BenQ DW830A DL Recorder - page 5

- BookType Setting

The BenQ DW830A supports Booktype change with the BookType Management v8.2, that will be included at the retail package.:

After pressing the "Set to DVD-ROM Type" a warning message informed us that the BookType setting can be changed before burning:

Lets now see how the BookType changed:

Unfortunately, we cannot change the BookType setting of already burned media with BenQ DW830A. As BenQ said, the BookType setting highly improves the compatibility with DVD players. Due to limited amount of DVD+R DL media, we haven't got the chance, for now, testing how the Booktype setting affects compatibility..

- Compatibility matrix

For our compatibility tests, we used the #1st burned DVD-Video test disc (DVD+R DL BookType - Gladiator movie) and PowerDVD v5.0. We moved forward and backwards around layer change addresses to ensure that movie can be playbacked without any glitches or skips. The results are shown below:

It seems there are huge problems with DVD+R DL media as our short investigation showed. Most DVD Writers refused to recognize the DVD+R DL media. On the other hand, the newest LiteOn SOHW-812S didn't had any problems and read the whole disc flawlessly. It's interesting that even BenQ DW800A cannot properly recognize the DL media.

As for combos, the LiteOn SOHK-5232K did recognize the media, however it failed to read the Layer1. The situation with the DVD-ROMs is slightly better although only three (3) out of the six tested models managed to playback without any issues, two of them didn't recognize the media at all and the last one read the media with problems.

We didn't test the burned DVD+R DL media with any DVD players. BenQ advises to use the DVD+R DL DVD-ROM BookType for testing with both DVD players and DVD-ROMs.