Sony BWU-100A Blu-ray Burner Review

Sony BWU-100A detail information

Posted by	agent009
Posted on	26/06/07 06:17
Number of views	20640
Manufacturer	Sony
Product	Sony BWU-100A

Conclusion

Introduction

Overview, specifications, retail package

Features and software

CD, DVD and BD (Blu-ray Disc) writing performance

CD, DVD and BD (Blu-ray Disc) reading performance

CD-R and CD-RW writing quality

DVD+R and DVD+RW writing quality

DVD-R and DVD-RW writing quality

DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL writing quality

DVD-RAM writing performance

BD-R and BD-RE writing quality

BD-R DL and BD-RE DL writing quality

Advanced tests

Text Size Text Size

CD, DVD and BD (Blu ray Disc) reading performance

CD reading performance

In the tests below, we will explore CD reading capabilities and performance of Sony BWU-100A. We will use Nero CD-DVD Speed to read various types of CDs.

Summary

The following table lists reading speeds and strategies used by Sony BWU-100A when reading CD media:

Some of these strategies are presented below.

CD-ROM

Sony BWU-100A reads CD-ROM at 14x-34x CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) speed.

With a pressed CD-ROM data disc, about 73 minutes in length, average speed is 25.28x and read time is 3 minutes and 1 second:

CD-ROM reading

CD-Audio

While only 1x speed is required to listen to sound stored on CD-Audio discs, it is useful to be able to read the discs at higher speeds when extracting the content of the disc to a hard drive.

Sony BWU-100A reads CD-audio at 5x-13x CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) speed.

With a 74-minute pressed CD-Audio disc, average speed is 9.42x and read time is 8 minutes and 13 seconds:

CD-Audio reading

CD-R

Sony BWU-100A reads CD-R at 14x-34x CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) speed.

Average speed is 25.29x and read time is 3 minutes and 19 seconds:

CD-R reading

CD-RW

Sony BWU-100A reads CD-RW at 11x-25x CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) speed.

Average speed is 18.96x and read time is 4 minutes and 8 seconds:

CD-RW reading

DVD reading performance

In the tests below, we will explore DVD reading capabilities and performance of Sony BWU-100A. We will use Nero CD-DVD Speed to read various types of DVDs.

Summary

The following table lists reading speeds and strategies used by Sony BWU-100A when reading DVD media:

Some of these strategies are presented below.

DVD-ROM

Sony BWU-100A reads DVD-ROM at 3x-8x CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) speed.

With a pressed DVD-ROM data disc, about 2.7 GB in length, average speed is 5.29x and read time is 6 minutes and 47 seconds:

DVD-ROM reading

DVD-Video (DVD-5)

While only 1x speed is required to watch movies stored on DVD-Video discs, it is useful to be able to read the discs at higher speeds when extracting the content of the disc to a hard drive.

Sony BWU-100A reads single-layer DVD-Video at 3x-6x CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) speed.

With a pressed single-layer DVD-Video data disc, about 4.3 GB in length, average speed is 4.62x and read time is 12 minutes and 47 seconds:

DVD-Video (DVD-5) reading

DVD-Video DL (DVD-9)

Sony BWU-100A reads double-layer DVD-Video at 3x-6x CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) speed.

With a pressed double-layer DVD-Video data disc, about 7.8 GB in length, average speed is 4.63x and read time is 22 minutes and 51 seconds:

DVD-Video DL (DVD-9) reading

DVD+R

Sony BWU-100A reads DVD+R at 3x-8x CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) speed.

Average speed is 6.17x and read time is 9 minutes and 41 seconds:

DVD+R reading

DVD+RW

Sony BWU-100A reads DVD+RW at 3x-8x CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) speed.

Average speed is 6.16x and read time is 9 minutes and 42 seconds:

DVD+RW reading

DVD+R DL

Sony BWU-100A reads DVD+R DL at 3x-8x CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) speed.

Average speed is 6.17x and read time is 17 minutes and 32 seconds:

DVD+R DL reading

DVD-R

Sony BWU-100A reads DVD-R at 3x-8x CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) speed.

Average speed is 6.15x and read time is 9 minutes and 43 seconds:

DVD-R reading

DVD-RW

Sony BWU-100A reads DVD-RW at 3x-8x CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) speed.

