Slashdot Mirror


First 16x DVD+R Recording Tests Available

An anonymous reader submits "CD Freaks.com has made a first preview of 16x DVD recording. Many people wondered if 16x DVD recording would be too fast and data could not be delivered by the hard disk. The first tests show that this is not a real problem. 16x DVD recording means that a DVD disk is written in about 6 minutes . The test drive, a BenQ DW1600, also supports dual layer writing and writing at 16x to 8x media."

15 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Re:8x vs 16x by Crazy_MYKL · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's mostly marketing, those are rated speeds, so if you burn above those and bad things happen, the company isn't responsible. But it SHOULD work with lower rated discs.

    --


    <jedi> There is something funny here. You laugh. </jedi>
  2. Re:8x vs 16x by DrLZRDMN · · Score: 3, Informative

    sometimes, spining a cd to fast will warp the disk causeing an uneven burn or even break it so if the increase the speed sturdier disks have to be made, but I think for only double the spead it shouldn't affect it to much.

  3. Re:Do DVDs work like CDs by noda132 · · Score: 3, Informative

    in that if you burn at a faster rate than a different reader can read, the DVD cannot be read. I know a while back when I had a blazing 2x cd ROM, my friend burned me something on a 4x, but alas, I couldn't read it. Needless to say I was pissed...

    No, and CDs don't work like that either. The situation you describe was an isolated incident. Even a 1x DVD reader (e.g., a DVD player) can read a 16x-burned CD. In fact, there should be no physical difference between a DVD burned at 1x and one burned at 16x.

  4. Ewww, BenQ by Dark+Lord+Seth · · Score: 4, Informative

    Horrible 'brand'. Once worked in a computer store for a while. We sold about 20 of their TFTs before we figured out that the three we had on display were showing serious signs of wear. After being on display for just two months. That, coupled with the two we already sent back for replacement, ( One simply didn't work, another one auto-adjusted the screen about 15cm too far to the right. ) make me glad I wasn't working there anymore when all those BenQ monitors started to fail on our customers.

    Anyways, let BenQ take the brunt of a new tech. If I'd want a 16x dvd+-rw drive so badly, I'd wait for very good quality ( Plextor ) or a good medium between quality and price. ( NEC ) And yes, those of you who are interested can take that as a hint.

    1. Re:Ewww, BenQ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      > they probably just buy parts from some Taiwanese company nobody's ever heard

      They ARE a Taiwanese company (that until not too long ago nobody's ever heard of).

    2. Re:Ewww, BenQ by number · · Score: 2, Informative

      I must admit I'm a tad skeptical of BenQ's manufacturing quality, but on one occasion they have come through for me.

      Right now I'm reading this post back on a 15" BenQ FP557s LCD monitor I bought for $145 refurbished - no dead pixels, still running like a champ after 8 or so months (cheapest search now shows it going for ~$280). Sure it was a gamble buying a refurbed LCD without seeing it first, but it sure paid off for me!

    3. Re:Ewww, BenQ by FRiC · · Score: 2, Informative

      BenQ was split off from Acer, but they're completely different companies. The Acer group also includes AOpen, Apacer, etc.

      BenQ was trying to take over Acer a few months ago...

  5. Re:Good for them by _generica · · Score: 5, Informative

    /bok'sn/ pl.n. [very common; by analogy with VAXen]
    Fanciful plural of box often encountered in the phrase `Unix boxen', used to describe commodity Unix hardware. The connotation is that any two Unix boxen are interchangeable.

    ph34r

  6. Re:Media price by Patrick+Cable+II · · Score: 3, Informative

    Economics! Supply and Demand.

    When there was a short supply of DVD-r 4x media, it costs more as a result of short supply. There wasnt much demand, so no reason to have a large supply. As demand increased, supply increased and you had a lowering in price.

    wow!

  7. Re:Good for them by Bios_Hakr · · Score: 2, Informative

    Look at the peak transfer rate of your device and decide if it can keep up with a 16x drive.

    I have a single SATA 10k Raptor. It sustains between 40MB/s and 55MB/s depending on which tool I'm using to check. The slowest part of the drive still sustains 35MB/s.

    Most ATA100/133 hard drives sustain 25MB/s to 40MB/s. Even my external enclosure can sustain 20MB/s.

    I have used SATA and ATA RAID0 in the past. I'm not really impressed with it. The benchmarks show a doubling of transfer, but load times (esp in BF1942) only drop by about 10%.

    --
    I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
  8. Re:The need for speed by WiPEOUT · · Score: 2, Informative

    Note to mods: the above should have been moderated Interesting, not Insightful.

    His historical anecdote about problems with CD-R devices at a time when there was little mainstream laser-recording manufacturing has little relevance today. In those days, a CD-R drive cost US$1,000, attempted to write at 150KB/s and burned coasters if you sneezed, the wind changed, or the CD fairy decided to have fun.

    Today, DVD+/-R/RW drives have been around for years, and you can get a top-of-the-line drive for US$80 that writes to quality media of all four major formats reliably at 10,400KB/s.

    Dual-layer burning may yet only be on the horizon, but that's not necessarily any reason to say that existing single-layer 4.7GB media aren't great value for money.

  9. Re:8x vs 16x by Laebshade · · Score: 2, Informative

    The difference, though I am not an expert by any means, between 8x and 16x dvd+r (or 32x and 48x cdrs) is the guaranteed labeled quality. You are guaranteed by the company who makes the medium that it is capable of being burned and read at said speed.

    That doesn't mean it can't be written at higher than said guaranteed rate; on the contrary, I have cdrs that are guaranteed to write/read up to 48x, but I write all of them at 52x.

  10. 16x DVD = 21MB/s (roughly) by doormat · · Score: 2, Informative

    21MB/s isnt all that fast. The new WD SATA drives are from 35MB/s to 60MB/s. No, a 5400 drive wont cut it, but any 7200 drive made in the past 2 years should be good. See here and look at "WB99 Disk/Read Transfer Rate - End in MB/Sec".

    --
    The Doormat

    If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
  11. Re:Good for them by anethema · · Score: 3, Informative

    Where to these misinformed people come out of the woodwork ?

    Windows XP loads my silicon image driver right from it database, no disk needed. (tho i have sp1)

    The only time windows doesnt support sata is on install. Then you have to put in the driver floppy and load the drivers yourself at the beginning of the install process (right when you boot from the xp cd.)

    The alternative for people who, like me, dont own a floppy drive and maybe havent had one for years (also like me:) is to slipstream the drivers (plus any service packs and critical updates they want) into the windows xp installation.

    Instructions on how to do that are here

    Or, a better solution, created by the same person as the site above, is to use his program (its actually just an elaborate batch file that calls certain programs) which creates the entire structure for you if you provide the updates and drivers, and burns you a new bootable xp cd. (given the old one of course). This is what i use for my raid0 setup with silicon image 3112r chip.

    Site here

    --


    It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
  12. It's more than that by mdarksbane · · Score: 2, Informative

    The polycarb that the CD's are made out of starts to deform at high speed. Even if it were perfectly balanced to begin with, if you spun it faster than 52x for a little while, it wouldn't be any more.

    Eventually the stress from the deformation becomes too much and they explode.

    I remember a study where they put a teflon wire on the outside of the cd. The polycarb warped around the wire at high speed.

    So, in short, it'll take a bit more re-engineering than that to get higher rpm's out of CD's.