detail information

As with any review we do, we're going to start by checking out the contents of the retail package Moka Europe send to us. Notice that we're taking a look at the European retail package here. In the box of the Ridata DVD recorder we can find the following items:

• Ridata RDA-08041 drive
• Brief user's guide
• Mounting screws and audio cable
• Sonic MyDVD CD-ROM containing;
  • MyDVD Video Suite 4
  • CinePlayer 1.5
  • RecordNow! 6.5
  • DLA 4.5
• 10 pcs. of Ritek 8x DVD+R media (RITEK-R03-001)

When looking at the Ridata package we feel that it could have been better. The package does not include any flatcables, extra jumper caps, etc. The user's guide that is shipped with the drive is very, very brief and inexperienced users will have a hard time building the Ritek recorder into their system. Luckily it isn't all bad since the Ridata drive is shipped with no less than 10 pieces of 8x Ritek DVD+R media. When it comes to software Ridata ships Sonic's software with their drives. This is not a bad choice but we'll get back to this later on this page of our review.

The Drive:

The front of the Ridata drive looks pretty standard. On the drive's tray we can find the Ridata logo and right below that we can find the 'DVD+ReWriteable' logo. From left to right we can find a headphone jack, volume control, emergency eject hole, a busy/write LED, a play/forward button and a stop/eject button:

The back of the Ridata drive looks the same as any DVD recorder. From left to right we have some unknown jumpers, a digital audio connector, an analog audio connector, the device jumpers (Master/Slave/CableSelect), the IDE interface connector and last but not least the power connector:

When we look at the label on the Ridata drive we can see the model number (RDA-08041) in the right top corner and the usual warning messages. On the left sticker we can see the Nu Tech model number (DDW-081) and that the drive has been manufactured in December 2003, on the 9^th to be exact:

Software:

As we already briefly mentioned the Ridata drive is shipped with software from the Sonic company. The Sonic CD-ROM contains pretty much everything you need to make your own CD and DVD compilations (Sonic RecordNow!). Besides that the Sonic CD-ROM also contains software with which you can create your own DVD-Video or VCD discs (Sonic MyDVD Video Suite), DVD and VideoCD playback software (Sonic CinePlayer) and packet writing software (Sonic Drive Letter Access).

Sonic MyDVD Welcome Screen

Sonic CinePlayer

Drive Specifications:

Let's begin with a listing of the drive's specifications as listed on the Ritek website:

To our surprise the specifications as posted on the Ritek site were different than the ones posted on the Nu Tech website. After checking some things we found that the specifications on the Ritek site were not correct. The Ridata drive, for instance, does not support 48x CD-ROM, 48x CD-R and 16x DVD-ROM speeds but instead it supports 40x CD-R, 40x CD-ROM and 12x DVD-ROM speeds. Let's take a look at what Nero InfoTool reports us:

As you can see Nero InfoTool agrees with what we just said: the Ridata drive supports 40x CD-R writing and 40x CD-ROM read speeds. InfoTool also reports us that the drive has firmware BX30 installed and a 2MB buffer. The drive can read most types of media, except for DVD-RAM. C2 Error information is not supported according to InfoTool and neither is the Mount Rainier standard.

From the screenshot we can also see that the drive is a RPC II (Regional Playback Control) DVD reader. This means that the drive has been set to play region 2 DVDs (Europe) and has four region changes left. After the last change the drive will be locked to the last used region. This was done by motion picture studios to control the release of movie titles in each world region. This lock can then be reset four times by the manufacturer of the drive.

Drive Features:

Buffer Underrun Protection:

Nero reports us that the Ridata drive supports the Seamless Link technology to prevent coasters when your computer cannot supply the recorder with enough data. The Seamless Link technology monitors the amount of data that is stored in the recorder's buffer (2MB in this case). When this amount falls beneath a certain level the recording process is paused while the recorder attempts to receive data from the PC to refill the buffer. As soon as the buffer has been refilled, the recorder will start recording again.

Running OPC:

The Ridata recorder uses Running OPC (Optimum Power Control) while recording data to a disc. Simply said, this means that during the write process the quality of the disc is constantly monitored and maintained. If needed the write speed can be reduced to increase the overall quality of the recorded disc. In the CD and DVD write tests below you can actually see the OPC in action. The recording speed has spikes which indicates that the running OPC is checking the quality of the disc.

Recording Speeds:

Let's take a look at the Ridata's DVD+R/RW and CD-R/RW write performance when using Nero CD Speed:

DVD+Recordable Media:

From this image you can see that the Ridata drive starts the write process at 6x and after writing around 400MB the write speed is increased to the drive's maximum recording speed of 8x. The speed drops you see are from the running OPC as we explained above. The Ridata's average recording speed was 7.49x. As a comparison, the Plextor PX-708A has an average recording speed of 7.69x using Nero CD Speed.

DVD+ReWriteable Media:

There isn't much to tell about the Ridata's DVD+RW writing performance as it uses the CLV (Constant Linear Velocity) recording method which means that recording speed, 4x in this case, is the same throughout the entire recording process.

CD-Recordable Media:

From the produced graph we can see that the Ridata drive uses the Full CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) recording method for CD-Rs. While the maximum recording speed of the Ridata drive (41.73x) was higher than the Plextor PX-708A's maximum recording speed (40x), its average recording speed was actually lower (31.21x versus 33.36x). This is because the Plextor PX-708A uses the Partial-CAV recording method and reaches its maximum recording speed of 40x much sooner than the Ridata drive.

CD-ReWriteable Media:

This last graph shows us that the Ridata drive uses the P-CAV writing method for CD-RW discs. This is the same recording method as the Plextor PX-708A uses only the Plextor has a slighly higher average recording speed (23.75x compared to the Ridata's 23.57x).