detail information

BTC was kind enough to send us their latest DVD-Writer; the BTC DRW1108IM. BTC is growing in the optical market due to competitive prices and large OEM contracts, so it will be interesting to see how their latest DVD-Writer performs. Read on to see our test results and opinions on this writer.

Also thanks to Memorex for providing some of the media used in this review.

Some BTC history and information:

We took a quick look at the company information found at BTC Europe's web pages:

Since its establishment in 1982, the expert keyboard manufacturer BTC has laid its foundation on incessant technological innovation, continuous pursuit of excellent quality, and the sharing of profits with employees, which has enabled it to become the world's top five CD-ROM and keyboard manufacturer and so to capture the five elements of success-creativity, technology, production, international marketing, and globalization.

In recent years BTC has been engaging in opto-electronics, in hopes to become the leader of opto-electronic products. In addition to earning numerous Product of Excellence awards from Taiwan, BTC has been the model of small to medium enterprise for years.

It is an appointed model manufacturer for visits by foreign delegations and one of the top three globalization enterprises in Taiwan according to the Business Weekly Taiwan. Nowadays, the map of BTC stretches to Asia, USA and Europe.

All these credits owe their roots to the R&D ability and powerful production ability of BTC, which has enabled the realization of the excellent R&D ability of the company. Amidst the rapid change of the high-tech industry, BTC captures the key to success with its outstanding company philosophy and stands on the world stage of high opto-electronic development to seek pride of tomorrow.

Company mission:

Professional Manufacturer for Computer Peripheral, Opto- electronic & Multi-medium products

Before:
Worldwide top 3 professional keyboard maker.

Now:
Diversify in input device and opto-electronic areas. Worldwide top 5 professional CD-ROM / DVD-ROM drives maker.

Tomorrow:
World leading manufacturer for computer peripherals, opto-electronic device & Multimedia products.

As we could all see their history is pretty long and they aim high for the future.

Drive specifications:

These are the specifications of this drive, found at the BTC webpage:

From the specifications it seems to be a very good drive, and should be able to compete with most other new DVD-Writers. But it's not always that the specifications really shows the real world performance, so let us take the drive through several extensive tests to see.

Test machine:

For this review we will be using a computer with the following configuration:

Hardware:

⋅         Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-8KNXP with Intel i875P chipset.
⋅         Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2,8GHz 800MHz FSB with Hyper Threading support.
⋅         RAM: 1Gb PC3500 DDR
⋅         GFX: ATI Radeon 9800 pro
⋅         Sound: SB Audigy 2
⋅         Hard disks: 2 x Hitachi Deskstar 7k250 160Gb S-ATA in RAID 0 on the i875P S-ATA RAID controller.

System set-up:

The BTC DRW1108IM was connected as Primary Master and identified itself as DVDRW IDE1108. DMA (Direct Memory Access) and autorun was enabled for all devices.

Software:

Windows XP professional is installed on the computer along with Service Pack 1 for windows XP. We will be using the following software in this review:

⋅         Ahead InCD v 4.2.4.1
⋅         Ahead Nero Burning ROM version 6.3.1.10B
⋅         Ahead Nero CD/DVD Speed v2.94 beta
⋅         Ahead Nero InfoTool v2.21
⋅         Slysoft CloneCD v4.3.2.2
⋅         Exact Audio Copy v0.95 prebeta 5
⋅         K-Probe v2.1.0

Head on to the next page and find out what's inside the box…