DVD Media Tests on NEC 4550A

[Wombler]

Thanks to Lightning UK! and all the others for the very useful media scans in the DVD Media forum.

 

I have an NEC 4550A and it's a great drive. Unbelieveably quiet too.

 

One small suggestion though.

 

It is well known among NEC users that burning at 16X with certain drives creates a PIE spike at 2GB.

 

It's unclear at the moment as to exactly why this is however as a result the more expert NEC users recommend always burning all 16X discs at 12X on these drives since this produces much better scans for very little extra time.

 

I know how long it takes to burn/scan discs not mention the cost of the media and very much appreciate the effort spent by the people doing these tests. It's a great resource and it's fantastic to have all this info in one location without having to trawl the Net and other burning sites.

 

But I still can't help feeling that for the 4550A these scans would be even more useful if the burns had been carried out at 12X in a similar fashion to the more specialist NEC forums on other sites.

 

Any thoughts on this Lightning UK!?

 

Anyone else care to comment?

 

 

Nemesis

[LIGHTNING UK!]

I expect the same is true for most of the drives!

 

They'd all benefit from slower speeds or special settings being enabled / disabled.

 

That wasn't the initial purpose though. The initial purpose was to show real-life burns as 'Joe Public' could expect without ANY 'insider' knowledge.

 

The only thing making them slightly less 'real-life', is that we made sure we were running the latest firmware - something very few newbies would think to do!

 

At the end of the day, if the drive can't burn a disc at 16x, it should be limited to 12x (or whatever). It shouldn't be up to the user to slow it down to workaround such problems.

 

If there are any tests you'd really like to see done again at 12x (and don't say all of them!), just mention which ones and I'll do them when I have time.

[Grain]

edit

Edited February 8, 2006 by Grain

[Wombler]

Blimey that was quick! Thanks for the very quick response.

 

 

 

I expect the same is true for most of the drives!

 

They'd all benefit from slower speeds or special settings being enabled / disabled.

 

That wasn't the initial purpose though. The initial purpose was to show real-life burns as 'Joe Public' could expect without ANY 'insider' knowledge.

 

The only thing making them slightly less 'real-life', is that we made sure we were running the latest firmware - something very few newbies would think to do!

 

At the end of the day, if the drive can't burn a disc at 16x, it should be limited to 12x (or whatever). It shouldn't be up to the user to slow it down to workaround such problems.

 

Fair comment and I agree entirely although it's not that it can't burn at 16x but that you get the best results at 12x and 12x is more representative of what the media is truely capable of.

 

I know I'm probably a bit on the conservative side (otherwise known as anally retentive ) but I'd rather have a better quality burn than save the extra few moments.

 

The 4550A is a great burner and can support overspeeding on a reasonably wide range of media with updated firmware using amended write strategies. There are 4x media that can be reliably burnt at 12x with this drive and produce good scans. It's just when you go beyond 12x that this slightly undesirable anomaly appears although to be honest it normally isn't significant enough to affect playback.

 

If there are any tests you'd really like to see done again at 12x (and don't say all of them!), just mention which ones and I'll do them when I have time.

 

That's a very generous offer and much appreciated but I don't want to put you to too much trouble as I was just trying to help improve what is already an increasingly comprehensive resource.

 

If it's not too much hassle the only one I'd really like to see at 12x is the Datawrite PRODISCF02.

 

I've had great success with PRODISCF01 (the 8x discs) and was wondering how this drive coped with the 16x F02 which I've discovered I can get for the same price.

 

None of the other sites have scans of these particular discs with this writer.

 

Thanks for all assistance both now and in the past (in the days of your previous no longer mentionable product ) there are very very few developers/programmers that support their product as well as this and it's this sort of service that makes a donation almost compulsory.

 

Keep up the good work and if you can manage the scan I'd be even more impressed than I am already.

 

 

Nemesis

[chewy]

If there are any tests you'd really like to see done again at 12x (and don't say all of them!), just mention which ones and I'll do them when I have time.

 

that mcc 003 burn by the benq 1640 must be a fluke with the high POF, was it a bad disk or bad scan?

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Scans should be finished in 15 mins.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Dunno chewy.

 

I've kinda made it policy to not retry the burns / scans unless I really have to. This way, it's fair as all drives have an equal chance of getting a good / bad disc - when spread over as many dyes as I've been testing.

 

However, since you mentioned it, I'll do another when these are finished. They are datasafe discs so I'm guessing it's a disc problem - i.e. the plex had big problems with them!

[chewy]

the scan didn't correlate with any other data

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Indeed, there was no sign of any errors elsewhere in the scan, nor in the verify graph.

 

Weird though, the second disc I burnt had real trouble during verify and yet the scan came out fine. I expected it to be worse!

[chewy]

I am giving all this a 2nd go with some of the better media available here in the US that doesn't seem to make it to the other side of the pond.

 

My first time doing this I had real issues with dvdinfopro, got a new

version tonight.

