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Tom's Hardware Review of Yamaha CRW F1

Tremblay99 writes "Tom's Hardware has a review of the Yamaha CRW F1 CD burner. Not interested, you say? Well, it can burn images on the media side of a CD. While it's not the fastest burner around, it can do CD-RWs at 24x. Not bad at all."

52 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Lovely. by BeNJ-GoS · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What will i do with a printed image on the media side?!? stick my CD KEY's on it???

  2. Life of CDRs by rastachops · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Looks like this may extend the useful life of CDRs! Sounds all good to me.... Even though DVD writables are coming down in price they still cant match CDRs for compatibilty (as they are still arguing over the format for DVDs) and price.

  3. Suppose DRM only limited SPEED... by dpbsmith · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I realize that neither side of the controversy is interested in a moderate or centrist view... but it does seem to me that IF you had digital restrictions management that allowed bit-for-bit digital copies and imposed no restrictions at all on what you could copy... but restricted copying SPEED to about 2X realtime... you'd have something very reasonable.

    (The point is to duplicate the sort of porous protection copyrights have always had, in which fair-use and casual personal copying is easy, but large-scale commercial piracy is difficult--and is based, not on technical mechanisms, but on the relationship between the value of the unauthorized copies and the cost and practicality of enforcement).

    Yes, yes, yes, I know, the DRM opponents (the side I'm on, mostly. I'm an EFF member, BTW. Are you?) would never trust that a DRM scheme, once in place, would ever be limited to ANYTHING reasonable. And I can think of various ways of evading the intent of the speed restriction.

    Just a thought.

    1. Re:Suppose DRM only limited SPEED... by Reziac · · Score: 2

      How would that do anything but annoy the home user?

      A commercial pirate would simply take the hour (at 2x speed) to make his own master from the original, then do his high-speed duplication from that master.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    2. Re:Suppose DRM only limited SPEED... by Abreu · · Score: 2

      Large scale Pirates would laugh at your proposal... many of them here in Mexico (ok, maybe not the #1 pirate haven, but maybe #3) are still using 2x or 4x scsi burners...
      They just have loads of them working simultaneously

      You have a band and want to make a couple of hundred CDs for selling at your gigs?
      Here in Mexico City's "Computer Plaza" you can purchase a ready-made scsi tower of 4-12 burners that connects to your scsi-equipped pc for about 1000-2500 USD, depending on how many burners you want... The salesman will probably give you some 200 blank CD-Rs as a gift if you buy from him instead of the competitor across the corridor

      --
      No sig for the moment.
  4. New feature! by psavo · · Score: 2

    We'll get to burn 3.09GB on the disk!

    --
    fucktard is a tenderhearted description
  5. Images by SmlFreshwaterBuffalo · · Score: 2, Informative

    Unless I've completely confused myself, media images wouldn't be very useful on discs which are nearly, or completely, full of data, as the images themselves must come after the TOC.

    I rarely find myself burning a CD if it's only going to be a small amount of data, so that normally wouldn't leave much room left for the pretty pictures.

    But I guess it may be common to burn a few megs on a CD for some people.

    1. Re:Images by Technician · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If you made coasters out of some CD's and don't have the heart to toss them, you could always put numbers along the edge and make inexpensive CD clocks for your friends and family ;-)

      --
      The truth shall set you free!
    2. Re:Images by Locutus · · Score: 2

      now there's a frivilous(sp?) project. I don't think we'd need a special CD burner to do this since most all cd's today have 1 bit color resolution. We just need the software to put the text down on the cd so it looks like text....or whatever( a clock ).

      I can see it now, the Gugenheim doing an art show called: "A Bit of CD Art". tm-LoB ;)

      There goes the blank cd supply out the window. Just like when AOL blankeded the earth with floppy disk in the mid 90's. It would be fun though.

      LoB

      --
      "Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
  6. Obvious pr0n reference. by DarkHelmet · · Score: 3, Funny
    Wow, graphical images depicting my archives of porn backups ON the CD itself.

    Either the industry has hit a new low, or I'm the only one planning to do this... That is until I posted it here on "perv"dot and all you people plan to follow suit.

