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."

Comments

Yes, but....

[ikkonoishi]

I doubt I could play UT while burning to a DVD at 16x.

You would need basically a dedicated machine for DVD burning at that speed.

Re:Yes, but....

[WiPEOUT]

... or a box with either a SCSI drive or dual CPUs ... or one of the upcoming dual-core CPUs and/or the next generation of SATA which should support command queueing and re-ordering.

Good for them

[huber]

they had an SATA raid 0 array. What about us people whos boxen still only has a single ata 100 or 133?

Re:Good for them

[forkazoo]

Well, first off, "boxen have" .. "a box has." But, I'm not a grammar nazi. :)

Only ATA 133? I work at a computer store, and I get plenty of people with PII's and low spec PIII's coming in all the time who want to make DVD's. The salesman five years ago told them that the computer was very fast, so they typically accuse me of being just a damned liar when I tell them it may not work very well. Oh, and most home users have HP Pavillions and E-Machines and shit like that. You ever benchmark the drives in the super-cheap consumer systems? The drive diagnostic program we use at the shop can usually get ~5 MB/sec out of an E-machines. That's going to RAM, not another drive.

A lot of people won't be able to use the 16 X features of this drive. OTOH, it probably has a larger buffer than a cheap 2.4x drive, so it will probably burn better at 1x than the old drives.

Re:Good for them

[Doppler00]

The benchmarks show a doubling of transfer, but load times (esp in BF1942) only drop by about 10%.

Then obviously, BF1942 loading maps is CPU or memory bound, not disk bound.

Hmm... since you mentioned that, maybe I shouldn't spend the money on a two drive 10,000RPM SATA RAID0 array...

8x vs 16x

[Coneasfast]

what is the real difference between 16x discs and 8x discs? what physically makes it writeable at one speed but not another? i've wondered about this for CD's too.

is it just a marketing thing or what?

Re:8x vs 16x

[wo1verin3]

Actually there is a little more then that when it comes to CD-RW (most) and DVD discs. Drives actually detect what speed the media is rated at, so if you have a 1x DVD-R disc, you can only write to it at 1x, other speed options will be unavailable.

Napkin math calculations (16X speed)

[(1337) God]

DVD: 4.7 GB / 6 minutes = 0.78 GB / minute burnt to disc
CD-R: 650 MB / 6 minutes = 108.33 MB / minute = 0.11 GB / minute burnt to disc

It's clear here that DVD is definitely the way to go if you want good storage size backed up quickly.

CD-Rs are still best for compatibility's sake (every CPU has a CD drive these days, but not all have DVD drives/software) though, and also for car stereo players.

Physical limits of the medium a factor.

[cascino]

With CDs having reached (essentially) the physical limits of the media at 52x burning speed - it is my understanding the discs will destruct at higher RPM's - has the speed of DVD burning neared its physical limit as well?
A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that DVDs shouldn't be burnable much faster than 16x... does anyone know anything more about this? Maybe DVDs are more durable than CDs?

Re:Ahem

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how hard would it be to do something to that nature by putting in a better motor and tweaking the firmware? There probobly a good reason it wouldn't work ... anyone know?

• Tracking (jitter)
• Linearity (timing)
• Laser intensity per unit time

Those three should be enough.

Re:Ewww, BenQ

[shepd]

BenQ is/was Acer. The proud manufacturers of old Apple laptops.

Let me just put it this way: Budget prices, budget brand, budget use. >:-D

We bought a couple of hundred 56i Acer monitors for labs at my old college. I do believe the failure rate approached 99%. In the end, a special deal was made so that the wholesaler could work on the warranty situation. All in all, it kept me busy! :-D

Average write speed under 12x?

[Guspaz]

The average write speed on this drive barely qualifies it as a 12x drive. Claiming this is a 16x drive is silly.

8x drives typically pull in average write speeds of 0.4 to 0.6 x lower than their rated spec (Like the 7.44x quoted in this article)... but THIS drive is pulling 4.7x lower than it's rated spec. It's burning at 11.32x... In my mind, that classifies this drive as a 12x, NOT a 16x.

