detail information

According to the specifications of this drive, it should be capable of writing DVD-R and DVD+R at up to 8x and DVD-RW and DVD+RW at up to 4x.  As the Recorder gives no indication of its recording speed for a given disc and there is no way of producing a write speed graph, we will use a stopwatch to time the initialisation, write time and finalisation stages. 

For these tests, we filled a DVD+RW with a continuous recording from TV using the High Quality recording setting until the disc filled up.  We then copied this recording over to its hard drive to use for creating tests discs.  The initialisation time is timed from the point the disc starts loading to the point where the word 'Preparing' no longer appears.  For DVD-RW's, the time spent while on the initialisation method screen was not included and in this case, 'Quick Initialisation' has been selected.  The recording time is timed from the point 'Copy' is pressed while highlighting the test recording until the time the progress dialogue disappears.  Finally, the finalisation stage is timed from the point the 'Finalise' icon is selected until the point it shows 'Done'.

After writing each disc, we performed a compatibility test by testing each disc in the following drives:

The recording used for each disc is a single continuous recording containing 13 chapters, each spaced 5 minutes apart.  When each disc was tested for compatibility, each chapter was tested for a few seconds to ensure smooth playback.  Apart from where mentioned below, each disc played without any noticeable issue in all drives. 

You should first notice that this is not a scientific and professional way to test the discs. But according to our testing done in recent months, we would conclude that there is a clear link between the quality reported when scanning the disc and the playability of the disc in different devices. Also notice that different drives report different amounts of errors. K-Probe was designed to work with Lite-On DVD-Writers, so we recommend using a DVD-Writer from Lite-On. In this test we use a Lite-On SOHW-832S DVD-Writer, as already said; remember that scans done with a Lite-On DVD-ROM or Lite-On combo drive can't be compared with the results obtained with a Lite-On DVD-Writer. Also remember that different PI/PO ECC sum settings along with different reading speeds in K-Probe will affect the result, we use these settings;  PI (Parity Inner) set to summarize 8 ECC blocks, PIF (Parity Inner Failures) set to summarize 1 ECC block, reading speed: 4X CLV (Constant Linear Velocity). Setting the PI sum to 8 and the PIF sum to 1 will give a result that we may compare to the standards for DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW.

This scan below shows the results from a pressed, Single Layer DVD-Video disc (Ronin DVD).

This next scan shows the result from a pressed Double Layer DVD-Video disc (Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King). Notice the error jump when shifting to the second layer (the error levels actually drop from the end of the first layer to the beginning of the second layer).

If you read below you will see that both of the pressed DVD-discs are well within the standards.

If you read below you will see that both the pressed DVD-discs are well within the standards.

Download the ECMA 267 Standard for DVD-ROM, the ECMA 337 Standard for DVD+R/RW and the ECMA 338 Standard for DVD-R/RW at http://www.ecma-international.org if you want to look at the standards for yourself. Here is some data from the ECMA standards (same for DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW):

Random errors:

A row of an ECC Block that has at least 1 byte in error constitutes a PI error. In any 8

consecutive ECC Blocks the total number of PI errors before correction shall not exceed 280.

Here we see what a PI error is defined as a row in an ECC block having 1 byte or more containing errors. And that the sum of PI errors in 8 ECC blocks after each other should not exceed 280 PI errors.

But what is a row and what is an ECC block? Again we refer to the ECMA standards. We do not copy and paste everything but if interested look in the ECMA standards. A row is 182 bytes long where the last 10 bytes contain PI (Parity Inner) information. An ECC block is 208 rows long where the last 16 rows contain the PO (Parity Outer) information. This gives us a maximum possible PI error amount of 208 errors per block and for 8 blocks after each other this sum is of course 8 times higher giving a maximum possible amount of 1664 PIE-8 errors. In practical use a disc with 1664 PIE-8 errors is unreadable.

According to our tests the specified max PI-8 sum of 280 for good discs seems to be a good guideline, as some readers have problems reading discs when the PI-8 errors is over 300 and most players starts to have problems when the PI-8 error level reaches 600 or more.

But what are the PIF errors that K-Probe reports? They are Parity Inner Failures, meaning errors left after PI correction. Only the ECMA 337 standard describes the Parity Inner Failures. So how is a Parity Inner Failure defined? Here are what ECMA 337 states:

'If a row of an ECC Block as defined in 13.3 contains more than 5 erroneous bytes, the row is said to be 'PI-uncorrectable"."

