OPTORITE DVD RW DD0405 - Page 12

DVD Recording Tests

- Writing Performance

The Optorite DD0405 supports DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW writing. The maximum available writing speed is 8x and 4x for writable and rewritable formats respectively. The writing strategy for writable media is the *Z-CLV while both rewritable media were written under CLV.

8x DVD-R

After the end of writing simulation, NeroCDSpeed confirmed that the maximum writing speed for -R media is 8x. The process started at 4.04x and ended with a maximum writing speed of 8.14x resulting in an average speed of 6.88x. The screenshot below, shows that the speed increased from 4x to 8x after 1/3 of the total process.

8x DVD+R

Once again the manufacturer's specifications for 8x maximum writing speed were confirmed after the end of the test. The writing process started at 4.03x and ended at 8.06x resulting in 6.88x average speed, a value that is identical to the previous tested -R media. The screenshot from NeroCDSpeed shows that the drive had to write about 1.2Gb in order to increase speed from 4x to 8x.

*After upgrading the firmware to v150E, the drive recorded on DVD+R media using the 8x P-CAVmode. This increased the DVD+R average recording speed to 7.74x (!), at least with some 8x media. In other cases, the drive lowered the recording speed to 4x by the end of the recording process:

• Mitsubishi Kagaku 8x DVD+R

• Philips 8x DVD+R (Philips C08)

• Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD+R

4x DVD+RW

The maximum supported speed for DVD+RW is 4x. NeroCDSpeed confirms smooth writing for rewritable media while the speed is slightly increased during the process from 3.97x to 4.04x. The simulation ended with an average writing speed of 4.04x

4x DVD-RW

We were not able to perform the -RW writing simulation with NeroCDSpeed. When we launched the program and pressed the start button to begin the process, the drive was spinning fast and noisy and the process didn't start. However, the 4x DVD-RW disc was succesfully burned with Nero Burning Rom.

- Burning Tests

The following graphs show the maximum writing speeds for all available DVD formats for the Optorite drive. For comparison, we also include the writing times from Memorex True-8x and Nec ND-2500A.

All three drives supports 8x maximum writing speed for the writable media and 4x for the rewritable.

As can been seen from the graph above, the Optorite was the fastest for the +R format due to its writing strategy, P-CAV as opposed to Z-CLV. In the -R format, the Memorex proved to be the best.

The following screenshots were taken from Nero, after successful burnings. The recording project is the same dvd-video compilation for all the tests.

• MC Kagaku 8x DVD-R

• Taito Yuden 8x DVD+R

• JVC 4x DVD-RW

• MKM 4x DVD+RW

The table above presents the writing speeds of the drive for the various media formats.

- Packet Writing Tests

For this test we copied a 403 MB file (412.822 KB) from Hard Disk (on the same PC as the recorder) to the formatted RW media through Windows explorer (drag and drop).