Average speed is 6.15x and read time is 9 minutes and 43 seconds:

DVD-RW reading

DVD-R DL

Sony BWU-100A reads DVD-R DL at 3x-8x CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) speed.

Average speed is 6.18x and read time is 17 minutes and 30 seconds:

DVD-R DL reading

DVD-RAM

Sony BWU-100A reads DVD-RAM at 5x CLV (Constant Linear Velocity).

Average speed is 5.00x and read time is 11 minutes:

DVD-RAM reading

BD (Blu-ray Disc) reading performance

In the tests below, we will explore BD reading capabilities and performance of Sony BWU-100A. We will use Nero CD-DVD Speed to read various types of BDs.

Summary

The following table lists reading speeds and strategies used by Sony BWU-100A when reading BD media:

Some of these strategies are presented below.

BD-ROM

Sony BWU-100A reads BD-ROM at 2x CLV (Constant Linear Velocity).

With a pressed single-layer BD-ROM disc, 22.4 GB in length, average speed is 2.00x and read time is 44 minutes and 21 seconds:

BD-ROM reading

BD-ROM DL

Sony BWU-100A reads BD-ROM DL at 2x CLV (Constant Linear Velocity).

With a pressed double-layer BD-ROM DL disc, 45.4 GB in length, average speed is 2.00x and read time is 89 minutes and 59 seconds:

BD-ROM DL reading

BD-R

Sony BWU-100A reads BD-R at 2x CLV (Constant Linear Velocity).

Average speed is 2.00x and read time is 44 minutes and 45 seconds:

BD-R reading

BD-RE

Sony BWU-100A reads BD-RE at 2x CLV (Constant Linear Velocity).

Average speed is 2.00x and read time is 44 minutes and 45 seconds:

BD-RE reading

BD-R DL

Sony BWU-100A reads BD-R DL at 2x CLV (Constant Linear Velocity).

With a recorded single-layer BD-R DL disc, 45.0 GB in length, average speed is 2.00x and read time is 89 minutes and 9 seconds:

BD-R DL reading

BD-RE DL

Sony BWU-100A reads BD-RE DL at 2x CLV (Constant Linear Velocity).

With a recorded double-layer BD-RE DL disc, 45.1 GB in length, average speed is 2.00x and read time is 89 minutes and 34 seconds:

BD-RE DL reading

Conclusion

Sony BWU-100A is limited to 32x CAV CD and 8x CAV DVD reading speeds, with CSS-protected DVD-Video speed further reduced to 6x CAV, quite slow by today's standards.

BD-R reading is a predictable 2x CLV in all cases: 45 minutes to read a full single-layer BD, 1.5 hours to read a full double-layer BD.

While 2x BD reading is more than sufficient for high-definition movie playback, in terms of data transfer rates, it is roughly equivalent to 6.5x DVD speed: 9 MB/s or 0.5 GB/minute.

CD, DVD and BD (Blu-ray Disc) writing performance

CD-R and CD-RW writing quality

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Reactions on this item

Posted by ProfessorDVD on Wednesday 27 June 2007 04:47

"handles all optical media"

except HDDVD perhaps

Posted by agent009 on Thursday 28 June 2007 04:01

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...

Posted by electrox3d (guest) on Thursday 28 June 2007 19:47

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.

Posted by cd pirate on Sunday 01 July 2007 15:05

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)

Posted by agent009 on Monday 02 July 2007 21:57

"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.

Posted by shae (guest) on Saturday 07 July 2007 00:57

BD-R discs are 24.2GB unlike BD-RE which are 25GB? Why's that?

Posted by agent009 on Saturday 07 July 2007 07:58

"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.

Posted by ProfessorDVD on Thursday 12 July 2007 03:13

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

Posted by Michael (guest) on Sunday 29 July 2007 13:06

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.

Posted by agent009 on Wednesday 01 August 2007 02:48

"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.

Posted by simon (guest) on Monday 20 August 2007 20:02

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.

Posted by plasm0 on Tuesday 23 October 2007 14:47

"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

Posted by simon (guest) on Wednesday 14 November 2007 17:22

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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