    --
    /^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
  7. Oh by Talisman · · Score: 5, Funny

    "What will i do with a printed image on the media side?!?"

    You must be new here.

    The answer is: pr0n

    Talisman

    --

    "Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
  8. Double sided CDs by Ed+Avis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why have a 'media side' at all? Why not have data on both sides of a CD?

    --
    -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
    1. Re:Double sided CDs by SmlFreshwaterBuffalo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm not sure if it would be physically possible or not, but I'm fairly certain it would at least require the disk to be twice as thick, and would make the manufacturing process somewhat more difficult.

      Other than that, it makes sense to me, as long as they include a small label in the center saying which side is which.

    2. Re:Double sided CDs by entrigant · · Score: 2, Informative

      Hmm.. I decided to reply instead of mod you down, but the media side IS the data side in this context.

    3. Re:Double sided CDs by Blkdeath · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Why have a 'media side' at all? Why not have data on both sides of a CD?
      Personally, I doubt I'd go for this completely, but in some cases I can see it being handy (just not on a large-scale basis). ie; I can't forsee something like that replacing single-sided discs.

      Double sided DVDs are great, sure, but consider quantity. How many DVDs does the average person have compared to the number of CDRs? With spindles of 50 selling for as low as $18, these things are as prolific as black ants at a barbecue. Personally, I've only got one spindle on the go (only had my burner for a few short months) and a small spattering of CD-RWs for backups, but I know people who have significantly less HDD space than I do (or more, but are more media-happy) who have everything conceivable on CD. Audio CDs, MP3 CDs, movies, games, files of varying sorts ...

      Long story short - collections of hundreds of generic CDR discs require some sort of organization. Since spindles don't come with jewel cases (duh!) you need a label, even if it's just with a Sharpie.

      So with double-sided discs, yeah, I can write twice the data, but how on Earth am I ever going to find it again? The eyestrain of reading labels written on the little bit of media that surrounds the hole would kill me (being the fine looking four-eyes that I am).

      Nope. Can't see them becoming mainstream unless we can come up with a label that's legible, long-lasting, and that standard CD-ROM lasers can penetrate.

      --
      BD Phone Home!

      Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.

    4. Re:Double sided CDs by Abreu · · Score: 2

      Really? I dont have any CDs from the late 80's anymore, but it would be interesting to find out if this is true

      --
      No sig for the moment.
    5. Re:Double sided CDs by Abreu · · Score: 2

      Mhmm maybe they were made of a denser plastic... I too have broken a CDr easily with one hand (like an egg)... but i didnt feel they were thicker before, so thats why I was asking

      --
      No sig for the moment.
    6. Re:Double sided CDs by AntiTuX · · Score: 2

      I'm posting anonymously because of your .sig.
      SQL: Redwood City, CA

      I swear to god :)

    7. Re:Double sided CDs by SuperDuG · · Score: 3
      well aren't you just the humanitarian

      Look mr. authority on everything that is multimedia. A double sided CD-R is very possible. The media side is not the data side of the cd. The Media side is where the label or tag of the CD goes, the data side is where the information is held, and reflected off of the media side. I hope to metamod your ass some day. In closing, if there's a double sided DVD then it's more than possible to have a double sided CD-R. Ass.

      --
      Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
  9. Yamaha R1? by gTsiros · · Score: 2

    Damn...

    Hey, the Yamaha R1 is very fast...why not review that? I'm sure you speed freaks you're gonna love a 170kg 1000cc bike

    --
    Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
    1. Re:Yamaha R1? by richie2000 · · Score: 2

      Personally I prefer a 250 kg, 1100 cc bike. It doesn't burn CDs, but it's known to have left a few black marks on the road. :-)

      --
      Money for nothing, pix for free
    2. Re:Yamaha R1? by Blkdeath · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Hey, the Yamaha R1 is very fast...why not review that? I'm sure you speed freaks you're gonna love a 170kg 1000cc bike
      I'm becomming rather partial to the 1979 Yamaha XS11. Held the speed record until '84, or thereabouts, and it still soars past most moving objects on the road today.

