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by Andrey Kuznetcov
06/24/2004 | 08:22 AM
The situation in the market of optical drives has been steadily approaching its resolution. The average price of writable DVD-ROMs has been declining, making them more attractive to the common user.
<%BANNER[article]%>The struggle between the two emerging optical technologies – Blu-Ray and HD-DVD – and the impendent onslaught of such devices also has an impact on the market of DVD drives. As usual, the current models become cheaper seeing next-generation products getting ready to take the market.
The price gap between DVD-RWs and DVD/CD-RW combos diminishing, I think a majority of users will vote for DVD-burners which are also becoming a bargain because of the constantly cheapening DVD media. For example, today the cost of 1MB of storage on a CD-R blank is higher in average than on a DVD+R disc.
The calculation is easy. One CD-R blank costs about 27 cents, while a DVD+R blank costs about $1.2 (I mean discs that come without an envelope, on a spindle). As you know, one DVD disc contains as much data as fits into six 700MB CDs and more, so buying a DVD-burner allows saving money on storage media in the future.
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This drive comes into the marker under the ASUS brand, but it is in fact an OEM Pioneer DVR-106 model and resembles much other products of the well-known Japanese manufacturer. Anyway, there are letters “ASUS” on the front panel, next to the symbols denoting the device’s class. Then, the front panel carries an eject button, a LED and two horizontal slits, one for ventilation and another for show. At the back side of the drive we find power and interface connectors, an analog audio output, and two jumper sets, one of which selects the device’s status on the IDE channel (Master, Slave, Cable Select) and another serves for factory diagnostics. There’s no digital audio output – mark this if you use this output often. There are circle-shaped vent holes at the butt-end of the case.
Among the drive’s technical characteristics the support of the two competing formats (DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW) may be noted. The drive reads DVDs at 12x and CDs at 32x (I always tell the maximum speeds in this article; you may want to make the drive work at a smaller speed to reduce its noise). It burns DVD-RW media at 2x and DVD+RW discs at 2.4x. CD-Rs are written at 16x and CD-RWs at 10x. The amount of cache memory onboard is 2MB. The access time is 140msec for DVD media and 130msec for CDs. The drive supports UDMA Mode 2.
The ASUS DRW-0402P/D comes without accessories in the OEM version. The average retail price is $110.
The second model of ASUS we include into this review is another OEM product of Pioneer, the DVR-107D model. The device is shipped in a box with the basic technical characteristics written on it. The face side of the drive differs from what we see in the original model from Pioneer, though. The tray is shaped bulging forward and the name of the manufacturer and the icons are written with dark paint. A rectangular eject button and a LED are placed below the tray. Two pressed horizontal stripes on the face panel enliven the drive’s design. The back of the case carries power and interface connectors, an analog audio output and the jumpers. There’s no digital audio output.
The drive supports two formats and reads DVDs at 12x and CDs at 40x. It can burn DVD-R and DVD+R blanks at 8x and do the same with DVD±RW discs at 4x. CD-R and CD-RW discs are written at 24x. The size of the cache-buffer is 2MB; the access times for DVDs and CDs are 140 and 130msec, respectively.
The device uses a number of original technologies. Particularly, FlextraLink allows avoiding buffer underrun errors, while FlextraSpeed automatically selects the optimal burn speed to ensure precision and reliability when burning and rewriting various data media. Besides that, the ASUS DRW-0804P features a deformation compensation mechanism called Liquid Crystal Tilt. This technology helps to avoid inaccuracy that arises during writing and playing back media with non-standard thickness or curvature.
ASUS traditionally complements its retail products with numerous and comprehensive accessories. Here we have an IDE cable, an audio cable, mounting screws, a user manual, a quick installation guide, a software CD with a set of programs from Nero and the ASUS DVD utility.
The average retail price of the ASUS DRW-0804P is $125.
Pioneer is among the most prominent figures in the market of DVD equipment; you can find other companies shipping drives from Pioneer under their own brands. The exterior of the DVR-107D model may be viewed as a traditional design of a DVD burner from Pioneer. The front panel is unpretentious, without any decorations. The symbols denoting the device’s class are printed on the face panel. The rectangular eject button, a LED and a vent slit are below the tray; the second slit is a decoration element. The butt-end of the case has power and interface connectors, an analog audio output and two jumper sets (for setting the status of the device on the IDE channel and for factory diagnostics). There’s no digital audio output. Circle-shaped vent holes are found there, too.
