Fall 2004 DVDR Roundup: Dual Layer and 16X DVD+R
by Anand Shimpi & Virginia Lee on November 1, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
NuTech DDW-163
Taiwanese NuTech (Quanta's retail channel) surprised us all a little with their DDW-081/082 drives. They were great for the price and deserved our Editor's Choice Award back when 8X was the best speeds that you could obtain on a DVD recorder.However, things have changed a lot since six months ago when we conducted that roundup. Most contenders in the optical storage sector continued to improve and refine their write descriptors and firmware while NuTech stayed relatively quiet. The DDW-163 never received a full fledged press release and just began to trickle onto the online marketplaces this week.
| NuTech DDW-163 16X DVD-/+RW Drive | |
| Interface | PATA |
| CD Write Speed | 40X, 32X, 24X 16X, 8X, 4X |
| CD Rewrite Speed | 24X, 16X, 10X, 8X, 4X |
| CD Read Speed | 40X MAX |
| DVD-R Write Speed | 8X, 4X, 2X |
| DVD-RW Rewrite Speed | 4X, 2X, 1X |
| DVD+R Write Speed | 16X, 8X 4X, 2.4X |
| DVD+RW Rewrite Speed | 4X, 2.4X |
| DVD+DL Write Speed | 2.4X |
| DVD Read Speed | 16X MAX (ROM) 10X MAX (-/+R, -/+RW) 5X MAX (RAM) |
| Supported Modes | DAO / DAO-RAW 16 & 96 TAO SAO / RAW SAO, RAW SAO 16 & 96 Packet Write Multi-Session |
| Supported Formats | DVD+R (DAO, incremental, seq) DVD+RW (random) DVD-R (DAO, incremental, seq) DVD-RW (restricted overwrite) CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-DA, Mixed Mode, CD Extra Photo CD, CD Text, Bootable CD, UDF |
| Access Time | CD: 125ms DVD: 145ms |
| Buffer | 2MB |
Nothing stands out here as particularly dramatic. Why all the secrecy around the newest NuTech drives? Remember our sneak peak at upcoming OSD devices during Computex 2004, particularly about Ricoh's reemergence back into the DVDR chipset arena? The NuTech DDW-162 drive was one of those slated to use the new Ricoh chipset. But today, we are looking at the DDW-163 instead. It would appear as though that, instead of pursuing a Ricoh design, NuTech scrapped the idea and continued to evolve their DDW-082 with the Nexperia chipset. In fact, even though we saw several of slated burners for the Ricoh chipset at Computex, not one of our burners today employs those chips. Ricoh may still introduce a product based on their core logic, but its getting a little late in the game.
Click to enlarge.
Below, you can see what Infotool had to say about the Philips Nexperia based DDW-163.
Internally, a lot seems to have changed since the NuTech DDW-082/1. The DDW-163 uses the newest Nexperia 7860E core logic and the TZA1047HL analog processor. Like the LG GSA series, the NuTech DDW-162 uses flash memory as well.
Click to enlarge.
NuTech has a very diverse product support team. Their employees are the ones who you see posting in forums and working on hacking their own firmware. Coaxing the Nexperia chipset into working with the DVD-R format on the DDW-082 was certainly not an easy task. Living on the fringe of product support and blurring the lines between customer feedback and company direction are extremely refreshing. By contrast, nearly faceless companies like Pioneer and NEC approach customer influence on more traditional marketing channels.
The Nexperia chipset is somewhat of a late-bloomer in the 16X market. If NuTech can keep their QA up, they can definitely utilize this chipset to its fullest by providing quality firmware updates.
Feel free to download the performance graphs for the DDW-163 here.
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Maverick215 - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
1) where are the 8x disc quality tests, it seems you only did -r, 16x, and DL2) who cares about DL at $10 a disc I have to quote you, "read/write capabilities are not really useful in applications for the common end user."
3) who cares about 16x
a)it's not readily available
b) will likely be more expensive when it is
c) no realized speed improvement (your review states 11.9x max for 16x and 11.88 max for 8x media @ 12x (again we don't know the burn quality of this 8x@12 burn but you gave the result)
given these I'd have to say "read/write capabilities are not really useful in applications for the common end user." again.
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And to just take one drive here, the benq, you used a BETA firmware, it might be fair if you used a BETA of a upcoming release, but you used a BETA that is 3 public releases and atleast 5 weeks old. you consider NEC more mature, why not give Benq etc a chance to mature? At the very least you could say all burners were updated as of xyz date, at least we would have a reference point. And we could then understand that infact you started doing this comparison 5 weeks ago.
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That minor point aside. If you really care what is applicable to the "common end user" then why not more 8x media with the price of said media and then that media's burn quality tests(16x has a use here in comparing burn quality). 8x is what's most readily available, 8x@12x is comparable burn speed to 16x.
Sorry but this review just leaves me with an empty feeling. Perhaps I am alone in my opinion, but I can live with that.
Reflex - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
Nice to know I made the right choice a month and a half ago when I grabbed the 3500A. It wasn't anything more than me looking for a bargain for a Media Center PC, so I just lucked into the best drive it appears.BTW, where do you find the latest firmware for this stuff? And are there any good reccomendations on softare, seeing as OEM drives don't come with it usually...
AkumaX - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
don't really care about speed, but which burner has the best COMPATIBILITY and RELIABILITY in terms of burning? the 108D or the 3500A or something else?mkruer - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
So I take it DVD+R/RW won the format wars. BTW that would be a good article in itself. Why IS there a difference between the two formats (that’s -R vs +R)KristopherKubicki - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
Most of the drives we reviewed are the OEM versions - they pretty much all look identical (flat, beige/black, one button).Kristopher
PuravSanghani - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
OCedHrt: Errors have been fixed for your viewing pleasure :)Operandi - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
xsilver: If the drive is a re-badge then just say so in the artical, I don't think a picture is required.My point is simply that if your going get pics of the drives you should be taking pics of the portion people will be looking at. Other pics are fine but not geing bezel shoots dosn't make any sense to me.
OCedHrt - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
Hmm dunno how to edit. The CD-R write speed for the Pioneer between the graph and the table at the end is also different.OCedHrt - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
The description for the Ritek G05 read test doesn't match the graph at all. One of them is wrong.xsilver - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link
I think the circuit pcb thing is a good idea -- some drives a just rebadges of other drives? (asus?) so to tell you look that the pcb / insides