In House Review - Sony DRU-700A Double Layer 8x DVD±RW

[Phoenix '97]

Nice review, one question though:
Should the book type be set (e.g. from DVD+R DL to DVD-ROM) before or after recording on a disc? Or does it matter?

[dhc014]

Currently, the BookType tool must be used before burning to specify the BookType to be used for discs. Some Liteon drives (and this Sony OEM) may some day be able to set the booktype of DVD+RW discs after they have been burned like Ricoh drives can, but for now, you must always specify the booktype before burning a disc.

[dolphinius_rex]

Ok ok, sometimes LiteON drives are fine with Verbatim media. I've burned some of the DVDRs myself and they've been fine. Personally however I've still never had a very good experience with Verbatim CD-Rs and LiteON burners, but I know others have. I've seen some information that leads me to believe that slight variations during production, but I don't really know on that. Still, I personally always burn Verbatim media on other drives then LiteON, just to be safe

[pchilson]

Ok ok, sometimes LiteON drives are fine with Verbatim media. I've burned some of the DVDRs myself and they've been fine. Personally however I've still never had a very good experience with Verbatim CD-Rs and LiteON burners, but I know others have. I've seen some information that leads me to believe that slight variations during production, but I don't really know on that. Still, I personally always burn Verbatim media on other drives then LiteON, just to be safe

OK, that's better...
Just seems by the tone of your posts at times that you have a hair up your butt for LiteON... Care to enlighten us?
They send you a third hand fruitcake for Xmas once?

[dolphinius_rex]

Ok ok, sometimes LiteON drives are fine with Verbatim media. I've burned some of the DVDRs myself and they've been fine. Personally however I've still never had a very good experience with Verbatim CD-Rs and LiteON burners, but I know others have. I've seen some information that leads me to believe that slight variations during production, but I don't really know on that. Still, I personally always burn Verbatim media on other drives then LiteON, just to be safe

OK, that's better...
Just seems by the tone of your posts at times that you have a hair up your butt for LiteON... Care to enlighten us?
They send you a third hand fruitcake for Xmas once?

Just a little frustrated with continually getting bad results from a brand name that is highly recommended, that's all. Mainly on the CD-R end though.

[pchilson]

Getting off topic here...

Just a little frustrated with continually getting bad results from a brand name that is highly recommended, that's all. Mainly on the CD-R end though.

I'm assuming you are refering to Verbatim here...?
My take is that the optical storage media companies are caught up in a "growing pains" phase and are letting quality suffer at the hands of quantity. I hope that is all it is and quality will come back into focus when the production capacities have been aqquired. I too find it frustrating that you can't really trust the name brands to supply quality only media.

[LoneWolf]

Ok, with a little more thought, and consultation with a friend, I suppose it *IS* possible, but only if CMC or another Taiwanese manufacturer is *ahem* dumping their "failure" media on the market. Now Only CMC has the guidence and I *THINK* licensing to make DL media, so if it's another company, then they would be doing pre-license work.

Licensing? In China?

[burner1000000]

It's the media. I tried two new 10 pk spindles with and without Drag to Disc and they seemed to work ok. Just chalk it up to quality control. Also BestBuy is only selling the regular verbatim (Data Life) and not the Data Life Plus which is considered to be better quality. Perhaps Ian's original samples sent from Verbatim were data Life Plus just as Claybuster had to burn on his 712A.

[aviationwiz]

If you look at it on newegg,
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 228&depa=0

You'll see that it doesn't specify the shipping price on the product page like it normally does, upon doing a shipping estimate for MN Express Saver, it's $0.10,

[sqlb]

So far I've burned 6 DVD+R (Memorex 4X) on the SONY DRU-700A (3 using latest NERO 6 RECODE and 3 using latest Easy CD 7). All 3 disc burned using NERO plays only on the Sony DRU-700. They won't play on any of my home DVD players or on either of my two Plextor 708A drives or on my NEC 2510A.

However the other 3 discs burned using Easy CD 7 on the same Sony DRU-700A plays on all machines. I also burned 4 discs on the NEC 2510A using NERO 6 and they all play flawlessly on all my DVD players. Go figure.

[bob11879]

Hmmm...slower than a Plextor 712 in most respects, won't write 8x on 4x media like a Plextor 708 or other drives, takes twice as long to record on expensive DL media than on a single cheapie disc with Shrink, compatibility questions with other PC and desktop players...yes sir, those are really good selling points...Think I'll wait...

