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I recently upgraded my dvd burner from a Pioneer 108 to a BenQ 1650. My reason for upgrading was purely because I wanted a faster DVD+R DL burner. My initial choice was the BenQ 1640 after reading the CDRLabs review (I use Verbatim 2.4X +R DL MKM-001 which the 1640 can supposedly burn at 8X), but saw the release of the 1650, and after reading up as much as I could on this new drive, decided to go for it as it was supposedly similar to the 1640. I immediately upgraded my 1650 to the latest BCDC firmware.

I've burnt a few 8X -R/+R SL media and the drive performed flawlessly. As this is my first BenQ burner, I love the ability to change the book type.

However, I burnt my first +R DL disc last night using a Verbatim 2.4X MKM-001 disc. I was surprised it burnt at 2.4X. The 1640 supposedly could burn at 8X. Can anyone confirm this is the case with their 1650/1655? My Pioneer 108 could burn the Verbatim at 4X so this is a step backwards for me! Should I have gone for the 1640 instead? Or should I wait for a new firmware release that would enable me to burn MKM-001 media at faster than 4X?

Yeah.. that's one down side of the DW1655. If you want to burn at 8x you will need 8x DVD+R DL media.

The BenQ DW1650/DW1655 models don't support MKM001 at 8x anymore because they couldn't make it work properly on a consistant basis. Some drives do ok, but not all. Verbatim also does not recommend burning MKM001 at 8x, they claim a 6x maximum and only with some drives.

apchoo wrote:However, I burnt my first +R DL disc last night using a Verbatim 2.4X MKM-001 disc. I was surprised it burnt at 2.4X. The 1640 supposedly could burn at 8X. Can anyone confirm this is the case with their 1650/1655? My Pioneer 108 could burn the Verbatim at 4X so this is a step backwards for me! Should I have gone for the 1640 instead? Or should I wait for a new firmware release that would enable me to burn MKM-001 media at faster than 4X?

The 1650/1655 drives are limited to 2.4x for MKM-001. They both will burn the newer MKM-003 at 8x, however.

What you can do, though technically it voids your warranty, is run the firmware through MediaCodeSpeedEdit, where you can change the MKM-001 media to write at 8x. You can download it from their website:
http://ala42.cdfreaks.com/MCSE/

Of course, your mileage may vary. Some MKM-001 media will not do as well at 8x than others will. I've had some that have scanned quite poorly, whereas others were fantastic.

Thanks for all the replies. I managed to swap my 1650 for a 1640 . I've yet to burn an MKM-001 disc in 8X but the option is there (upgraded the firmware to latest BSOB). I'll experiment between 4X and 8X and see if I have any probs on my 3 dvd players (Harman Kardon, Sony & Shinco). I had no probs reading MKM-001 discs burnt at 4X on my Pioneer 108.