      According to the owner (a friend of mine) when you're going about 150 in 5th, you can still give your wrist a twist and take off. Just be careful that she doesn't throw ya, 'cause she will. ;)

      </OFFTOPIC>

      --
      BD Phone Home!

      Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.

  10. Problems by Zara2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I am very suprised that this is not mentioned in the article but this technology is almost completely useless. The Disk T@2 can only be put on a area with no data. So maybe if you are copying 100MB of mp3's to a cd you could add a bit of text but if you burn more than 300MB or so there is not enough room to put the image. Personally I can't remember the last time I burned a disk with under 500mb on it so this is really a pretty useless feature, however cool I thought it would be at first before I did some research.

    --

    Pithy, yet ultimately meaningless, phrase expressed with gusto!

    1. Re:Problems by Captain+Chad · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Aside from the already-stated DRM and pr0n possibilities, I can see a use for this with promotional items. CD business cards, trial/AOL software, and (if you can do it on an audio disc) music singles.

      --
      Check out Chad's News
    2. Re:Problems by mmoncur · · Score: 2, Interesting

      500 MB? Really? Virtually every disc I burn has 100MB or less on it. They're so cheap you can waste the space, and what better way to waste a bit of space than with a cute picture.

      More importantly, you would only lose 100-200MB to print a line of text around the border. A permanent label that identifies the contents of the CD at a glance and can't be changed. I can find uses for that.

      Most importantly of all, you could buy a pack of 25-cent generic CDRs, print little pine trees and snowmen on them, and use them as Xmas ornaments. Now *that's* a useful technology.

      --

      It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
    3. Re:Problems by Zara2 · · Score: 2
      500 MB? Really? Virtually every disc I burn has 100MB or less on it. They're so cheap you can waste the space, and what better way to waste a bit of space than with a cute picture.

      Well, they may be useful for you then. Most of the time I am burning a music CD (before you complain its live and legal), a Game CD (for LAN parties ect.) or, most of the time, a system image or back-up of downloaded files. All of the above applications for cd's will use more space then I could and still get a decent image. Now I am mostly going by the feature in Maximum PC magazine but they did some extensive tests on it and stated that to get a readable font on the cd you could put a maximum of about 400MB on a CD just to do labeling, let alone a full picture.

      Now the idea of the XMAS ornaments (alternately coasters or car mirror danglies) I really do like. Not sure if I could justify buying one of these for that purpose but when I shope for a burner the next time I might think about it.

      --

      Pithy, yet ultimately meaningless, phrase expressed with gusto!

    4. Re:Problems by gmhowell · · Score: 2

      Thanks. You just saved me $150.

      I sorta suspected it.

      --
      Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
    5. Re:Problems by ruiner13 · · Score: 2
      Actually, if you read the article, it gave a few uses of it, suck as putting a serial number imprinted directly on the CD media iteself instead of worring about the ink on the label fading (some ink-jet inks fade BADLY). It is very rare that recording artists fill up an entire 74 minute CD with music, so I can see them being very interested in playing with the T@2 feature to personalize their stuff. If you are an artist trying to get started, it may be something that will catch people's eye, as it is very unique and I'm sure many people have not seen anything like that before. Music artists LOVE to push the limits of art and technology. Hell, the first hybrid cd-rom I ever had was a Primus album (tales from the punchbowl) that had a data session with a macromedia director made application.

      My question is, if you gave a CD with this on it to a fabrication facility for distrobution, would they be able to reproduce that with the stamping hardware?

      --

      today is spelling optional day.

    6. Re:Problems by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 2

      My question is, if you gave a CD with this on it to a fabrication facility for distrobution, would they be able to reproduce that with the stamping hardware?

      I am pretty sure they can, if they can make the glass master or whatever they use to press the pits into the CD.

    7. Re:Problems by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 2

      "you could buy a pack of 25-cent generic CDRs, print little pine trees and snowmen on them, and use them as Xmas ornaments."

      'You could also buy a pack of 1-cent generic sheets of paper, print little pine trees and snowmen on them, and use them as Xmas ornaments.'

