40x CD-RW Roundup Vol. 3

Review Pages

1. Introduction - CyQve4048
2. Introduction - Philips PCRW4012P
3. Data Reading Tests
4. CloneCD Reading Tests
5. DAE Tests
6. CDR Tests
7. Writing Quality of CyQve 4048
8. Writing Quality of Philips PCRW4012P
9. RW-Packet Writing Tests
10. Conclusion

40x CD-RW Roundup Vol 3- Page 2

- Philips PCRW4012P

The drive supports 40x writing (Z-CLV), 12x re-writing, 4MB Buffer and "Seamless Link" as the main anti-buffer underrun technology among with "Thermo Balanced". The maximum reading speed of the drive is 48x (CAV). The exact supported writing speeds are 4x, 8x, 16x, 20x (CLV) and 24, 32x and 40x (Zone-CLV). The re-writing speeds are 4x, 10x and 12x.

The drive doesn't support the Mt. Rainier format yet, but Philips plans to release a firmware upgrade in the near future. The drive includes C2 error reporting and supports all the known writing modes (DAO, SAO, TAO and RAW).

- 40x writing speed

The Philips PCRW4012P supports the 40x writing speed with the use of the Z-CLV writing technology.

The 40x writing speed range is divided in 4 zones: The drive starts writing at 20x from the lead-in area till 6mins, shifts up to 24x at 10mins, up to 32x at 30mins and lastly shifts to 40x at 56mins and stays there until the end. The average theoretical recording speed is 30.28X.

- The package

The package supplied was the retail European version. This included: the drive itself, an installation guide, a warranty registration form, audio cable and one (1) piece of Philips 80min 32x CD-R blank (actual manufacturer Ritek). The package doesn't offer any HS-RW media. The supplied software comes from Ahead, Nero v5.5.8.1 and InCD v3.27. The drive has a 2-year warranty (only in Europe).

The front panel of the drive includes 2 led (busy, write), the manual eject hole, the headphone jack/volume control and the logos of "Philips", "HS-RW" and "CDRW4000 Series".

At the back of the drive we will find the usual connectors (IDE interface, power), the jumpers for making the drive Master/Slave, the SPDIF output connector and the analog / digital output connectors. There are also 3 jumpers on the left. The two of them are not used (factory reserved), and the third is used for making the drive working in UDMA33 mode. If you remove the third jumper, the drive works in PIO-Mode4 mode.