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Ian wrote:Nice. Hopefully they'll release it soon. I might have to email BenQ and see if I can get a copy of it early.

Ian wrote:

dolphinius_rex wrote:Hrm... would have been nice to get this too...

Yes, but you'd have to sell your soul or permanently sew your lips to the ass of someone at BenQ.

i gather they were'nt too responsive ???

I was being a smart ass. I just got home a little while ago and haven't had time to email anyone yet.

dolphinius_rex, you've got mail

Ian wrote:

dolphinius_rex wrote:Hrm... would have been nice to get this too...

Yes, but you'd have to sell your soul or permanently sew your lips to the ass of someone at BenQ.

If that someone is a female and is very attractive, that might not be such a bad thing.
Just kidding; I just got a visual reading Ian's post and my reply was just
the first thing that came to mind based on the visual.

This is a Verbatim 2.4x DVD+R9 disc burned at 4x using the BenQ DW1620 with firmware B7P9. The disc was then tested in the same BenQ DW1620 at 8x. As you can see, the disc is fully readable, but could still use a little tweaking in quality at the point of the layer break to the end of the disc. I'm going to try to run a few more tests (K-Probe and Plextools) when I can, but I'm now in the middle of the next review, and don't want to hold it up too much

I noticed that my results were not quite as good as CDRinfo's... this is possibly due to media quality fluctuations, but for this test I used one of the Verbatim Dual Layer discs that BenQ themselves sent to me, so I would expect mine to be of very good quality. On the other hand, it was also in a paper sleeve, so there may have been minor scratches I didn't notice.

That's quick

dolphinius_rex wrote:Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:42 am Post subject:
Hrm... would have been nice to get this too...

dolphinius_rex wrote:Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 10:57 am Post subject:
This is a Verbatim 2.4x DVD+R9 disc burned at 4x using the BenQ DW1620 with firmware B7P9

hjs wrote:That's quick

Someone was listening

I didn't recieve any mail yet

yeah, where's my test firmware

Dartman wrote:yeah, where's my test firmware

How much ass did you kiss?

Not enough I guess. Hmmm, didn't see that on the job requirements .....

Are there more nice things in that firmware, except 4x DL burning?

4x DL burning is nice, but i don't think i will buy any DL media soon, too expensive

hjs wrote:Are there more nice things in that firmware, except 4x DL burning?

4x DL burning is nice, but i don't think i will buy any DL media soon, too expensive

Looks like they've tweaked a few write strategies as well, but I can't really test each one out I'm trying to focus all my attention on the next review right now, so since doing testing on the BenQ requires the same computer system, I am giving the new review first priority. That being said, I'll through in a test here and there when I can

dolphinius_rex wrote:
This is a Verbatim 2.4x DVD+R9 disc burned at 4x using the BenQ DW1620 with firmware B7P9. The disc was then tested in the same BenQ DW1620 at 8x. As you can see, the disc is fully readable, but could still use a little tweaking in quality at the point of the layer break to the end of the disc. I'm going to try to run a few more tests (K-Probe and Plextools) when I can, but I'm now in the middle of the next review, and don't want to hold it up too much

I noticed that my results were not quite as good as CDRinfo's... this is possibly due to media quality fluctuations, but for this test I used one of the Verbatim Dual Layer discs that BenQ themselves sent to me, so I would expect mine to be of very good quality. On the other hand, it was also in a paper sleeve, so there may have been minor scratches I didn't notice.

The media Benq supplied a long should be of the same quality as you can buy on the streets.
So source of variations for the burnquality.
Are A the media. Small production variances could cause it.
B the state of media you suggested.
C Your drive. Since Benq/Philips seem to have a variation in the performance the drive can deliver.

But the media looks ok in cdspeed but then again a end judgement can not be really made with cdspeed.

RJW wrote:The media Benq supplied a long should be of the same quality as you can buy on the streets.

Yes and no. I've gotten sames of MKM/Verbatim media from a number of different companies and I have seen variances. Some of the early samples yielded less than stellar results and others packed were packed in paper sleeves (like BenQ's) that might have had an effect on the results. These days, I try to keep the playing field as level as I can by using retail Verbatim DL media.