      But it wouldn't be sparkly or cool! Given the common $0.99 deals for 100 generic CDs, I think it might be cheaper than prints.

    8. Re:Problems by Zara2 · · Score: 2
      Well, agian, if you have disks that don't use up the full space, more power too you. Enjoy your T@2 feature and have fun. For me, and for a lot of the rest of the burning community, being limited to even 500MB on a disk is unnacceptable when most stuff you download is 700MB.

      My question is, if you gave a CD with this on it to a fabrication facility for distrobution, would they be able to reproduce that with the stamping hardware?

      No you cannot. A CD-R uses a dye sublimation process to fake the cd drive into thinking that the pits are there. There is other technology out there to create a picture in a disk. My personal favorite example (and what I was hoping the T@2 technology could do) is the latest Aphex Twin album where the data side has a face in it. The actual data has a picture in it. Now that is cool. I believe there was a /. article about it a few months ago.

      --

      Pithy, yet ultimately meaningless, phrase expressed with gusto!

  11. nifty! by G.+W.+Bush+Junior · · Score: 4, Funny

    For all I care the burner could suck... now you can make better looking coasters!

    --
    "I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." -George H.W. Bush
    1. Re:nifty! by CaptainSuperBoy · · Score: 2

      George W. Bush didn't say that, Dan Quayle did.

  12. useful for *gasp* copy protection schemes? by lophophore · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I can imagine some creative vendor using this technology to burn bar codes (or other non-standard data) of crypt keys on CDs. The software would then verify the key data existed and allow the protected content to be accessed.

    --
    there are 3 kinds of people:
    * those who can count
    * those who can't
  13. just got one by squarefish · · Score: 2, Informative

    Last week and it's awesome. no buffer underrun errors or other problems and it's superfast. My last one was a budget burner and died after a little over a year. I went with the scsi version.
    Highly recommended!

    --
    Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
  14. Serial solution by really_blurry · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Finally, a permanent place to write down the serial!

    --
    > You've gotta sin to get saved.
  15. Useful use of this technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If it allows you to burn pits and lands arbitarily, surely you could write data in analogue laserdisc format to CD-R?

    Think how useful it would be - commercials for local TV stations could be put on CD-R. I know you can do that with recordable DVD, or just using an MPEG stream on CD-R, but this would be cheap and cost effective, assuming that the local TV station had a laserdisc player.

    Admittedly you would only get about 10 minutes of laserdisc video on a standard CD-R, but it would be really cool :-).

  16. CDR technology has a regression... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    My chief problem with CDRs is that you can't use a hole punch to make the disk double-sided.

  17. Yeah yeah ... by dsb3 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wake me up when I can burn data on the image side.

    --

    Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
  18. Re:Making such images with a regular CD burner by kmellis · · Score: 2

    If you read Tom's article, you'll see that Yamaha's using special hardware to accomplish more gradations in albedo.

  19. 12 minutes is a long time by jmichaelg · · Score: 2

    If you're burning a batch of CD's, 12 minutes to burn the image is a lot to add just to put a picture on the cd. Had I put together a birthday CD last weekend and had I burned 30 copies for the guests and had I used the image burner, it would have added six hours to the task. Seems a lot of time just to put a label on a CD.

  20. My impressions by dnight · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I just installed one of these drives last night.

    It's pretty fast, and the disk tattoo feature is really neat. I paid $180 at CDW for it. The grey(blue/whatever)scale gradients are sufficient to get a lot of detail. The Nero software will automatically thottle down the speed if the media can't handle the burn rate you select. Useful feature, imo.

    And yes, you can burn porn images. I have one disc burned with 7 boob pix around it that I plan to give to a friend and tell him it's a CD full of porn. ;)

    1. Re:My impressions by TheTomcat · · Score: 2, Funny

      And yes, you can burn porn images

      REALLY?
      You mean there's no special software that detects them and refuses the burn? hmm strange.

