detail information

DVD-R media compatibility and write quality:

It seems like there is some problems at the end of the disc which makes it unreadable at the end. Not good as nobody would like an unreadable disc.

Well, something is not right as this disc is unreadable as well. Room for a lot of improvements BTC!

Very good! The result is almost perfect and we highly recommend this media.

Completely perfect result and we could easily recommend this media.

Disappointing to see this result as CMC magnetics DVD-R media is quite ok media. Room for improvements!

A very good result and we have no problems recommending this media for use with this drive. But notice that the quality of Ritek discs also varies from batch to batch.

There were some reading glitches when doing the K-Probe scan, but this is probably just a problem with the Lite-On drive used to scan the disc and could easily be ignored.

Among the better result we have had with Princo, but the disc we used were from a very good batch of Princo media. Notice that the quality of Princo DVD-R discs varies greatly, and that most of the Princo DVD-R media available has very low quality.

Although the K-Probe scan seems good, the reading graph shows that the disc is not perfect. But it's still good enough and should not cause you any trouble, but notice that the quality of Prodisc DVD-R disc may vary from batch to batch.

Very low-quality media so we did not expect great results. You should try to stay away from this low-quality media as much as possible.

Not that bad, and this media should not cause you any trouble.

Another type of low quality media that we could not recommend with this drive.

Even if the result looks pretty ok the reading curve revealed that the result is quite bad actually. Low quality media though, and we do not recommend it.

The K-Probe scan seems ok, but the reading curve shows that the disc is not very good. Room for improvement as many other writers write this media better.

Again we present a table with various media to see if all media types are supported at certified speed.

*This is a very problematic Princo disc type that few writers are able to recognize and write successfully.

One disc was not recognized and three were not supported at certified speed, this is a bit higher than for most competitors.

Another strange thing we noticed is that it starts writing longer away from the centre of the disc compared to other writers. We are unsure if this may affect the reading compatibility with some drives. Below are pictures to illustrate this.

This illustrates a DVD-R disc written with BTC DRW1108IM

This illustrates a DVD-R disc written with a Pioneer DVR-107D.

Both images are of a RitekG04 DVD-R disc. Lite-On LDW-411S with early firmware versions and NU DDW-082 both starts writing a bit away from the centre and discs created by those drives are unreadable in many devices.

But we can't say for sure if this 'Starts writing longer away from the centre" 'problem" affects compatibility and playability for the BTC DRW1108IM written discs. We do know that most other writers we have (Pioneer, NEC, LG, Lite-On, Plextor and Pioneer) starts writing closer to the centre than the BTC drive. This affects DVD-R/RW only and not DVD+R/RW.

Overall thoughts: To be honest we do not have anything positive to say about the DVD-Writing capabilities of this drive:

⋅         It's the slowest 8x writer we know of - over 2 minutes slower than the fastest 8x writers.
⋅         Most discs written at 8x is unreadable, and many discs written at 4x is not good either
⋅         Media compatibility is not as good as with most other DVD-Writers

As you probably have guessed already we will not have any positive points to add for DVD-Writing, only negative.

This concludes our DVD-writing tests, so head on to next page and read about the RW and packet writing performance of this drive…