The device supports the two basic formats. It reads DVDs at 12x and CDs at 40x, writes DVD-R and DVD+R blanks at 8x, and processes DVD-RW and DVD+RW at 4x. CD-R and CD-RW media are written at 24x. The cache-buffer size is 2MB; the access time for DVDs and CDs is 140 and 130msec, respectively.
The OEM version of the drive comes with a short exploitation manual. The average retail price of the Pioneer DVR-107D is $105.
This is an OEM version of the DRU-510A drive. The tray is absolutely bare, while the class-denoting symbols and the eject button and the LED are placed below it. The back side of the case carries power and interface connectors, analog and digital audio outputs, and a jumper set for setting the drive’s status on the IDE channel.
This multi-format drive has the following maximum speeds: 12x DVD and 32x CD read (the manufacturer makes a stipulation that DVD-Video discs are read at 2x speed only), 24x CD-R and 16x CD-RW write. DVD±R and DVD+RW media are written at 4x, and DVD-RW discs are burned at 2x. The amount of cache memory is 8MB; the access time is 200 and 160msec for DVDs and CDs, respectively.
The OEM version of the Sony DW-U14A comes without accessories. Its average retail price is $105.
This drives sells under the Sony brand, but is actually a SOHW 812S model from LITE-ON. The look of the face panel doesn’t practically differ from the previous model – it only contains an eject button and a LED. Judging from the snapshot on LITE-ON’s Web-site, the Sony DW-U18A differs from its original in the lack of a headphones socket and volume control on the front panel. The case is rather short, so you can use this drive in “cramped” system cases. At the butt-end you see power and interface connectors, analog and digital audio outputs and a jumper for defining the drive’s status on the IDE cable.
This multi-format drive allows reading DVDs at 12x and CDs at 40x. It can burn DVD±R at 8x and DVD±RW at 4x. CD-R and CD-RW discs can be written at 40x and 24x, respectively. The access time is 160msec for both CDs and DVDs. The buffer is 2MB big.
The Sony DW-U18A features a bunch of exclusive technologies for better operation. SMART BURN (Smart Monitoring & Adapting Recording Technology for Burning) helps avoid buffer underrun errors, selects the burn strategy and performs Optimum Power Calibration for the best burn quality. SMART-X technology (Smart Monitoring & Adjusting Read-speed Technology for eXtraction) allows selecting the maximum acceptable speed of reading CD-DA/VCD/DVD discs depending on the quality of the media (to minimize read errors). The Vibration Absorber System innovation lessens the vibration and noise from the device.
The OEM version of the drive comes without accessories at $110.
The last drive included into this review again comes from LITE-ON (the LDW-811S model), although ships under the TEAC brand. Again, the case is short in length, which allows avoiding problem during its installation into small system cases. The design of the drive makes it memorable among other devices of the class due to the name of the firm, written on the tray in blue. Under the tray there are an eject button and a LED and a headphones socket with a volume control. The usual power and interface connectors, analog and digital audio outputs and a jumper are all found at the back side of the case.
Being in fact a product of LITE-ON, the TEAC DV-W58G supports SMART BURN, SMART-X and VAS technologies, mentioned above.
The OEM version of the TEAC DV-W58G comes without any accessories for $115.
We made use of the following software to check out the operational characteristics of the drives:
The testbed was configured as follows:
The drives were attached to the second IDE channel as “Master” during our tests.
Nero Info Tool and DVDINFOPro helped us to reveal the basic technical characteristics of the drives. You can see the results in the screenshots below:
First of all, I’d like to note that all the drives support the RPC II region-dependent protection system. In order to bypass this protection, you may search the Internet or jump right to the popular site www.rpc1.com to find firmware and utilities to switch the drive into the RPC I status. It is especially simple and effortless with DVD-burners originally manufactured by LITE-ON.
You run a special utility in Windows and select the Disable menu item. After that you can enjoy DVD discs from any region of this world.
The result is shown in the above screenshot made in Nero Info Tool with the Sony DW-U18A. All the drives reported support of C2 error correction, but we will see afterwards that it’s not all simple with C2 errors.