[MOTOMATT]

Quote:BookType tool must be used before burning to specify the BookType to be used for discs
I did this and burned a disc with nero than played with set top it still read as +?
What did i do wrong?

I have burn't at 8x using cmc mag eo1, brand name is teon dvd+r 4x
I've had about 50% falure with these playing back on my set top
I"ve burn't at 4X using cmc mag AF1,brand name is teon dvd-r 4x
no falures yet
they were on sale
my set top is a philips dvdr 80 which suports +/-
I usualy burn memorex + 4x and those have played back

[Ravenrex]

I just got this drive yesterday (the DRU700A) and the review looked pretty comprehensive and was a good read. The one thing I had issue with was one of the low points in the conclusion.

"Cannot write to 4x DVD±R media at 8x"

How can this be a low point for the drive? I could see if the drive were capable of performing beyond its stated capabilities by burning 4x media at a higher speed that would be a benefit, but simply because it performs to specification with 4x media it's not as though it's performing at a lesser level than it was designed to. The product does what it claims to be capable of for that recording medium.

I burned about 10 DVD's with it last night and had no issues with it as far as burning was concerned. I did find that for some disks I had that it was not as capable at ripping certain disks compared to my TEAC DVD/CDRW. That drive (the TEAC) seemed more tolerant or able to compensate for certain sectors on some disks that were more difficult to read whereas the SONY errored out and failed to create the ISO to be burned.

Even at 4x speeds the drive was capable of burning a full DVD in about 12 minutes. I don't know if this is bad or good as I have no basis for comparison, but it seems quite acceptable to me for burning 4.7GB of data to a recordable media.

[Ian]

Ravenrex, its a feature found on a lot of other DVD writers. With 8x DVD media still hard to find in a lot of places (not to mention expensive) having this capability comes in handy.

[jase]

I agree, but I can also see the point Ravenrex is making. Being able to "overclock" 4x media to 8x is a good feature, but an inability to do so isn't really a weakness as such. If the drive was writing to some 4x media at 2x, or some 8x at 4x, then this would be a weakness in the firmware, but I think it's a fair point being made here.

[Ian]

I agree, its not a bad thing. However, IMO it is a "low point".

[stevger]

Hi, I also just purchased a Sony 700A, and I'd like to relay my experiences.

1) It installed great, and they have a great Nero package as said in the review.

2) I purchased Verbatim Datalife Plus 8X media. You are probably smiling now, since most of you know that this will only write at 4X on the drive (because of firmware issues). I didn't know that when I bought it though.

3) So I was trying to figure out why the drive didn't see it. After a few software updates to Nero and it still didn't work, I checked out Sony's site, and there it was (that it only writes to verbatim 8x media at 4X).

4) I didn't feel like returning it, so I did some web hunting. I found that the liteon 832s was the same drive, and that they released a firmware update in the beginning of June for the 832S drive. I downloaded it and of course it didn't work since it checks the current drive.

5) I found the hacked firmware (can't remember now where), that allows you to apply the firmware without it checking for current version. I was a little nervous since I didn't see anyone say that they have done this yet, but I tried it... and it worked...

6) I rebooted and ran Nero and saw that it can now write at 8X, however the Nero OEM edition won't write to the drive anymore, since it sees it as a liteon now!

7) The Nero Express part of the software for some reason still worked for me, and I was able to burn the 8X media at 8X, and no problem!


So now I have a Liteon Drive firmware in my Sony drive in device manager it says:

LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-832S .. and firmware VS03 (the sony came with VY02).

[Bhairav]

Good stuff! You like the drive now?

[KenW]

stevger

VS03 had major bug id load VS04 before you drive dies or something. liteon posted VS04 , 5 days after VS03 due to this bug. as to what the bug is i dont know but rumour is its got something to do with reading media.

http://www.liteonit.com/ODD/English/e_d ... =SHOW-832S

[stevger]

thanks for the warning KenW! I'll do that right now!

As for the drive, it's great! I had a Sony 4X reader external before (500U I think).

[MOTOMATT]

well i have not been so happy with mine' I have a sony dru-510a that has served me very well burn't lots of memorex -/+ dvds and 99% played back on my set top dvd.
700a burnt them nero said sucess but wouldn't play on set top'
I tried all my software programs copy to dvd, dvdcrypter all say succes but will not play back on my set top
burnt same iso on 510 played on set top
I did try VS04 but same thing
maybe i have a bad drive , did not give me cofidence to try dl
I'm going to try the nec 2510