So as I said in a previous post. I took my birthday money and treated myself to a toy. My first DVD burner.
I took a gamble on an off-brand the Optorite based on Sanyo technology. They have been responding to posts on one of the CDRW forums (cdrlabs.com) and updating their firmware every 2-3 weeks so I decided to take the plunge.
Luckily I had helped install an NEC based drive for my brother-in-law and knew DVD burners can be a pain; just like the old days with CDR burners. So when there were early problems I didn't get discouraged or send the drive back. More Latter.....
The Optorite DD0203 has basically the same specs and most of the new dual format DVD burners. +R 4X, +RW 2.4X, -R 4X. -RW 2X. CDR 24X CDRW 10X. It is also one of the first drives with the Sanyo HD-Burn feature that will cram 1.4 GB on a CDR!! Sanyo says any DVD player with firmware changes will be able to read this.
Unlike the the competing Gigarec from Plextor it doesn't slow to a crawl and disable the buffer underrun protection. It still burns at 24X with burn proof on. And the retail box comes with WINDVD4, MYDVD, and B's Recorder Gold 5 all for $195 ($199 for the black drive)
It got here a day early (I love newegg.com)
The drive seems very solid. Full set of connectors including analog audio and SPDIF.
Nothing fancy, a nice looking drive.
The disc tray responds quickly to a gentle push, I like that.
Two small issues.
1) The eject button (the only button it has) is recessed and takes more precise finger placement to push. (This is a small issue for my PC case that has a door with a CD slot so you can get at the drive while the main door is shut. The outside button almost didn't work)
2) Both LEDs are square and green. Better to have made the writing indicator a different color. I might tint it for myself. On the black face sometimes you can't tell which is on unless both are flashing.
It plays DVD movies better than my standalone DVD-ROM
It burned normal CDR and CDRW perfectly with my installed Roxio. However Roxio would not use it as a DVD burner.
I didn't sleep much the first night as it was making coasters on the DVDRW disks (erasable coasters, but too many errors) The HD-BURN feature was nothing but error after error (ok so its bleeding edge I expected that)
Time to look at my system and clean things up.
A) Moved the DVD burner to Master and my 52X CDRW to slave
B) Updated the Optorite firmware to 2.09 released on July 1st.
C) Canceled my Music Now subscription. Even though I like Music Now better then Pressplay, its software keeps WMP9 open in the background and that conflicts with CDRW/DVD writing. (I have ended up with Rhapsody as the one service am keeping because of this)
D) Made sure all my MB IDE drivers were the most recent (Asus A7N8X Deluxe Rev 1.X)
E) Un-installed Roxio ECDC and Direct CD. I like them but I already had Nero and this new B's 5 installed.
F) Installed Adapted ASPI drivers for good measure (may remove them now don't think they are helping)
Did some more tests. I had bought TDK 4X DVD+R and CompUSA 2.4X DVD+RW media.
After all the cleaning and testing and ten hours over 3 days. I got a good DVD+R!!! Still got Errors when burning over 4gig on the DVD+RW.
Bought some Phillips 2.4X DVD+RW Media .. almost perfect one error at the very edge of the disk. (NERO gave me an error. but the file opened perfectly) I have come to the opinion that NERO gives up without re-tries too easily and reports errors on good disks) The B's recorder will retry too often and not give up even on a really bad error. (I would like something in between please)
Still my TDK 48X CDR media kept returning "Power Calibration Errors" when I tried the HD-BURN function.
Did some more research with Google and found that so far the HD-Burn only works with Taiyo Yuden CDRs (Sold as Fuji 48X CDRs) So today I bought some. And NERO dumped a 1.35 gig AVI file to a .33 cent CDR perfectly and it played back perfectly!!!
I don't know if Sanyo will get enough people to update their DVD drives to read these HD CDRs for this to become an standard, but for me it cuts down on the number I need to use for personal back-ups...
What about the software. WinDVD4 is great. MyDVD is adequate, but to make customer DVD Menu themes you have to own Photoshop 6 or 7. I am looking at Dazzle complete DVD when I have more money to spend.
I have seen a lot of trash talk about this B's Recorder Gold 5. The name sucks... But I like it about as much as I do NERO. It also offers some interesting bad disc recovery tools and and HD imaging / back-up feature that makes it pretty decent.
As soon as Roxio says it supports this drive I may reinstall that. Though only NERO and B5 Gold support the new HD-BURN feature.
Summary:
If you are doing your first DVD drive... put aside some time. Make it the master and on its own IDE cable if you can. Look for software that might be competing for control of the drive and remove it. Update the all the BIOS, FIRMWARE, and drivers you can.
About the Optorite DD 0203:
- Nice Look and solidly built
Needs two color LEDs and a bigger button
Stick to Media they list on their site for now. I think this will get better as the Firmware updates come
To use HD-Burn buy Fuji 48x CDR media for now.
Give B's Recorder 5 Gold a a try (though I think they may be switching to NERO later
All and all I am happy with this drive. IF you like playing with leading to bleeding edge toys, this one will work great for you.
