detail information

Day 2 - Friday 11^th March:

We arose quite early  and were ready for a new and very busy day as we had a lot of appointments to make.

HD-DVD conference:

Today, the first stop on our list was to see what the HD-DVD team had to say at the HD-DVD Conference. The HD DVD team knew how the weather in Germany usually is, as the press release kits included umbrellas. Anyway, let us see what their focus points are.

One of their main focus points is that the price of HD-DVD will be drastically lower as the production lines only need minor changes to be able to manufacture HD-DVD discs. They think that the lower price will attract end users to buy HD-DVD over Blu-ray.

It looks like HD-DVD drives are close to being ready, but unlike Blu-Ray most of the drives will be read only, not writers. Also unlike Blu-ray, which is already selling in Japan, the HD-DVD drives are not yet for sale.

Another focus point is that there will be close to 100 HD-DVD movie titles released by the end of the year, which shows great support in the movie industry.

The image above shows the NEC PC drive press sample, which is a read only unit. There was also a large amount of HD-DVD pre-release discs shown, this image only shows about half the discs that were on display. This is most likely due to the fact as we mentioned earlier, that manufacturing HD-DVD only requires minor changes in the production lines - while Blu-ray requires new manufacturing equipment.

That was all we had from the HD-DVD press conference.

Lite-On:

The next point on our list was a meeting with Lite-On. We took a few pictures of their latest products.

Their latest DVD-Writer is the SOHW-1693S which features 16x DVD+/-R and 4x DVD+/-R DL as well as 6x DVD-RW and 8x DVD+RW.

Their latest slim external drive is the SOSW-833SX, the specifications is clearly visible on the picture.

The latest external Lite-On drive (16x DVD+/-R and 4x DVD+R DL as well as 6x DVD-RW and 8x DVD+RW) along with the latest CD-Writer SOHR-5238S and combo drive SOHC-5235K. There was also a HP LightScribe drive shown, as well as an HP representative available at the Lite-On stand.

Lite-On did also display some nice stand-alone DVD-Players and DVD-Recorders. And among them was this device, which also supports DVD+R Double layer media.

We asked Lite-On some questions of course.

The first was why don't they have a Lite-On branded LightScribe drive yet - since they manufacture the lightscribe drive for HP? Well, the reason for this was very simple, HP and Lite-On have made a deal where Lite-On manufactures the LightScribe drive (and all other HP branded optical drives!) for HP - but that Lite-On is not allowed to sell this drive under their own brand before November 2005. Due to price of course as the HP branded drive cost slightly more than a Lite-On drive would.

We did also ask them if there were plans to improve the specifications of the HP LightScribe drive (which is only 2.4x DVD+R Double Layer speed and 8x DVD-R), but these specs was in an agreement with HP, so there were no plans to increase performance by firmware upgrade.

OptoDisc:

On our way to another appointment we dropped by the OptoDisc stand to look at their latest products.

OptoDisc plans to start manufacturing Blu-ray discs in Q2 2006 according to our information, so the discs shown here are probably promo discs.

And they did also show HD-DVD promo discs, no information on availability.

5x DVD-RAM discs were on display, as well as 16x DVD+R and DVD-R discs. But no double layer discs, which was quite surprising to us. We asked them and they said the market demand was not big enough for investing money in production lines for double layer discs.

NEC:

We hurried over to NEC to get a look of their products.

NEC displayed their latest writers, ND-3540 and ND-6650A. ND-3540 supports 16x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW as well as 8x DVD+R DL and 4x DVD-R DL. The CD-Writing speed is 48x and CD-RW writing speed is 32x.

ND-6650A supports 8x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW and 4x DVD+/-R DL.

Both these drives are expected to be shipping in late April or early May.

NEC is one of the HD-DVD supporters and displayed HD-DVD media……

….as well as an HD-DVD reader. This should be available in September this year. The HD-DVD PC-drive (read only) should be available for 99 EUR.

We asked NEC about the benefits of HD-DVD. They told us that the price was the main consideration  . They also believe that Blu-ray was very difficult to implement into slim laptop drives because of the fact that the lens has to be very close to the disc.  They felt it might be too easy for the lens to hit the disc and damage disc/drive. We will see in the future if the Blu-ray team could find a good solution for this.

Another problem with Blu-ray at the moment according to NEC, is that Blu-ray discs written with one drive brand could only be read back by drives of the same brand. So a Sony written disc will not work in a Thomson drive for example. We made a note of this so we would remember to ask Benq about it.

