Fall 2004 DVDR Roundup: Dual Layer and 16X DVD+R

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.