detail information

What's inside the box?

Notice that this is a pre-release sample and that the information on this page may not be relevant for the final shipping version.

Here is the box that contained the drive:

Since this is a pre-release sample the box is actually the box of the 52x24x52x CD-RW drive that is already in stores.

But a nice box is not enough, there have to be something inside it, so we opened the box and took out the content of it:

Notice that the content of the box will change with the shipping version.

Box content:

⋅         The drive itself
⋅         Quick install guide
⋅         Small registration paper.
⋅         Power cable (Non-European standard)
⋅         Power supply
⋅         CD containing Nero Burning ROM 5.5.
⋅         Driver CD
⋅         One empty DVD+RW labelled RiData 2.4X but is actually a 4X DVD+RW disc made by Ricoh.
⋅         USB 2.0 Cable to connect it to the computer.

Since this is only a pre-release drive we will not look to hard at the package details, but a software DVD-Video player and a manual is what we are missing.

Now it's time to take a look at the drive itself:

Even the bottom of the External case is not yet updated as it states that only 110V power may be used, this is wrong as the power supply is auto switching 110-250V, the external case states 'Made in China". The rubber feets are very good and makes the drive stand stable.

And we did of course also open the external case. Inside the case we found a standard IDE BTC DRW1004IM Dual format DVD-Writer. The writer is manufactured By Top Glory Electronics in China. Our sample was manufactured in October 2003.

On the back we find a power connector and a power switch, along with the USB 2.0 interface and the USB 2.0 HUB. There is also a fan to keep the drive cool, when used along with a silent laptop the sound level of this fan is quite annoying, but when used with a regular computer it's not much louder than most CPU and case fans.

The front is completely filled with button, slots and LED's. To keep track on all of them we have numbered them and lists them all here.

1: Volume knob to adjust the volume for the headphones connected to the headphone connector.
2: Headphone connector.
3: LED that lights green when a flash card is inserted into the Memory stick slot.
4: LED that lights green when a flash card is inserted into the Secure digital / MultiMedia card slot.
5: Flash reader slot for Memory Stick and Memory Stick PRO flash cards.
6: Flash reader slot for Secure Digital and MultiMedia card flash cards.
7: Play / next track when playing music discs.
8: Open / Close tray / Stop (when playing music discs).
9: Drive LED: Flashes red wile writing and green while reading.
10: LED for the 9in4 flash reader. Lights green when the drive is powered and connected to a computer.
11: Flash reader slot for Compact Flash flash cards.
12: Flash reader slot for Smart media and xD flash cards.
13: External enclosure LED, Lights green when the drive is powered, and lights red when data is transferred between the drive and the computer.
14: LED that lights green when a flash card is inserted into the Smart Media/xD flash card slot.
15: LED that lights green when a flash card is inserted into the Compact Flash flash card slot.
16: Emergency Eject hole, use a long thin object to manually force the tray out in case the drive has failed with a disc inside.

We quickly installed the drive without any problems and fired up Nero Info Tool to get an idea of which features this drive supports:

Our drive came shipped with firmware 0040. BTC had a newer version available; version 0047, the only problem is that their firmware updaters do not support external drives. So we had to take the drive out of the external case and put it internally on the IDE bus to flash it, after flashing we put the drive back in the external enclosure again. We think and hope that BTC/Mediagear will fix this problem so that updating the firmware will be possible for the external version as well, firmware upgrades is pretty essential for DVD-Writers as there is new media types coming to the market all the time.

Update! While finishing the review BTC released firmware version 0048, and a few test were re-done to see if this firmware removed some of the problems we had.

The drive supports almost everything but we miss the support for CD+G and Mount Rainier. We do also prefer a larger buffer than 2Mb.

And another shot from Nero Burning ROM:

We do not really find anything alarming here either, but a larger buffer and Mount Rainier support would have been nice.

Now it's time to take a closer look at the write technology used by the Mediagear:

CD-Recordable:

The drive uses CAV(Constant Angular Velocity) to write at its maximum speed of 40X. The drive reached 41.89X at the end and this gives an average speed of 31.85x. We only know of one other drive in the same generation that supports 40X CD-R writing and that is the Lite-On LDW-411S.

CD-ReWritable:

As we could see the drive uses P-CAV(Partial-Constant Angualar Velocity) write method to write at its rated speed of 24X for Ultra speed CD-RW, this easily makes it one of the fastest drives for CD-RW writing in its class with an average speed of 23.50X.

Included software:

Notice that the program bundle may change, since this is only a pre-release unit. Notice that we may not use the included software in our performance testing part of the review.

Nero 5.5:

The drive comes shipped with a Nero 5.5 installation CD, Nero is a quite good recording software and is among our favourites. This CD also contains manuals for the BTC DVD-Writer, but only for the internal version without the added Mediagear flash reader.

Mediagear driver CD:

The first option is for installing the Mediagear drivers. Notice that you have to install the drivers before connecting the drive! During the installation you will be asked to connect the drive. On a windows XP system there will be no drivers except the colour icons utility installed, the colour icons utility is a feature that tells you which of the card readers that is what when browsing them on your computer. Look below for more pictures of this:

 
This picture shows how it looks before any flash cards is inserted.

 
And this picture shows how the colour turns red when we inserted a Compact Flash and a Secure Digital flash card.

We only had a compact flash card and a Secure Digital card available to test with but everything worked as it should with these two card types, and the best of all was that it worked very fast! The images was transferred in no time, much faster than using the cable included with the cameras.

NTI CD/DVD Maker 6.5 GOLD:

The driver CD also contains installation files for NTI CD/DVD maker 6.5 GOLD, we find this a bit strange, as Nero burning ROM was also included. In other words you have the choice to use either Nero or NTI software. This may change for the shipping version though as this is only a pre-release drive.

As already mentioned we would also like to see a software DVD-Video player included (like PowerDVD or WinDVD), and a DVD Authoring program would be nice as well since Nero and NTI CD & DVD Maker only have limited features for doing this.

Now that we have finished examining the drive bundle it's time to head on to next page, which is reading performance test…