We tested the drives in CD WinBench 99 using an original disc and two copies made on CD-R and CD-RW discs. The following table contains the results:
The above graphs show that the Sony DW-U18A stumbled on the original disc, slowing down on the last stretch. The rest of the drives had no problems whatever, only showing different speeds. According to CD-ROM WinMark score, the TEAC DV-W58G is the fastest, being the best with two types of media out of three. The Sony DW-U18A is just a little slower. The Sony DW-U14A takes the third position with a noticeable lag. The remaining three models fell behind farther, although two of them have a declared read speed of 40x.
The TEAC DV-W58G happens to have the lowest access time, and the Sony DW-U18A is just a little worse than that. The Sony DW-U14A is the worst in this respect, while the two ASUS drives and the Pioneer again show very similar results.
We ran CD-DVD Speed on discs of two categories. First we used five CD discs: a molded CD enclosed with a computer magazine, 700MB data CD-R and CD-RW discs, written with the testing utility itself, a likewise-prepared 800MB CD-R disc, and an Audio CD. Second, we used five DVD media: a DVD-ROM with a movie and its copies on a DVD-R (Digitex), DVD-RW (TDK), DVD+R (Fujifilm) and DVD+RW (Verbatim). Thus we can see how the drives work with different media types and reveal any compatibility problems.
CD media
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DVD-RW model | CD-ROM | CD-R | CD-R 800MB | CD-RW | CD-DA |
ASUS DRW-0402P/D | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
ASUS DRW-0804P | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
Pioneer DVR-107D | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
Sony DW-U14A | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
Sony DW-U18A | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
TEAC DV-W58G | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
All the drives reach their maximum declared speeds on CDs and even exceed them somewhat. The Sony DW-U14A couldn’t work with a CD-R disc from TDK of 800MB capacity. The four high-speed drives with a specified maximum read speed of CDs of 40x reach only about 33x on the CD-RW. The TEAC DV-W58G and the Sony DW-U18A look best of all in the access time parameter, while the Sony DW-U14A is the worst. The rest of the results can be read in the table; they are of less importance, mostly.
DVD media
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DVD-RW model | CD-ROM | CD-R | CD-R 800MB | CD-RW | CD-DA |
ASUS DRW-0402P/D | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
ASUS DRW-0804P | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
Pioneer DVR-107D | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
Sony DW-U14A | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
Sony DW-U18A | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
TEAC DV-W58G | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
Now, let’s examine the results we got with DVD discs. The read speeds are given as we had them in CD-DVD Speed. Several extremely high values we got at the end of discs are due to the problems the drives met at the final stage – you can see it in the graphs. In such cases we should pay attention to averaged numbers to compare the performance of different drives. All the models reached their specified read speed, save for the Sony DW-U14A, but this is only because we used a DVD Video disc and this drive is declared to process such discs at 2x. Overall, summing up the results on all the media types, I’d say the ASUS DRW-0804P, Pioneer DVR-107D and Sony DW-U18 are the fastest, while the Sony DW-U14A is the slowest (again, because of the manufacturer’s imposed restrictions on its speed with video discs). The TEAC DV-W58G boasts the smallest access time; the Sony DW-U18A closely follows.
Advanced DAE Quality Test helps estimate the drive’s skills in high-quality extraction of audio tracks from Audio CDs. This test can make use of certain hardware capabilities of the drive relevant to music extraction. We carried out our tests using two Audio CDs prepared by the test utility itself. They were two CD-R blanks, one normal and another with scratches on the surface.
Let’s first see what hardware properties of the drives the test utility could reveal. From the purely formalistic point of view, the Sony DW-U18A and TEAC DV-W58G look advantageous, since they have the lowest offset which reflects the drive’s ability to position its laser accurately and they both support all three types of servo information out of four possible.
The Quality Score is the maximum possible for all the drives as they process the normal Audio CD. The four models with the highest specified CD read speeds turn to be the fastest in practice, too.
The results differ greatly with the scratched CD. The Sony DW-U18A couldn’t pass the test, reporting a non-recoverable error. The TEAC DV-W58G was the best among the other drives, getting the maximum Quality Score, although at a rather average speed. The remaining models got too many errors and thus got a lower score.