Ian wrote:

RJW wrote:The media Benq supplied a long should be of the same quality as you can buy on the streets.

Yes and no. I've gotten sames of MKM/Verbatim media from a number of different companies and I have seen variances. Some of the early samples yielded less than stellar results and others packed were packed in paper sleeves (like BenQ's) that might have had an effect on the results. These days, I try to keep the playing field as level as I can by using retail Verbatim DL media.

I also try to make sure all my media comes from a retail supply.. although this is not always possible with some discs.

only we could get the cost of DL media to come down

pigpenz wrote:only we could get the cost of DL media to come down

Give it a bit more time. There are at least 5 companies now making dual layer DVD+R9 media, and more are on the way quite soon! We should see some good price drops early next year I hope.

It's are at least 6 and there might be more. but these are the 7 for which there is proof out there.

For the people who like to know what

we have CMC produceing CMC and PHILIPS and MCC/MKM disc's
we have MCC/MKM produceing MCC/MKM disc's
we have Ritek produceing ritek *
we have Prodisc produceing Prodisc
we have Infomedia produceing infomedia
We have ricoh produceing ricoh.

Also we have a Hongkong manufacturer that claims that it can make dual layer media. Code is unknown at this time. I think the factory price was something like $1. If people are interested I could probally dig it up again or you can do some self

* Ritek might also produce ricoh disc's

Now which of these are approved by Philips.
Well only MCC/MKM version is fully approved.

Provisional approved at this time are:
Philips and Ricoh.

Here are the +R9 media codes extracted from a LiteOn firmware...

Code: Select all

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+R9 Media Codes (7)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0x02: MKM     /001/00  [ 2.4x, 4x ]
0x04: RICOHJPN/D00/01  [ 2.4x     ]
0x06: RITEK   /D01/01  [ 2.4x     ]
0x08: PHILIPS /CD2/00  [ 2.4x     ]
0x0A: PRODISC /D01/00  [ 2.4x     ]
0x0C: INFOME  /D01/00  [ 2.4x     ]
0x0E: CMC MAG /D01/00  [ 2.4x     ]

Pretty much matches what the post above says. So the question is, how much longer is it going to be before these things get transformed from a list of ASCII characters to actual things sitting on shelves? DL's been out for half a year now, and so far, it's still Mitsubishi and Ritek running the show, and prices are still about where they used to be...

I'm worried about that error reporting problem. In the review the BenQ drive didn't reported any errors, which is strange. Does anyone knows if the recent firmwares (B7S9 and B7T9) fixed this issue?

Do you mean for CDs?

I mean this:

To see how well BenQ's new drive can read scratched and dirty discs, I used CD Speed's ScanDisc utility to see how many sectors were damaged or unreadable. This is a very rough, but good way to test the drive's error correcting abilities.

Unfortunately the DW1620 wasn't able to report any damaged sections on the disc. So the best we can say from this scan is that no blocks were regarded as unreadable. Although it is good that the whole disc is considered readable, it does leave us a little in the dark as to *how* readable various sections are.

vio_man wrote:I mean this:

To see how well BenQ's new drive can read scratched and dirty discs, I used CD Speed's ScanDisc utility to see how many sectors were damaged or unreadable. This is a very rough, but good way to test the drive's error correcting abilities.

Unfortunately the DW1620 wasn't able to report any damaged sections on the disc. So the best we can say from this scan is that no blocks were regarded as unreadable. Although it is good that the whole disc is considered readable, it does leave us a little in the dark as to *how* readable various sections are.

I'll take that as a yes.... I'll look into it for you

MacClipper @ cdfreaks wrote:I wouldn't spend much time wondering about P9 vs S9 vs T9 cos U9 is just around the corner and I am sure that everyone here will jump to U9 straightaway, thanks to its added functionality (2 new features to toy with) in combination with the upcoming BenQ utilities.

any idea what to expect? (and the post is already 4 days old)

http://forum.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=123725