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First 16x DVD+R Recording Tests Available

Posted by timothy on from the buncha-freaks dept.

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."

54 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Typo? by lancomandr · · Score: 2, Insightful
    "The test drive, a BenQ DW1600 also supports dual layer writing and writing to 16x at 8x media."

    Last time I checked I couldn't write to 16x itself at any speed of media.

    --

    "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

  2. Ahem by The-Bus · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've already overclocked my DVD burner. It now burns stuff I haven't even downloaded yet.

    --

    Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.

    1. Re:Ahem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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.
  3. Yes, but.... by ikkonoishi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Yes, but.... by damiangerous · · Score: 5, Funny

      Or you could, you know, maybe stop playing UT for the six minutes it takes to burn a DVD at that speed.

    2. Re:Yes, but.... by kfg · · Score: 5, Funny

      Good Lord man! The average person will pass out after only two minutes of not playing UT and it takes years of training to go as long as five.

      Expecting the average Joe to stop for six is simply absurd.

      KFG

    3. Re:Yes, but.... by WiPEOUT · · Score: 2, Interesting

      ... 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.

  4. Could they confuse you anymore... by bdigit · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The opening sentence...

    "We have just seen the first 12x DVD-writers appearing in stores, and here we have it; the first 16X DVD-Writer!"

    All those dashes confuse the hell out of me when we have DVD media that is referred to by DVD+R or DVD-R. I had to re-read to make sure they were really talking about DVD+R and not DVD-R.

  5. Good for them by huber · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

    1. 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

    2. Re:Good for them by forkazoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    3. 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.
    4. Re:Good for them by eht · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's retard for plural of box.

    5. Re:Good for them by Doppler00 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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...

    6. 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.
    7. Re:Good for them by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Funny

      It's more like what Mike Tyson does if he has a date...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  6. 8x vs 16x by Coneasfast · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

    --
    Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
    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:8x vs 16x by wo1verin3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    4. 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.

    5. Re:8x vs 16x by Pooua · · Score: 4, Insightful
      As I understand it, the main difference in writing speeds between various types of optical media is the dye formulation used in the media.

      "To achieve 2.4x high-speed writing, Verbatim DVD+R utilises a patented Metal Azo dye as the recording layer."

      Verbatim: Verbatim Announces 4.7GB DVD+R Discs

      --
      Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
  7. The need for speed by Slayer_X · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Man, wait some months and u can obtain the uber DVD-burner at XX mega-hyper-speed.

    Is really a need to have the last toy in hardware?

    Don't waste your money :-D

    "saludos"

    --
    - Slayer_X
    http://www.slayerx.org/
    Lima
    1. Re:The need for speed by FlipmodePlaya · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I jumped on the CDR bandwagon a bit early, and god burned by it. The drive I bought ruined discs far too often, in the days where they weren't $.20 a piece. Yet there was no hope for a return, because that was the 'nature of CD burning'. I won't make the same mistake with DVD burners, I advise all to wait a year or two.

    2. Re:The need for speed by mblase · · Score: 4, Funny

      I jumped on the CDR bandwagon a bit early, and god burned by it.

      Perhaps if you hadn't been stealing music or archiving pr0n, God wouldn't have felt it necessary to smite you with fire for your actions.

    3. 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.

  8. Finally... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    My porn backups will be able to keep up with my downloads...

  9. The Best Part? by wandernotlost · · Score: 3, Funny

    At the end of the page:

    "It is not possible to react on this item."

  10. Re:Do DVDs work like CDs by ahaning · · Score: 5, Funny

    Heh. Things have progressed a bit since the 2x CD-R days. What probably happened was that your drive just wasn't able to distinguish the pits in the CD your friend burned.

    I have an older (5-6 years old) laptop whose CD-ROM drive can't read all the discs I burn. It can read most any silver that I give it, though. I'm guessing it's just that the laser isn't able to "see" the pits my CDRW burns (it's an 8x4x32, so it's rather old, too.)