Nearly all modern optical drives feature a hardware error-correction mechanism, but of a varying degree of efficiency. We used the Advanced DAE Error Correction Test to find the best error-processing drive.
We had a special Audio CD prepared by Nero CD-DVD Speed. The disc had scratches on the surface – it was the same as in the previous test. The program identifies how many C2 errors should be overall found by the drive and how many of them the drive does find. Besides that, the test controls the number of sync errors. Then, the Quality Score and C2 Accuracy are calculated basing on the results. You may know that C2 errors pose the biggest problem for optical drives.
We took the results into the above table. The TEAC DV-W58G achieved the highest Quality Score; it is followed by the two slowest drives, the Sony DW-U14A and ASUS DRW-0402P/D. The drives from ASUS, the Pioneer DVR-107D and the Sony DW-U14A prove to be much more watchful working with C2 errors – they are much faster than the remaining two models. Considering this situation under a different point of view, we may note that the Sony DW-U18A and the TEAC DV-W58G committed fewer errors in the absolute calculus than their opponents. So it’s a question what’s better in practice.
CD Quality Check is a tool for checking the drive’s ability to process bad-quality media. We used a printed data CD with a physically-damaged surface. The results are listed below:
According to the numbers, the ASUS DRW-0804P and the Pioneer DVR-107D win this test. They have no C2 errors and get the maximum quality score. On the other hand, this is only true if the two drives really can process such errors – this ability was questioned in other tests. The drives from Sony and the TEAC DV-W58G got the most errors and zeroes in the “Quality Score” column.
The special-purpose Nero CD DAE utility allows checking the drive’s speed at ripping audio tracks and saving them in the WAV format. This utility doesn’t use any specific hardware capabilities of the drives and its algorithm is similar to many other programs of this kind that the users employ for music digitization.
The drives were extracting eighteen audio tracks from an Audio CD at the maximum possible speed.
As you see, there are no errors committed. As for speed, the ASUS DRW-0804P and the Pioneer DVR-107D were the fastest, but closely followed by the Sony DW-U18A and TEAC DV-W58G. As we might have expected, the models with the smallest declared CD-processing speed, the ASUS DRW-0402P/D and the Sony DW-U14A, are the slowest.
EAC is among the best programs to check out the optical drive’s ability to extract audio tracks. It uses all the hardware features of the drive to create best-quality audio files.
On the first step we checked out the availability of three important functions in the tested drives. I mean data caching, “accurate stream” and C2 errors. The first function hinders making precise audio copies, while the other two facilitate this process. We also proved the drives’ ability to process C2 errors by means of a special “scratched” Audio CD created in Nero CD-DVD Speed.
On the second step we used EAC to measure the time it took the drive to extract eighteen audio tracks and convert them into WAV-files. This procedure was carried out in the Secure mode using the hardware capabilities of the devices. This approach provides the best quality compared to other modes, but it takes more time.
The test produced rather strange results, especially for the models originally manufactured by Pioneer. The program didn’t find these drives capable of working with C2 errors, giving the appropriate message immediately, while it took the program some time to recognize this function in other devices. This situation left more questions than answers as all the drives reported their ability to correct C2 errors to Nero Info Tool. It’s hard to tell where the truth is. All the drives we test should support C2 errors and the problem may be with the testing program itself, or this function doesn’t work properly in the drives. Anyway, all the settings in the Secure Mode were chosen according to the diagnostics report and the Pioneer DVR-107D and the Sony DW-U14A were the fastest at extracting audio tracks and transforming them into WAV files. This fact can only be explained by their not spending time for correcting C2 errors, while the Sony DW-U14A, which should have been slower than them, worked without caching audio data, thus not spending time for clearing the cache up on each read of the data.
We run this popular CD-copying program to copy a licensed copy-protected CD with the “Cossacks” game into an image file on the hard disk and then write it on a CD-RW. We used a Verbatim DataLifePlus 16-24x CD-RW disc with all the drives, save for the ASUS DRW-0402P/D for which we used a Digitex 4-12x CD-RW.
The ASUS DRW-0804P and the Pioneer DVR-107D were the fastest at creating the image file. The Sony DW-U14A took the third place, outperforming the two nominally-faster devices, Sony DW-U18A and TEAC DV-W58G. The TEAC won the test of creating a copy of the game CD on a CD-RW disc. It is followed by a pair of “duplicates”, the ASUS DRW-0804P and Pioneer DVR-107D. The ASUS DRW-0402P/D turns to be the worst device in both the test modes.
