DRU-720A First Impressions
Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2005 3:05 pm
When I went to Fry's earlier this week to buy a Sony DRU-710A, I noticed that they had the DRU-720A, which according to the box supports writing DVD+/-R at 16X and DVD+R DL at 4X out of the box. On the assumption that it's better to start at these speeds out of the box before any firmware upgrades, I splurged for the 720A instead of the 710A.
So far, the drive is behaving quite well. I only have 8X DVD-R media, so I haven't been able to test any of the 16X modes or DVD+R DL writing, but the drive appears to meet the stated speeds on the box for the media I have (the Fry's "GC" brand, which turned out to be Taiyo Yuden).
I've created a couple of coasters, but I think that was because of my inexperience with formatting the data for output to DVD rather than because of the drive.
Is there a standard benchmarking procedure I could follow so I could then post useful information to this forum? I'm fairly new to the world of DVD burners (though I did quite a bit of research before deciding on the Sony drive).
Amazingly, I couldn't find any reviews or impressions of the DRU-720A on the Internet, and what little I could find basically described the specs on the box and tended to be in Taiwanese. This must be a *really* new drive.
Also, my current understanding is that it's not possible to even attempt to write to an 8X blank at faster speeds (Nero reports 8X as the maximum speed with a disc in the drive). I've seen online reviews of other drives that described burning to 8X media at 12X or even 16X, so I know this is possible. Does it require a modified firmware? I tried using the Nero InfoTool; it reports the media *types* supported by the drive, but it only reports the *speed* for CD-R burning. I haven't figured out yet if it's possible to click somewhere to determine the maximum DVD burning speeds.
-Polar Weasel
So far, the drive is behaving quite well. I only have 8X DVD-R media, so I haven't been able to test any of the 16X modes or DVD+R DL writing, but the drive appears to meet the stated speeds on the box for the media I have (the Fry's "GC" brand, which turned out to be Taiyo Yuden).
I've created a couple of coasters, but I think that was because of my inexperience with formatting the data for output to DVD rather than because of the drive.
Is there a standard benchmarking procedure I could follow so I could then post useful information to this forum? I'm fairly new to the world of DVD burners (though I did quite a bit of research before deciding on the Sony drive).
Amazingly, I couldn't find any reviews or impressions of the DRU-720A on the Internet, and what little I could find basically described the specs on the box and tended to be in Taiwanese. This must be a *really* new drive.
Also, my current understanding is that it's not possible to even attempt to write to an 8X blank at faster speeds (Nero reports 8X as the maximum speed with a disc in the drive). I've seen online reviews of other drives that described burning to 8X media at 12X or even 16X, so I know this is possible. Does it require a modified firmware? I tried using the Nero InfoTool; it reports the media *types* supported by the drive, but it only reports the *speed* for CD-R burning. I haven't figured out yet if it's possible to click somewhere to determine the maximum DVD burning speeds.
-Polar Weasel