In theory an ECC block may in the worst case have 208 PIF since every ECC block is 208 rows long. But the ECMA 337 standard goes further and specifies the max amount of accepted PI Failures (uncorrectable errors) allowed on a good disc:

'- In any ECC Block the number of PI-uncorrectable rows should not exceed 4." 

This means that when the PIF sum is set to 1 the maximum error value should not exceed 4. The theoretical maximum value for PIF is 208 errors.

But what makes a disc unreadable? A POF (Parity Outer Failure) error will make the disc unreadable, but K-Probe does not display the POF's.

Notice that there are other aspects such as disc reflectivity, jitter, tracking errors and so on that also will affect the readability of a DVD disc - but for this we do not have measuring equipment available.

And another note is that we have scanned the discs at 4X CLV speed, by lowering the speed to 2X(DVD-R/RW)/2.4X(DVD+R/RW) or 1X the amount of reported errors may drop on some discs. We scanned at 4X CLV due to lower speeds taking to much time.

To see if there is a connection between the reported amount of errors and readability of the discs we also include the reading curve from a NEC ND-3520AW DVD-Writer. The reason why we have changed reader is that some companies disliked that we used a modified firmware to obtain 16x reading speed. So to please them we are now using a drive that reads DVDR media at 16x as default. A small speed reduction near the end is still accepted on good discs, but serious reading problems or reading failures is a bad sign.

Maybe this got too technical and you are wondering what to look for in KProbe reports?

Use this as a guideline for good discs:

PI (Parity Inner): No larger areas on the disc should exceed 280 PI-8 errors, do not worry too much about high single spikes that exceed 280.
PIF (Parity Inner Failures): No larger areas on the disc should exceed 4 PIF-1 errors, do not worry too much about high single spikes that exceed 4.

And as always; lower is better

And look at the reading curve; does it look clean with no dips it should be good, a small slowdown near the end is accepted.

For some reason, when KProbe is used with DVD+R's that were recording using the Lite-On Recorder, KProbe will continue reading beyond the end of the disc, with the progress going beyond 100%.  As a result, errors start clocking up once it goes beyond 100%, so the errors on the following test results can be ignored as no errors have clocked up during the scan before it reached 100%.

Unlike recording on CD-R or CD-RW, we can see that there are no unusual high spikes in either the Parity Inner or Parity Inner Failure graphs.  This disc gave fairly good results with both fairly low PI and PIF error rates as well as a perfectly straight read speed graph.

Another good quality brand of media with a slightly lower PIF rate than the above disc.  This disc also produced a perfect read graph.  In this test, we left KProbe to read a few percent beyond the end of the disc just to show what happens when it reads DVD+R's written by the Lite-On Recorder. 

When it comes to PI/PIF error checking, this disc gives excellent results, however when spun up to, it does show a small bit of struggling to reach 16x, unlike the other two discs which produced perfect speed graphs.  Then again, as most standalone DVD players only spin the disc between 1x and 2x, this disc should give very good results.

Both PI and PIF rates are a little higher than previous discs, but no unusual PI/PIF bursts either.  Like the first two discs, this disc also produces a perfect speed graph.

When it comes to DVD-R media, the Recorder will sometimes not show the disc preparation process when loaded, so as a result two of the tests do not have an initialise time.  However unlike scanning DVD+R media written in the Recorder, KProbe does stop scanning once it reaches the 100% mark.

This disc gave fairly decent PI and PIF rates and showed a slight bit of struggling to reach 16x speed whiled reading.  Then again, it still turned out to be a very good burn since the PIF rate only climbed above 1 for a few parts of the disc and there were no unusual spikes.

Like with DVD+R media, this Recorder can also do a very good job with writing DVD-R media, producing both low average PIF rates and a perfect speed graph, apart from the unusually high PIF spike in this case.  It is interesting to see the same manufacturer and code on this disc and yet produce results quite different from the first DVD-R test.

While Titanium may appear like a higher class than Blue for a given brand band, it seems unusual to get a much higher PI error rate for the Titanium Datawrite disc.  Then again, this disc produced a lower PIF rate, did not show any unusual PIF spikes and also produced a perfect speed graph. 

This disc produced excellent results, with the best overall when it comes to its average PIF rate and how few times the PIF climbed to even 2. 