    BTW, if you burn audio discs at 16x, do they play at that speed? ;-)

    --
    Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
  11. Data from HD no problem.... With Raid 0 by CtrlPhreak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Come on guys, not everyone has raid with two fast drives, last I'd checked a lot of consumer pcs still ship with 5400 drives. This bottleneck may indeed be a problem with burning 16x dvds on the average system.

    --
    WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
    1. Re:Data from HD no problem.... With Raid 0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yeah but using RIAA math, the amount of people doing illegel burning has just doubled.

  12. 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.

  13. Physical limits of the medium a factor. by cascino · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  14. 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.

    --
    Hate me!
    1. Re:Ewww, BenQ by ameoba · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I doubt BenQ actually makes any of their own hardware; they probably just buy parts from some Taiwanese company nobody's ever heard of and put it into a BenQ box.

      --
      my sig's at the bottom of the page.
    2. Re:Ewww, BenQ by shepd · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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

      --
      If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
    3. 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!

      --
      - HOORAY!
    4. 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...

  15. just a question by louden+obscure · · Score: 5, Funny

    am i gonna need a kevlar blanket to drape over my damn box just in case a faulty disc explodes?

    --
    Serenity now, insanity later.
  16. I think I speak for many when I say by ashot · · Score: 2, Insightful


    who cares?

    6 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, does it matter?

    how often do people burn an entire DVD? If you burn so many that speed matters you probably shouldn't be using a consumer solution anyway.

    --
    -ashot
    1. Re:I think I speak for many when I say by the_bard17 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:I think I speak for many when I say by Pooua · · Score: 2, Interesting
      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.

      --
      Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
  17. a summary by vmircea · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Basically to give a little summary for people who like having information condensed into a readable form... of things you should know about this technology...

    1. Unless you have a smoking hard drive you're not gonna see 16X speeds (ATA hard drive? you wish)

    2. Unless your PC is relatively fast as well, in addition to a good deal of RAM (as in their test system) it's also not going to happen.

    3. And an IMPORTANT note: Don't get caught up in the craze of getting the newest thing, this will probably cost an unholy amount when it comes out, and the requirements will be really high, which will add to the price as well. I have a 4X DVDRW and although it isn't anywhere near as fast, I don't need godly system specs to use it. And neither do I need to drop anything else I'm doing. Also note that on a lesser system that they tested it with you will see significantly slower writing.

    Hope you found this helpful.

    1. Re:a summary by sexecutioner · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In response to point (2).

      You could also have 4GB of RAM (or so), and do the burn from there.

      Just a thought.

  18. Average write speed under 12x? by Guspaz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  19. 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!

  20. Grandparent is *not* an isolated incident. by The+Darkness · · Score: 4, Insightful
    No, and CDs don't work like that either.

    Sorry to burst your bubble, but they most certainly do.

    It most certainly could be that an old drive can't read discs burned by newer, faster drives. The older drives may be less fault tolerant. Pre-pressed discs could be ok but a disc burned too fast could have pits just slightly too close together or too far apart that confuse the older drive.

    I have seen this happen with CDs on more than one occasion. Slowing down the burn speed made a disc usable by the older drive. Think PSX backups.

    In fact, there should be no..

    Should being the key word.
    A Wise man whose name I can't remember once said: In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

    --
    There are two kinds of people: 1) those that need closure
    1. Re:Grandparent is *not* an isolated incident. by Alioth · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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).

      --
      Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
  21. DVDs aren't more durable, but... by drewhearle · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.

    --
    -- If you can read this, you are too close to my signature.
  22. Re:Storage. by Hes+Nikke · · Score: 2, Funny

    750 Megabyte was amazing
    especially considering that the biggest discs at the time were 650 MB! (read "D'oh!")

    --
    Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
  23. 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.
  24. Uh, how about no... by Cyno01 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    --
    "Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
  25. Do These Numbers Look Right to You? by Pooua · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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.

    --
    Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
  26. 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.