X-bit labs

MSI DR16-B2 DVD±RW Dual Layer Burner: Repeated Success or New Heights? (page 11)

Category: Storage

by Vasily Melnik

[ 09/27/2005 | 09:43 PM ]

DVD Burn Quality

The following media were used in the tests:

• DVD+R Verbatim Advanced AZO (Mitsubishi Chemical, MID: MCC 004 (000))
• DVD-R Verbatim Advanced AZO (Mitsubishi Chemical, MID: MCC 02RG20)
• DVD+RW Verbatim DataLifePlus (MID: MKM A02 (000))
• DVD-RW Verbatim DataLifePlus (MID: MCC 01RW4X)

The following table shows you the duration of the burn session for each format and speed:

The drives again take the same time to process any type of DVD media. The only difference is that the BenQ drive could burn an 8x DVD-R disc at higher burn speeds while the MSI burned it only at the speed the blank was rated for.

I will now discuss the quality of the recorded discs, starting from write-once formats.

Single-Write (Non-Rewritable) DVD Media

The two discs differ in their quality, despite the drives having performed the burning in the same manner. The total number of PI Error blocks found on the disc from the BenQ is two times smaller than on the disc from MSI DR16-B2. This is the only success of the BenQ in this test, however. The total number of PI Failure blocks is smaller on the MSI disc by a factor of 30! Well, the average PI Failure rate is acceptable even on the BenQ disc (but it is close to the limit), but there is a high spike of PI Failures on the outermost tracks of the disc. The same goes for PI Errors, too, although not so dramatically.

The Beta graph is normal, with small and quite acceptable fluctuations. The Jitter parameter is acceptable, too. But looking at the results of the TA Test I should note that the MSI drive doesn’t maintain the required pit/land lengths at 4x burn speed. Jitter is overall small (it is only rather high for the small-lengths pits and lands), but the Peak Shift parameter is rather big. It means the drive makes the pits a little shorter and the lands a little longer than they should be.