detail information

Scanning drive summary

BenQ DW1640:

Our BenQ DW1640 scanned the media it burned fairly well. It is also a fairly fast scanning drive; PI/PIF and Jitter are all reported in a single pass.

The main problem with the BenQ DW1640 was scanning media burned on other drives, where it did not seem to scan the test discs in a neutral manner.

Positive:

• Completes the scan quickly.
• Inexpensive to buy.
• Is able to scan its own recordings fairly well.
• Reports Jitter and POF.
• Can use a CLV scanning method

Negative:

• Does not provide neutral scans on some media burned on other drives.
• Uses sum 8 for deriving its PIF results.
• Did not do well in our consistency tests.

Lite-On SHW-16H5S:

Our Lite-On SHW-16H5S proved very reliable with our scanning tests. The drive is also capable of using a CLV scanning method which we believe is a must for reliable PI/PIF scanning. PI and PIF are reported in a single pass.

The Lite-On SHW-16H5S didn't seem to mind on which drive the media had been burned and remained neutral throughout our tests. This is also important for reliable Disc Quality Scanning.

Positive:

• Neutral scanning behaviour (does not mind which drive the media was burned on).
• Good scanning consistency
• Completes the scan fairly quickly.
• Can use a CLV scanning method.
• Inexpensive to buy.

Negative:

• Does not currently report Jitter with the current version of KProbe.

NEC ND-4570A:

The NEC ND-4570A displayed many problems during our tests. It nearly always displayed elevated PI errors and in some cases was totally out of step compared to our other scanning drives.

It did however manage to scan its own burned media fairly well, and reports PI and PIF in a single pass.

Positive:

• Can use sum 1 to derive its PIF results.
• Inexpensive to buy.
• Is able to scan its own recordings fairly well.

 Negative:

• Does not provide neutral scans on some media burned on other drives.
• Slow 5x CAV scanning method.
• Does not support Jitter tests.
• Did not do well in our scanning consistency tests.

Plextor PX-760A:

The Plextor PX-760A is by some margin the most expensive drive and the slowest scanning drive in our tests. It does however produce very neutral scans, regardless of the drive used for burning the disc.

With the PlexTools Professional/XL suite of test applications, it also supports an amazing amount of media tests. The biggest problem with the Plextor is the amount of time needed for running the tests. The drive requires a separate pass for scanning PI, PIF, and Jitter.

Positive:

• Neutral scanning behaviour (does not mind which drive the media was burned on).
• Good scanning consistency
• Can report Jitter and POF.
• Uses a CLV scanning method.
• Advanced tests via PlexTools Professional/XL

Negative:

• Expensive to buy
• Very slow scanning speeds
• Requires a separate pass for each test.

Conclusion

While the NEC ND-4570 and BenQ DW1640 drives could prove useful for scanning their own burned media, in a system where only one drive space is available and the user particularly wanted one of these drives. These two drives proved not to be neutral when scanning media burned on other drives.

There is also the matter of scanning drives following the criteria for Disc Quality Scanning according to the ECMA standard. One of the requirements of this standard is for the scan to be done using a CLV reading method. The NEC drive is not able to perform this task at a reasonable scanning speed, (by reasonable we mean 2x '� 4x scanning speed).

While 4x CLV is an option in CD-Speed when using the BenQ drive, this option is fairly recent and the forum standard is 8x using a CAV reading method. We therefore find it difficult to recommend these two drives for serious home PI/PIF scanning.

This now leaves us with the Lite-On SHW-16H5S and Plextor PX-760A drives. Both these drives scan media in a very neutral fashion and proved this with all our tested media, time after time reporting fairly similar results. These two drives also did well with our scanning consistency tests.

We would also like to note, that both these drive manufacturers show great faith in their drives ability to do PI/PIF testing, by making available specialised software specifically for this task. 

The Plextor drive probably has the most complete set of diagnostic features of any DVD writer aimed at the home user. But this feature set does not come cheap. There is also the matter of the time the Plextor PX-760A drive takes to complete its results.

The Lite-On SHW-16H5S drive by contrast is very inexpensive and completes a Disc Quality Scan in a very reasonable amount of time using a 4x CLV reading method, and does a PI/PIF scan in a single pass. And as we have seen from our tests, the Lite-On SHW-16H5S scanned our test media in a very neutral manner and did not mind which drive had burned the media.

To sum up, this is what we would say. We conclude that the drives from Lite-On and Plextor performed the most reliably in our tests. If we consider the price of these drives and the time taken to complete the tests, the Lite-On drive has to be the logical choice.

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Thanks to:

SVP Communications '� The United Kingdom for providing the media used in this review.

Verbatim - Germany and United Kingdom for providing the media used in this review.

Ricoh Europe '� For providing the media used in this review.

Introduction