Re:I think I speak for many when I say

[the_bard17]

how often do people burn an entire DVD?

Any time anybody wants to back up a sizeable portion of their system. Which people ought to be doing fairly regularly, right? ;o)
If you burn so many that speed matters you probably shouldn't be using a consumer solution anyway.

You might have a point here... though it's not that "lost time" that matters. It's the perception of that lost time that matters. Nobody I know says "Oh, it's 'bout time I backed up my system. Let's go eat lunch while the DVD burns." Instead, they stare down that little progress bar. Then that additional burning time makes a difference.

DVDs aren't more durable, but...

[drewhearle]

The physical limits of CD burning (the speeds that often cause shattering) aren't because CDs are easily breakable. It's because CDs are imperfectly manufactured, and therefore imbalanced - a CD spinning at 52x that isn't perfectly round will be wobbling with an incredible amount of force.

So... for DVDs to be able to spin at faster speeds, the discs (and drives) will have to be manufactured to very high specs. Very slight variations in the roundness of the disc would cause enough vibration to break the disc. A non-round or off-center hole in the middle would also cause this problem.

Uh, how about no...

[Cyno01]

Me and some friends of mine did a short movie and did a run of about 100 copies. It took us about 50 hours total, just burning. I dont know how much having a small run like that pressed would cost, but i'm sure its more than the cost of 100 DVDs and our time (which is obviously worthless). But yeah, it woulda been nice to save some time.

Do These Numbers Look Right to You?

[Pooua]

I am perplexed by the numbers given for this so-called, "16x" DVD burner. Let's start with the rated speeds, and compare it to my 2-month old Maddog 8x Dominator 6-in-1 Dual DVD burner.

First, the BenQ:

Writing DVD+R discs: 16x
Writing DVD+RW discs: 4x
Writing DVD+R Dual Layer discs: 2.4x
Writing CD-R discs: 40x
Writing CD-RW discs: 24x
Reading DVD-Discs: 16x
Reading CD-Discs: 40x
Access time CD/DVD: 120ms
Buffer: 2Mb

Now, my Maddog:

Writing DVD+/-R discs: 8x
Writing DVD+/-RW discs: 4x
Writing DVD+R Dual Layer discs: Unk*
Writing CD-R discs: 32x
Writing CD-RW discs: 16x
Reading DVD-Discs: 12x
Reading CD-Discs: 40x
Access time CD/DVD: 110/130 ms
Buffer: 2Mb

As you can see, the specs show that my 8x Maddog is almost as fast as the 16x BenQ!

Then, there is the statement in the review that says it only takes an average of about 6 minutes to burn a DVD at 16x (actually, average speed is only 11.32x). Compare this to the 8-to-9 minutes it takes to burn a DVD at 8x.

These results are underwhelming. I would expect more from a 16x DVD burner.

*Rumor on Usenet is that some DVD burners, such as the Pioneer A07 currently on the market, will be able to burn dual-layer DVDs with a simple firmware upgrade. Indeed, some of these models already *have* burned dual-layer in hacked versions. No word on where people got the dual-layer media.

Re:I think I speak for many when I say

[Pooua]

how often do people burn an entire DVD?

FYI, I am scanning my old family photographs from negatives, and one batch resulted in files that are 80 Meg per photo. I could only fit 50 of these on a DVD (out of the 67 I scanned). I have hundreds of photos. I've also started shooting video on miniDV, which already could swamp my 250-Gig hard drive, much less my puny 4.7-Gig DVDs.

Re:Grandparent is *not* an isolated incident.

[Alioth]

IIRC, the reason your old CD drive might not read a CD-R burned at high speed is because the new high speed writers use CAV (constant angular velocity - i.e. the disk RPM remains the same regardless of whether you're writing a track near the hub or near the edge). Older CD drives may not be able to do CAV since the CD standard is for CLV (constant linear velocity - the bit of disk right over the head is always going the same speed relative to the read head, hence the disk is spun faster on tracks near the hub and spun slower on tracks near the edge).