As consumers frequently rewrite over their existing VHS tapes, there is a good chance that they will do the same when it comes to rewritable DVD media, especially if they record in one place and playback their recording elsewhere.  So, for these tests, we will test out four different brands of DVD+RW media and another four brands of DVD-RW media.

In the following tests, the Verbatim DVD+RW, included Lite-On DVD+RW media and Smartbuy media have been used on previous occasions, however not none has been rewritten to more than 10 times.  The rest of the rewritable media have been used for their first time when recording the test data onto them.

For these four DVD+RW tests, we have used the Lite-On SOHW-1693S to perform the speed graph.  When we tried using the NEC 3520AW, we got the following error on each disc:

While the Lite-On drive does not report any errors at the end of the disc, it does show an unusual jump in the speed read speed, even though the drive does not sound like it is spinning its disc any quicker. 

The results are as follows:

Very disappointing results for the blank unbranded media that Lite-On included with the Recorder.  Both the PI and PIF bursts frequently exceed the allowed limit for DVD media and the disc struggled to read faster than 4x throughout the disc.  Our recommendation would be to get pick up a decent DVD+RW disc and only use this to practice with.

The disc failed to be detected at all in an LG GDR-8081N laptop DVD-ROM drive and would not play beyond the 50 minute mark in our Samsung SD616Q.  In other drives however, the disc showed no signs of issue playing back.

While this disc is well within the allowed limit for PI errors, it does frequently exceed the allowed PIF error rate, up to 3 times limit at one point.  However, the disc is the only DVD+RW tested in this review that showed no compatibility issues with any player and also gave a perfect speed graph.

Certainly the worst test result for this review and would not be a smart buy, despite its brand name.

This disc gave intermittent playback in our Sony standalone DVD player, could not be detected in our NEC and laptop LG drives, unplayable at all in our Plextor DVD-ROM and gave intermittent performance in the PC's Lite-On and Samsung drives. The only drive that could playback the disc without issues was the Lite-On Recorder itself that wrote the disc.

While this media is manufactured by Prodisc like with the Smartbuy media above, this disc surely shows a major improvement in quality compared with the Smartbuy disc.  Although not visible in the above graph, the PI error rate peaked at 388 and the PIF error rate peaked at 36, which are well outside the allowed limits, however this only appeared to happen at one point. 

When it comes to compatibility, this disc played in all but the laptop LG DVD-ROM.  With the LG laptop drive, it could not detect the disc.

Unlike the DVD+RW media written in the Recorder, Nero CD speed shows no issue reading DVD-RW media in our NEC 3520AW. 

When a blank DVD-RW media is loaded, a screen appears asking whether to quick prepare the disc or perform a full prepare.  In these tests, we performed a quick prepare.  As the Recorder does not give any indication of when its preparation has finished for DVD-RW media, we could not time the initialisation stage.

The results are as follows:

While this Recorder did not seem to do a good job when it came to DVD+RW media, DVD-RW media on the other hand produces results similar to that of write once media, especially with this media.  This disc showed no compatibility issues, gave a perfect read graph and showed good low PI and PIF error rates apart from the one PIF spike.

While not as good as the FujiFilm brand, the PI and PIF error rates are within the allowed limits apart from the one unusually high PI spike and two PIF spikes.  As the first PIF spike is in the same position as the FujiFilm DVD-RW disc, this likely as a result of what ever method the Recorder writes to its media at this point, much like the first C2 spike present in all CD-RW media written on this Recorder. 

When it comes to playback, this disc played fine in all drives, except Windows Media Player in our laptop's LG drive, which gave the following error:

However, when we tried playing the disc with WinDVD on that same laptop, it showed no issue playing the disc.  The same went with playing the disc using Windows Media Player on other machines.

Summary:

When it comes to DVD-R and DVD+R media, this Recorder produces excellent results with low PI and PIF rates and averages.  However, DVD+RW media showed very poor results, especially with the included disc and Smartbuy media.  While Verbatim DVD+RW showed a significant improvement over these two; this is still a very poor result considering how good Verbatim media performs with most PC DVD writers.  DVD-RW performed much better than DVD+RW, with both discs capable of being played back in all PC DVD drives and our Sony standalone player.

We were rather disappointed with the write performance when it comes to DVD+R and DVD-R media as the Recorder did not write at 8x to any of our 8x certified media.  It seems like the Recorder is being over precautionary when it comes to the writing speed on this type of media.  Then again, it is often better to wait the extra few minutes for a higher quality recoding.