      </sarcasm>

      S

  21. Re:Hm... by Blkdeath · · Score: 2
    Out of curiosity, Mr. C, what makes you say that?

    I've read a few reviews from Tom's Hardware Guide and haven't (personally) found anything that stands out as being flawed, per se. Do you have any links (clickable this time, if you would. ;> ), or a basic explanation?

    (Disclaimer: I'm actually genuinely curious here)

    --
    BD Phone Home!

    Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.

  22. More than meets the eye by DeadBugs · · Score: 5, Informative

    True the image writing on the CD is mainly eye candy. But the other features that the CRW-F1 support are the reason I purchased one.

    * CAV 44X max CD-R recording
    * CAV* Ultra Speed 24X max CD-RW recording
    * CAV 44X CD reading
    * 44X max digital audio extraction
    * IDE interface
    * 8MB buffer memory
    * Safe Burn technology
    * Optimum Write Speed Control technology
    * New YDC132-V controller
    * Supports overburn
    * Supports blank CDs of 80, 90 and 99 minutes
    * Supports the DAO RAW mode
    * Mount Rainier-compatible
    * Advanced Audio Master Quality Recording technology
    * DiscT@2 technology
    * CD-RW Audio Track Edit
    * Ahead Nero Burning Rom 5.5 and InCD software
    Oh...And a cool blue LED

    --
    http://www.kubuntu.org/
  23. But no deep blue CDs available... by dramsey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've got a CRW-F1. Yes, the included software-- a version of Nero 5 which, incidentally, is too stupid to match the curvature of your text to the CD (you have to adjust it manually)-- does burn text and images to the unused portion of a CDR. Too bad that on most CDs the difference between the burned and unburned portion is so slight you'll have to hold the CD up to bright light at an angle to see anything. Yamaha includes a single CD-R with a deep blue dye layer that shows off the effect very well...but so far hasn't made these special CD-Rs available for purchase.

  24. *hum* printed image you said... by danalien · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It just accured to me that these "printed images" on the rest of the free space could be used to copyprotect a cd; (now avalible ) for us plain-users *that is*.

    The images gets burned outside the TOC, so when you read (copy) the cd all other info outside the TOC gets left out.

    Add a little "protection app" to the cd, make the cd-rom[s] execute the app. Where the apps look "in a certian place" for the right bit burnt in the right places. [Don't forget that you most likely have to encode the data of the cd; so, that only the little app that gets executed upon insertion can read&decode the contet (only IF! it finds the right bits&bytes on the cd)].

    And Voul'a a copy protected cd.


    *hum* upon more thought, You could do this with a regular cdburner too *you just need someone (or yourself) to code the right app for this certian scheme :)*. Maybe someone will start a new opensource project *hehe*

    --
    I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
  25. Not the fastest? by Lester67 · · Score: 2

    There is a consumer model that burns faster than 44x?

    I've installed several of these in external cases at work, and they are awesome little drives. (Although the Yamaha site says nothing about a SCSI version, there is one, sort of. It is an IDE drive with a SCSI converter that plugs into the IDE connector). Works like a champ, and other than DiscT@2, it can burn a CD pretty damn quick.

  26. yo *nix hippies by zdzichu · · Score: 3, Informative

    cdrecord already supports this technology - browse documentation and search for discopts=, imagefile=. Be sure to prepare 3000x40 image first :)

    --
    :wq
  27. Re:Faster than you thought by phorm · · Score: 2

    Make sure you find writable media rated at this speed though. One of my family members got a new Dell with a 24x burner, they thought it sucked because they kept making coasters every now and then. Turns out the media was rated for 12x/16x. A lot of the CD's came out fine, but burning at 40/48x on a 16x writable will probably make you a CD that holds your coffee cup better than your data.

    101 uses for a misburned CD... is there a book? - phorm

  28. Re: Airport codes by Abreu · · Score: 2

    yup... According to IATA:

    SQL : San Carlos, CA

    I guess that's probably near Redwood City... Too bad I can't add it to the sig, I already had to trim it down due to /. policies

    --
    No sig for the moment.
  29. Re: Airport codes by AntiTuX · · Score: 2

    Yah, they're right next to each other :)