CDRLabs.com

http://support.benq.com/files/storage/F ... 0/B7U9.zip
taken from the BENQ FORUM at cdfreaks.com.
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=127936

It's rumored that some special tool(s) may come out that will get the U firmware to do things, what I don't know. Those tools aren't out as of yet.

based on the posted results, this firmware is NOT looking good... which is what I was worried about.

Not looking good is a big word.
It seems that people expectation might have been a bit to high for this one.
Specially with all the talking about support for special tool(s) and the time Benq took for releasing it. (compared to older firmwares.)

I think I'm going to stick with my B7P9 for a while yet. If it ain't broke don't fix it is my watch word. I now only burn TY and Verbatim DVD+R inkjet hub printable and it burns those good enough for me so I'm not budging just yet.

Well it's supposed to improve the 4x write quality on dual layer verbatim much. It should be much better.
Haven't seen any testing on that one.
Maybe time that C't retests it or someone who got the right tools and time ! since last time 4x was to fast.

hopefully it improved the Ritek Dual Layer support too!

One thing I'm a little concerned about is how BenQ is tweaking the WOPC... their burn times have changed a lot. Initially the firmware was supposed to make burning much faster, but with a significant decrease in the WOPC. Now it appears the burn times have increased, but the WOPC is not doing as much either. But perhaps calibration times have increased? I haven't tried it out yet since I'm still too busy with other things right now...

Some tests with new U9 fw, not looking so good speed wise for -R media.

http://forums.speedlabs.org/index.php/topic,915.0.html

Some tests with new U9 fw, looking great speed wise.

TY02 in 5:35

dolphinius_rex wrote:Initially the firmware was supposed to make burning much faster, but with a significant decrease in the WOPC. Now it appears the burn times have increased, but the WOPC is not doing as much either. But perhaps calibration times have increased? I haven't tried it out yet since I'm still too busy with other things right now...

Keep in mind that this is a very tough interpretation I wouldn't make any comment about that the WOPC doesn't do much either.
While on some stuff it doesn't seem to do anything there are also reports of people that now can burn HongKong with media which they couldn't burn befor and more of that sort of stuff. I have seen a few burns on cheap media showeing significant less PIF errors.

Problem here is the quality fluctuations with all media and yes that includes big names as TY so I wouldn't just make a conclusion yet if they fixed things or screwed up.

But I have to say that's it's more the other way arround if you look at time and quality. Quality seems to have increased but times have increased even more.

There might be a dissapointing thing dual layer verbatim media now seems to burn at 2.4x (the speed C't suggested) however the quality seems to have gone down hill or are we looking at some terrible batches of MKM dual layer media which are spotted more and more these days.

According to the discussion in the following forum so many people do have problems with BenQ 1620.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=125535

Benq for DVD is really what Lite on was for CD.
Great drives when they work like they should.

The bad thing is that there quality control really seems to be sleeping.

There is one other point back in the highlight days of Lite On and now with BENQ they sold huge ammounts of drives. It is possible that the % number of actually defect drives still is normal.

Also keep in mind that most of todays drives are sold that cheap that you might expect that things do not work out the first time like they should be.