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| Posted by | Tor Magne |
| Posted on | 04/09/03 22:10 |
| Number of views | 10098 |
The package:
On this page we will take a look at what the drive came shipped with and take a look at the drive and it's techniques.
The drive came shipped from the United States of America to small Norway just to be reviewed by us. The drive survived the transport and here is the box containing the drive:
The box leaves no doubts about it: this is a dual format DVD-Writer, also the main speeds is clearly visible.
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:
As we could see the package is pretty complete, to be sure that nothing is left out we list the content of the box below:
Box content:
- The drive itself
- Quick setup map
- Quick install guide
- IDE cable
- Sound Cable
- 4 screws
- Installation DVD
- One empty 4X DVD+R disc
- One empty 2,4X DVD+RW disc
Now that is everything that we want to see in an retail box, Memorex did even include an IDE cable and paper manual, something which many other manufacturers do not include.
The so called Quick Install Guide is actually very good and contains a lot of good information when installing the drive, it do also contain a user guide to get you started with most of the included programs from Roxio.
We can't find anything to put our finger on when it comes to bundle or manual.
Why not take a closer look at the drive as well?
Memorex opted for a black design on the front and a silver tray, while this may look good in a black case it may look a bit odd in a grey or white case. We do find a lot of logos on the tray: The Memorex logo, a DVD-R/RW logo, a DVD+Rewritable logo and a CD-Rewritable High-Speed logo. And of course there is also an eject button and one LED (Light Emitting Diode), but the normal headphone connection and volume knob is gone.
Overall it looks like Memorex have tried to make their drive look special by making it with a black/silver front, but we prefer to have the choice between buying the black or the white version, also it feels strange to not have the headphone connection and volume knob, not because most people need it but because it looks a bit boring without it.
As we could see out from the sticker on the drive, our sample was manufactured in June 2003 at a factory in china. The strange thing is that the box states that it's made in Japan, but we trust this sticker more than the box.
Since Memorex do normally not manufacture any optical drives theirself, we surfed the web a bit and looked at pictures and specifications of other drives and this one seems to be an OEM Pioneer DVR-106.
We quickly installed the drive without any problems and fired up Nero Info Tool to get an idea of which features this drive supports:
Out from this picture we could see that the drive is shipped with firmware 1.05 and a buffer size of only 2000Kb. Why they do not add a larger 4Mb or 8Mb buffer like many other manufacturers is a mystery to us as we think the drive would benefit a larger buffer on older computers. The only features that lacks is the ability to read CD+G and DVD-RAM as well as writing DVD-RAM. Hopefully we will see Mount Rainier support in DVD-Writers as well some time soon.
We have also included another snapshot showing the features of this drive, this one is from DVD Info Pro
What we mentioned earlier is now confirmed, take a look at the Extra info field and you will see that it's identified as a PIONEER with a firmware that is made 23. May 2003
And another shot from Nero Burning ROM:
We couldn't find anything bad here, but still a 2000Kb buffer is a bit small and may cause the buffer-underrun protection technology to kick in very often on stressed systems.
Now it's time to take a closer look at the write technology used by the Memorex:
CD-Recordable:
The drive uses CLV(Constant Linear V elocity) to write at it's rated speed of 16X.
CD-ReWritable:
As we could see the drive uses CLV(Constant Linear Velocity) to write at it's rated speed of 10X for CD-RW.
Included software:
Now it's time to put in the included software DVD to see which programs that is included.
When we inserted the disc, we got this autorun menu, a short while and a few reboots later and all the programs were installed.
All programs except the DVD Max player is available through the following menu:
Disc copier:
No much to say really, a simple and easy to understand program for copying discs.
Audio Central:
Audio central is a music player and organizer, with pretty many options and features. Well worth a try.
Videowave is a full featured program for capturing video and edit it as well. The nice thing is that it's very easy to understand and contains most needed features.
DVD Builder is a program that will help you making your own DVD-Movie discs, again a very easy to use program. Notice that there is a quick guide on how to use this program in the included 'Quick Install Guide" manual.
Photosuite will help you to edit and organize your pictures.
And the classic easy CD-Creator, now in version 6. Works well for writing data and music CD and DVD's.
And finally the Roxio DVD
MAX Player:
This program is used to play Movie-DVD's, and is actually a very good player.
We peeked at the properties of this program:
And the program is actually developed by Cyberlink, which is known for another popular Software DVD-Player: PowerDVD.
All in all the software collection is quite complete and features most programs that could be useful in combination with your newly bought DVD-Writer.
Features and software is not everything, so continue to the next page and look at the reading performance of the Memorex…
Introduction
Nice to have you back again OC-Freak
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