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Sony BWU-100A detail information

Posted by agent009
Posted on 26/06/07 06:17
Number of views 20669
Manufacturer Sony
Product Sony BWU-100A
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Advanced tests

Advanced DAE (Digital Audio Extraction) test

In this test, we will use the "Advanced DAE Quality Test" feature of Nero CD-DVD Speed.

The CD-R media is a 40x certified Memorex Music CD-R made by CMC:


Memorex 40x Music CD-R
(Thanks to Memorex USA for providing this media)

Sony BWU-100A shows only 24x as the maximum speed available with this media, and we create a 74-minute test disc at 24x:


DAE test disc creation

The test shows that audio extraction quality is perfect, with a quality score of 100, and that the drive supports reading CD text, subchannel data and the lead-in. On-the-fly copying works at speeds up to 10x:


DAE (Digital Audio Extraction) test

The "Sheep Test"

In this test we will rate the drive with a certain number of sheep by using the sheep test program made by Alexander Noé.

Why sheep? That's because the official logo of the first 1-to-1 copy program called CloneCD is a sheep:


CloneCD logo

We are interested in the drive's ability to make exact copies of CDs by writing weak sectors. This feature is also known as "Correct EFM encoding of regular bit-patterns."

  • 0 sheep: Can't backup any Safedisc 2 versions without software help.
  • 1 Sheep: Can backup Safedisc 2 up to version 2.4x without software help.
  • 2 Sheep: Can backup Safedisc 2, including version 2.5x.
  • 3 Sheep: Can write all possible weak sectors, few if any writers can do this.

One of our forum moderators, Womble, has written a guide concerning the "Sheep Test" that can be found here.

CloneCD reports that Sony BWU-100A supports all features CloneCD tests for, with one exception of the RAW Disc-At-Once mode:


CloneCD report

Our sheep test indicates that Sony BWU-100A is a two-sheep burner capable of writing Safedisc CDs up to version 2.5x:

Of the four files involved in the test, sd290.dat and sheep3.dat failed to copy:


Safedisc version 2.9 is not supported


Safedisc version 3 is not supported

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Reactions on this item
"handles all optical media"

except HDDVD perhaps :S
Good point!

Unfortunately, 1x HD-DVD burners are just beginning to appear this summer [in notebooks], so HD-DVD burning has been no more than a theoretical possibility even though HD-DVD-R and -RW media has been out for months.

Toshiba's SD-H903A 1x HD-DVD burner is awfully late for a product launched/unveiled six months ago. They better hurry. You know: train... leaving the station... :)
why even bother, over a year has gone by and blu-ray has been pumping out 2x burners and now 4x, later 6x, and hd-dvd will finally have 1x and barely be able to store 15GB.... why?? 15GB?? come on, seems so last-gen, 50GB's where its at.
Hey Agent009, I like your review. Good to see some opinions here and there about the burns, which I agree with more than I usually do.

Just wondering if that benQ you used for scanning is a rebadged liteon? If it's genuine benQ, I wonder why you didn't use cdspeed for scanning + jitter, it would be nice to see how good the jitter was on some of those discs that had ridiculously low error levels (MCC003 in particular) :)
"Just wondering if that benQ you used for scanning is a rebadged liteon? If it's genuine benQ, I wonder why you didn't use cdspeed for scanning + jitter, it would be nice to see how good the jitter was on some of those discs that had ridiculously low error levels (MCC003 in particular)"

DW1680 is a MediaTek/Lite-On design [otherwise KProbe wouldn't have worked with it], equivalent to LH-16A1P.

We use KProbe for quality testing to keep reviews consistent, but you are right, CD-DVD Speed does provide more quality data.

In BWU-100A DVD+R burns, jitter is pretty low. It usually averages 9% +-0.4% when measured by either BenQ or Lite-On drives.
BD-R discs are 24.2GB unlike BD-RE which are 25GB? Why's that?
"BD-R discs are 24.2GB unlike BD-RE which are 25GB? Why's that?"

I believe this is the way CD-DVD Speed reports capacities.

25,025,xxx,xxx bytes is the so-called 'gross' BD-RE capacity before 12,288 clusters are allocated for the inner spare area (ISA0).

The same number of 64 KB clusters is lost with BD-R as well, but the 24,220,xxx,xxx number reported for BD-R is the 'net' capacity.

In both cases, usable space ends up being the same 24,220,xxx,xxx bytes.
Whoah only 15GB?? - i didn't know that.
Havent payed much attention yet as its still sorta early to consider using anything newer than DVD as a cost effective measure..
But yeah, absolutely too small for next gen, which is sad because I hate sony and everything they are about.

btw nice writeup 009
Hi,

thanks for the review, I appreciate it, I was wondering if anybody here, maybe able to help me with a question, I am thinking of fitting one of these into a custom HTPC case. Is this the same same size dimensions as current DVD drives and also, does the front bezel remove easily as current drives, I need to remove to be able to fit the drive into my custom case, as long as it is standard sizeand the bezel comes off, I will be fine.

thanks for any feedback.
"Is this the same same size dimensions as current DVD drives and also, does the front bezel remove easily as current drives, I need to remove to be able to fit the drive into my custom case, as long as it is standard sizeand the bezel comes off, I will be fine."

Yes, the bezel is removable. It is held in place by plastic tabs, as with any other drive.

BWU-100A is a standard 5.25 inch drive that is 190 mm long. This is longer than usual and about the maximum length that 5.25 inch bays are designed for. It may be a tight fit in very small cases like Shuttle. I don't think you will have trouble fitting it in an HTPC case, but to be sure, measure the length of the drive bay.
I bought an oem bwu-100A on ebay a few months ago for under $500. It can only write BD-R and BD-RW at 1x. Several people in cyberspace mentioned that because of the "write verify" turned on at the hardware level and Nero doesn't have an option to turn it off. Though Imgburn has the option, it doesn't support the INCD UDF format Nero is using. It seems that new drives like that in this review doen't have the problem. I just wish Sony can release a firmware update to solve this problem.
"I bought an oem bwu-100A on ebay a few months ago for under $500. It can only write BD-R and BD-RW at 1x. Several people in cyberspace mentioned that because of the "write verify" turned on at the hardware level and Nero doesn't have an option to turn it off. Though Imgburn has the option, it doesn't support the INCD UDF format Nero is using. It seems that new drives like that in this review doen't have the problem. I just wish Sony can release a firmware update to solve this problem."

...is this true? BD-R at 1x? Is this only on the OEM version? I am also looking at a (retail) version from ebay and wondering if anyone else had same experiences... thx
It seems that there are two different versions on the market. According to the CNET review, "Burning a BD-R with 23GB of mixed data files took 1 hour, 40 minutes, 11 seconds.". NOT 45 minutes in the review here.

http://reviews.cnet.com/dvd-drives/sony-bwu-100a-blu/4505-3212_7-31899197.html
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