The drive’s real speed on different media types may differ in a certain range. In order to determine the real characteristics of the drives we used the popular Nero Burning Rom program. We burned an image file of DVD Video, created with ClonDVD. The time it took to perform this operation was measured with two media, DVD+RW Fujifilm 1-4x and DVD+R Verbatim 8x. We performed writing at the maximum possible speed, which corresponded to the specified one.
As you see in the table, all the drives form a dense group working with a DVD+RW disc, although the TEAC DV-W58G may be considered a winner. The ASUS DRW-0402P/D model is an exception here as it can work at 2.4x speed only, but not at 4x as the other drives.
The same TEAC DV-W58G spends the least time to burn the DVD+R blank. The ASUS DRW-0402P/D outperforms the Sony DW-U14A in their category (4x burn speed).
Writing information onto the medium is the main concern of the tested drives, but sometimes there arise compatibility issues: a disc written by one drive cannot be read by another drive, fully or partially. This often occurs because of the low quality of the media. The KProbe utility will help us determine the BLER (Block Error Rate) parameter of CD-R and CD+R blanks written during our tests in CloneCD and Nero Burning Rom. BLER is the measure of data blocks per second with recognizable errors. This parameter reflects the overall quality of the disc – the smaller BLER, the better. I’d like to note, though, that this is only a measure of the number of errors, but no indication of how many of them will become critical during the reading of the disc.
The KProbe utility only works with LITE-ON’s devices, so we took the Sony DW-U18A as a reference point.
First, let’s deal with CD-RW discs. The results in the table say that the Sony DW-U18A committed the fewest errors, among which we are most concerned about C2 errors. The TEAC DV-W58G and the Pioneer DVR-107D took the second and third places, respectively. The ASUS DRW-0402P/D leaves a gloomy impression in this test.
Now, about the DVD+R media. There’s deciphering to the diagram: Parity Inner and Parity Outer parameters reflect the number of random errors recognized in the media. According to the ECMA 337 standard, the maximum number of PI errors in each eight sequential ECC blocks before correction cannot exceed 280 for DVD+R/RW discs. Each ECC block contains 208 rows where the last 16 rows contain the PI data. Any row with one erroneous byte is considered a PI error in an ECC block. Thus, a simple computation gives out the maximum possible number of PI errors per ECC block – 208, or 1664 errors for eight sequential blocks, which would make the disc practically unreadable. Cutting it short, if the number of errors in a disc doesn’t exceed 280 PI during the tests, this disc is considered good. More errors may cause problems at reading. The PO errors parameter is the number of errors after correction of PI errors. The ECMA 337 standard says that a row in an ECC block with over 5 wrong bytes is PI-uncorrectable. The same standard states that no ECC block can have more than 4 PI-uncorrectable rows.
Our testing suggests that the Sony DW-U14A was much worse than the other drives as concerns the quality of writing the medium. It made more errors than the total of the remaining devices. The ASUS DRW-0804P burned a disc with the best quality.
I can’t honestly name any definite winners or losers of our today’s tests. Some drives were better in one test, but poorer in the next one. In fact, we had a competition between two major manufacturers of optical drives, LITE-ON and Pioneer. I’d like to note that we had devices of two generations (with DVD±R burn speeds of 4x and 8x) and this had an impact on the results in some tests.
Considering the small price difference (about $10) between these two categories of drives, the faster devices seem more appealing to the end-user since they allow considerably saving the time on burning discs. The Sony DW-U18A model features the fastest speed characteristics among the drives we have tested today. It also confidently went through all the tests (save for Nero Advanced DAE Quality Test with a scratched CD). Its hardware characteristics allow making precise audio copies from Audio CDs. I guess it can be recommended to any user, especially if we recall the ease of disabling its regional protection.
On the other hand, the other three high-speed models – ASUS DRW-0804P, Pioneer DVR-107D and TEAC DV-W58G – were just a little worse, or sometimes even better. In this case, minor factors like the availability of a digital audio output, headphones socket, design or loyalty to any particular manufacturer may affect your choice of a DVD-burner.