| Buffer | 2MB |
Nothing stands out here as particularly dramatic. Why all the secrecy around the newest NuTech drives? Remember our sneak peak at upcoming OSD devices during Computex 2004, particularly about Ricoh's reemergence back into the DVDR chipset arena? The NuTech DDW-162 drive was one of those slated to use the new Ricoh chipset. But today, we are looking at the DDW-163 instead. It would appear as though that, instead of pursuing a Ricoh design, NuTech scrapped the idea and continued to evolve their DDW-082 with the Nexperia chipset. In fact, even though we saw several of slated burners for the Ricoh chipset at Computex, not one of our burners today employs those chips. Ricoh may still introduce a product based on their core logic, but its getting a little late in the game.
Click to enlarge.
Below, you can see what Infotool had to say about the Philips Nexperia based DDW-163.
Internally, a lot seems to have changed since the NuTech DDW-082/1. The DDW-163 uses the newest Nexperia 7860E core logic and the TZA1047HL analog processor. Like the LG GSA series, the NuTech DDW-162 uses flash memory as well.
Click to enlarge.
NuTech has a very diverse product support team. Their employees are the ones who you see posting in forums and working on hacking their own firmware. Coaxing the Nexperia chipset into working with the DVD-R format on the DDW-082 was certainly not an easy task. Living on the fringe of product support and blurring the lines between customer feedback and company direction are extremely refreshing. By contrast, nearly faceless companies like Pioneer and NEC approach customer influence on more traditional marketing channels.
The Nexperia chipset is somewhat of a late-bloomer in the 16X market. If NuTech can keep their QA up, they can definitely utilize this chipset to its fullest by providing quality firmware updates.
Feel free to download the performance graphs for the DDW-163 here.
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kellvarsen - Friday, November 26, 2004 - link
I would like to congrtulate the Anandtech team for this DVD-RW roundup as they prooved once more that they are better and more thorough with the testing than Tomshardware.And by this i am reffering to the writing quality test mainly ,which in my opinion is the most important and eloquent of them all.Great HL2 review also!!!Tabajara - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
I've heard several people say that the new Plextor 716A drives are defective, and are mostly burning DVD coasters, specially dual layer ones. Pioneer Europe isn't selling them yet, and this also point to some kind of manufacturing problem. I was waiting for this drive, but now I don't know if I will buy a NEC or a Pioneer one. I would buy the DVR-108 if a new firmware version enables the user the choose the booktype to be used.JaRb0y - Thursday, November 4, 2004 - link
Curious, did you get the NEC 3500AG to write Fujifilm 48X CDR media at 48X? It appears you did, but I heard NEC limited the speed on some types. My drive does 32X on the Fujifilm TY, am I missing something?DonB - Thursday, November 4, 2004 - link
"ND-3500A is priced $10 lower than Pioneer's DVR-108D at $68" Prices are really coming down. I bought the same NEC 3500A just a few months ago for $95 + shipping (from NewEgg).eleewhm - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
you guys sure know how to review dvd writers???looks like you are good at opening up the drives only
Since when does NEC 3500 overdrive MCC003?????? 6:72??...it only writes @8x speeds....
pls relook at the way you guys post the results...and understand nero numbers before publishing the article...
see how ppl are thrashing you guys here in singapore...we have a bunch of serious ppl here doing testing ...
http://forums.hardwarezone.com/showthread.php?p=11...
Maverick215 - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
>NEC follows a pattern for each firmware revision: 2.xy, where:
>
>X = Type (Retail, OEM, Rebadge)
>Y = Revision number
>
>Till today know patterns:
>
>X = 0 (OEM)
>X = 1 (Retail)
>X = 2 (I-O Data)
>X = 4 (Freecom)
>X = 7 (TDK)
>X = B (Ricoh)
>X = F (MadDog)
>----------------------
>Y = 6
>Y = 7
>Y = 8
So what 2.26 really represents is the same generation of firmware with feature tweaks from an oem that rebadged the drive. The firmware wasn't released for the "retail" drive. We must distinguish OEM from rebadge now. OEM in the more "traditional" is a drive intended for resale, such as in a system(this is what you'll find at newegg and similar being sold as NEC). OEM rebadge would be a drive intended to be sold by another company with that company's logo etc if they desire, the insides of all these drives could very well be exactly the same, and often times are, since this saves the OEM a great deal of money. At most you'll get different revisions of the same line. (On the flip side you'll see companies such as HP that buy 16x drives from whoever is the cheapest, so Lite-On one month and BenQ the next)
--
NEC does have more support than just the "official" there are several "hacked" firmwares
that provide all kinds of features not in the official releases(bitsetting included), though I think they go beyond the scope of what you were trying to portray.
--
So, more fairly you would represent that the drive being OEM(system) might come with a 2.x7 firmware most likely 2.17(see above). An important distinction. Since this would seem to give this drive the same flaw as the pioneer (bitsetting only in DL) that disqualified itfrom winning..
But, I still don't need dvd-ram :)
Picking and chosing features from untested firmware and not doing the same from another drive has introduced a clear bias(bias in a scientific sense, which is information/data which skews the results of your study/review due to a sytematic error in your study/review design; I am NOT implying you have a bias to one product or another) in the selection of the winner.
==
as an aside, further confirmation that my assumption about the nutech drives is correct
email correspondence with Chris Geerlings,
Field Application Engineer from nutech I inquired to using any of the firmwares from the benq ftp. And he wrote back:
"I know the (G7)K9 works, the others I haven't tested yet."
asteamerandy - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
In you review:"If LG had implemented bitsetting into their GSA-4160B, it would have helped their product climb the ladder ..."
"The booktype setting feature offered in this unit also makes this a great drive. The GSA-4160B is a bit on the steep side ..."
There are other instances if this abuigity. So which is it? Does the 4160B have the bit setting feature or not?
rcabor - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
Why do you say "DVDR burn speeds are excellent, and the drive technically supports 4X DVD+DL burn speeds, even though it does not readily advertise such. You can see our original DL tests on the drive here." But then right below that you show an image of the box that Advertises 4x DVD+R dual layer?rcabor - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
Maverick215 - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
Still not working, short story=NEC 2.26=2.16 with tweaks to rebadge specifications. they do not follow traditional revision codes 2.x6=are all same