detail information

What's inside the box?

On this page we will take a look at what the drive came shipped with, and take a look at the drive and its technology.

Since our drive is a pre-release drive it came in a white paper box that is not worth showing, let's jump right to the content of the box:

Notice that this is a pre-release drive, so this is what we got:

⋅         The drive itself
⋅         Nero software installation CD
⋅         Dual Layer 2.4x DVD+R discs (Media code MKM001 - Mitsubishi Kagaku Media)

The shipping version will of course have more content like manuals and screws etc.

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

The Philips drive sets itself apart from most other drives we've had with a less boring front bezel than most other drives. The most interesting feature is the LEDs, which are both fancy and useful. There are separate LEDs for showing if there is a CD or DVD disc in the drive, as well as a long LED for showing the operation done. The long LED glows red while writing and blue while reading. Look below for examples.

The Philips DVDRW885 is now reading a DVD-Disc, the DVD light is on and the function led lights blue.

The Philips DVDRW885 is now writing a DVD-Disc, the DVD light is on and the function LED lights red.

There were two stickers on our sample drive. The production date is as early as February 2004, this shows that Dual layer capable hardware has been ready for quite a while. Our sample is manufactured in Malaysia.

On the back of the drive there are from the left: two undocumented pins, digital audio connector; analog audio connector; pins and jumper to set the drive to cable select, slave or master; IDE connector, power connector.

We quickly installed the drive without any problems and here is a screenshot from Nero info tool:

Our drive came shipped with firmware T1.4, and T1.4 is used in this review except for two reading tests that were re-done with P1.6 due to problems with the T1.4 firmware. As we said earlier; the drive does not support writing DVD-R and DVD-RW discs. We also miss Mt.Rainier support and a larger buffer would have been nice.

And another shot from Nero Burning ROM:

We do not really find anything alarming here, but Mount Rainier, and DVD-R/RW support and a larger buffer would have been nice.

Now it's time to take a closer look at the write technology used by the Philips DVDRW885:

CD-Recordable:

As we could see the Philips DVDRW885 uses P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular Velocity) to write at its rated speed of 24x. This gives an average speed of 23.05x. This low speed will for sure makes it lag behind most other drives. Two drives for comparison is found below.

The NEC ND-2500A uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 32X. The drive wrote the last zone at 32X and this gives an average speed of 27.16x.

As we could see the Plextor PX-708A uses P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular Velocity) writing strategy to reach it rated speed of 40X. This gives an average speed of 33.38x.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

The Philips DVDRW885 is of course among the slower drives due to the 24x writing speed.

CD-ReWritable:

The Philips DVDRW885 uses CLV (Constant Linear Velocity) writing technology to write at 10X for CD-RW discs, the average speed is 9.93x. The low speed of only 10x does for sure make the Philips slower than most other modern DVD-Writers. Below are some other drives for comparison.

The Pioneer DVR-107D uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its rated speed of 24x, this gives an average speed of 22.47x.

The Plextor PX-708A, with its P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular Velocity) write speed of 24X for Ultra Speed CD-RW discs is among the faster writers due to its high starting speed of 20.01x. For a better overview we present the following comparison table:

It used exactly the same amount of time as the BenQ DW822A, not surprising as they are basically built on the same hardware. The drive is of course very slow due to the low speed of only 10x.

8X DVD Writing speed:

The Philips DVDRW885 uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity) to write at 8x. It uses two zones to achieve 8x speed; The first zone from 0-0,4Gb is done at 6x speed, the last zone from 0,4Gb to 4,4Gb is done at 8x. This gives an average speed of 7.55x. This places the drive among the faster 8x writers we know of. The reason why there is so many bumps in the transfer rate curve is the OPC control used by the Philips drive, which is designed to measure the writing quality and adjust writing strategy when needed.

The NEC ND-2500A uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity). The first zone from 0-0,8Gb is done at 4x speed, the next zone from 0,8Gb to 2,2Gb is done at 6x speed and the last zone from 2,2Gb to 4,4Gb is done at 8x. This gives an average speed of 6.80x. The speed is the same for both DVD-R and DVD+R discs.

The Plextor PX-708A also uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity). The first zone from 0-0,7Gb is done at 6x speed; the next zone from 0,7Gb to 4,4Gb is done at 8x speed. This gives an average speed of 7.69x, look below to see a comparison table:

Very good and it's only 9 seconds behind the fastest drive (Plextor PX-708A).

Features and techniques:

Changing book type (bitsetting).

The Philips DVDRW885 supports bitsetting, and will as default write DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD+R DL media with DVD-ROM booktype. You do not need to do anything, unless you do not want DVD-ROM booktype on your discs. If you want to write discs with their original booktype (DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD+R DL) you should be able to do so with one of the generic bitsetting programs. DVDInfopro, DVDbitsetter and others should work just fine.

Here is how you could check if your discs are really written with DVD-ROM booktype:

Start DVDinfoPRO and click the Media button and you should get something like this:

As we could see the disc Book type is now DVD-ROM

Another quick test is to start Nero CD-Speed and look at the disc information:

This should also say DVD-ROM.

We recommend writing DVD+R discs with booktype set to DVD-ROM as this improves the compatibility of the disc.

Included software:

Now it's time to look at the included software, and comment it if needed. Notice that we may not use the included software in our performance testing part of the review.

Nero OEM suite:

We guess that the Ahead program suite is not new to most of you; it contains programs for creating most types of CD/DVD discs. Packet writing program, media player etc. Our favourite writing program suite, and thus Philips gets a plus in our book for including it.

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