[lfcrule1972]

Mmm I do wonder why discs are certified at 16x (take the TYG03's for e.g) when plainly their best burn quality is achieved at 8x-12x.... Is it so that the manufacturer can claim to have a 16x disc ?

 

I agree with LUK!, if the disc is rated at a certain speed it should, for the purposes of the tests be burnt at that speed tho as that is what the majority of purchasers would do....

 

Pleased you found the tests useful tho Nemesis, hopefully others will as well....

[lfcrule1972]

I just looked at LUK!'s scans at 12x and 10 with the NEC for the ProdiscF02, seems like a slower burn moved the spike towards the end of the disc whilst the 10x burn seemed to remove it all together ! I still wouldn't recommend 16x discs tho at the moment - why pay for faster burns when in reality you get lesser quality ?

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Quite correct Shamus! It would seem the problem stems from when the NEC tries to go faster than 12x. As soon as it does.... SPIKE!

 

If only the bloody thing didn't end up burning at 13x when I asked for a max of 12 - hence my reason for then doing an 'unsupported' 10x burn

[lfcrule1972]

Quite correct Shamus!

 

Shamus ??

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Sorry mate, I just looked at the avatar.... that's how I normally tell who's saying what!

 

As yours are both kinda orange (flame) and I saw you'd posted above it, I assumed the 2nd orange avatar must have been Shamus's !

[lfcrule1972]

No worries - oh and you're it !!!

[chewy]

I agree with LUK!, if the disc is rated at a certain speed it should, for the purposes of the tests be burnt at that speed tho as that is what the majority of purchasers would do....

 

not after they learn to scan or come to the newsgroups for help after

producing inferior burns

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Chewy, we're but a drop in the ocean.

 

Millions upon millions of people burn dvds. I expect 0.00001% even know what 'scanning' is!

[chewy]

Things will change, given enough time, the "cream" will rise to the top.

Coasters have a way of educating the "masses"!

[lfcrule1972]

Yeah they do, like the CMC MAGS - but I still believe that if you sell something that's advertised at 16x you should expect to get a decent performance at that speed.

 

Take performance cars, if you purchased a top of the range sports model that claimed a top speed of 160 mph, yet when you drove it at those speeds it drove like a bag of snot; would you accept that ? Would you think oh its ok I will drive it at 80mph so that it doesn't shake all over the road ? Of course you wouldn't.....

[chewy]

When you compare the initial release of the plextor yuden T03's

in Europe to the present batches of T02 available here in the states,

you find a decrease in quality, regardless of burn speed.

Probably due to an increase in production. With TY DVD-R's,

I see little if any change in the media from the original TYG01's.

They were already as good as it gets.

Now Verbatim seems to have improved the 16X DVD+R MCC 004's,

over the previous 8X MCC 003's. Of course in Europe there have been

a lot of issues with initial production from MBI in India.

[Wombler]

Scans should be finished in 15 mins.

 

Thanks a million and some interesting results too.

 

The spike at 2GB has disappeared as predicted however the high PIF peaks would give me some cause for concern.

 

I note that they're in different places on the 12x and 10x scans which suggests that this is not just a one off but that this media is maybe not as compatible with these drives as it could be.

 

You've given me the info I was after and saved me some money on discs so thanks again.

 

I don't normally post unless I think I've something worthwhile to say so I'm glad this has generated some interest especially as it was my first post.

 

 

Nemesis

[Wombler]

Mmm I do wonder why discs are certified at 16x (take the TYG03's for e.g) when plainly their best burn quality is achieved at 8x-12x.... Is it so that the manufacturer can claim to have a 16x disc ?

 

 

I'm not sure if this is the norm with other drives or just a peculiarity with certain NEC models. I assume it's only been noticed with these drives as a result of the very prominent spike at 2GB.

 

I agree with LUK!, if the disc is rated at a certain speed it should, for the purposes of the tests be burnt at that speed tho as that is what the majority of purchasers would do....

Again I agree that should normally be the case however as a result of an anomaly with these drives most NEC owners in the know that care about quality will burn at 12x and the 12x scans are more representative of the results they are likely to achieve.

 

Not very satisfactory I know but who knows maybe future firmwares will cure this problem and hopefully this is the case.

 

Pleased you found the tests useful tho Nemesis, hopefully others will as well....

 

They're exceptionally useful as most sites rely on user submissions and are nowhere near as comprehensive.

 

As I said earlier in the thread it's tremendously useful to have all this info in one source and not have to trawl various websites in an attempt to find details on the media you're interested in.

 

It's a great resource and I can't be complementary enough in this regard.

 

 

Nemesis

[Wombler]

Things will change, given enough time, the "cream" will rise to the top.

Coasters have a way of educating the "masses"!

 

I have to agree with that. I come across people having problems with media all the time so I explain to them about scanning and point them in the right direction for sites with media scans.

 

More and more people are learning about this and relying on it before buying new media.

 

In fact I actually sought out scans before deciding on buying my current drive having suffered compatibility problems in the past.

 

I used to recommend other sites but quite honestly for the drives tested these forums are now the best and believe me I've searched the Net high and low for such resources.

 

 

Nemesis