Some other questions that we asked on request from you:

Will ND-3500AG support DVD-R DL?

There are no plans to add DVD-R DL to the ND-3500AG at the moment.

Will NEC drives support PI/PO testing?

The tales persons we discussed it with did honestly not know. But as you see, it may look like it - just check latest CD/DVD-Speed news ;)

BenQ:

The next company on our list was BenQ.

BenQ's latest and greatest DVD-Writer, the DW-1640A. Specifications of this drive is 16x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 4x DVD+R DL, 48x CD-R and 32x CD-RW.

Expected to be shipping late April.

They also show their DW-1625A LightScribe drive with, 16x DVD+R, 8x DVD-R, 2.4x DVD+R DL, 4x DVD+/-RW, 40x CD-R and 24x CD-RW writing speeds.

The optical pickup unit developed  for both, Blu-ray and CD/DVD reading/writing as well as Blu-ray media.

The BenQ Blu-ray writer, even though it's not a finished product, it is at least working and BenQ took the time to give us a demonstration.

The compilation is made, but since the product is not finished yet they had to use the small tool in the right corner to tell that the disc they would insert was a Blu-ray disc.

Well, it works! At the moment just at 1x speed but the plan is to release the drive as a 2x speed Blu-ray recorder.

And the disc was created successfully.

Now the disc was put into this standalone recorder to see if it plays back.

And it plays back with no problems.

So it seems like Blu-ray is getting close to becoming a finished product.

But then we asked BenQ about the compatibility problems that NEC told us about, and they had to admit that there were still compatibility problems between different brands. But they promised that this should be corrected before the end of the year.

We spoke about the future of BenQ as well, BenQ is very end user minded as they actively use user feedback and read forums to see the customer opinions on their products. They do often read our own forums as well.

The plan for BenQ was to develop more easy to use programs to include with their consumer products, and in this way take market shares from other brands. BenQ as a brand name is growing well at the moment, but they are still a very large OEM manufacturer.

As for the DW1625A they do not plan to improve the current specifications of the drive. But they did say that there may be new drives with LightScribe support and better performance later on.

Plextor:

We did of course not forget Plextor. This is what they had to show us.

Plextor PX-716A/716SA is already well known on the market. So let us take a look at other products.

The Plextor PX-716AL slot loader is very interesting because it's also compatible with 8 cm media, which is very uncommon for slot loaders. It also features a unique method of only grabbing the sides of the disc so there will be no dust etc., on the top and bottom of the disc. This is of course important for error free recording.

The bad news is that Plextor is not sure if this model will be available for sale in Europe. Let's try to push them to start selling this model in Europe as well! The drive will soon be available in Asia and USA.

Plextor will also provide floppy drives, flash memory products and several other products  made by their new partner I-O Data.

And that also includes standalone players supporting various file formats.

We asked Plextor about their new Plextools XL, we feel the price they charge is a bit high. But they promised to add several new features to the program making it really worth the money.

We did also fear that they would stop providing plextools with their drives, but luckily - that is not the case. They will still include the regular plextools version with every drive sold in Europe.

We did also ask them why Plextools do not support disc quality checking at higher speeds than 2x. According to our tales man they had tested 4x speed as well - but due to fear of inconsistent results they decided not to enable it.

We asked him about the writing quality at 16x speed, since it can't keep up with other drives quality wise.

He said it depends on the media, as well as promising better media compatibility in next firmware. We pushed him harder and then he said 'every manufacturer tries to get the best quality out of the components and chipset they use".

So we asked him if Plextor used components of too low quality since they could not obtain the same writing quality at 16x speed as their competitors. Again he promised further improvements with next firmware. But we will have to wait and see if they could deliver real 16x speed (with that we mean 'without the need to disable PowerREC to reach 16x") with all 16x media.

Plextor have not yet decided what to do for HD-DVD and Blu-ray.

AOpen:

The last thing we did this day was to stop at the AOpen stand

AOpen still have a complete selection of optical drives; Combo drives, CD-Writers and DVD-Writers.

The latest internal DVD-Writer; DUW1616/ARR. Specifications; 16x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 4x DVD-RW, Double layer support, 48x CD-Writing speed and 32x CD-RW speed.

Now our feet were really beginning to get sore after running around the whole day, so thank goodness the show was over for this for the evening.