DVD Capabilities

Next we tried various flavours of DVD disk, these included: DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD+R, DVD-RAM and a pressed DVD-ROM disk. This insured that the drive was put to test with all the common type of disks on the market.

DVD-R

Firstly we checked its performance with a DVD-R disk with Nero DVD Speed:

It gave a reasonable average read performance of 5.90 X speed for DVD-R disks.

DVD-RW

Next we tried a DVD-RW disk from the competing "-" (minus) format:

We did notice some strange issues with DVD-RW disks - a few times the drive wouldn't even give an accurate table of contents for the disk and we thought it might not be compatible at all, but then it started working. This is a poor result and it only managed to read them at 2 x speed.

DVD-ROM

Pressed DVDs have the best reflectivity due to their good pit and landing definition made at the mastering plant. This result should be the drives best:

The drive gave an average of 5.91 speed and manages its full speed of 7.89 X towards the end of the disk (this is very close to the stated 8 X speed reading on the box).

DVD+RW

DVD+RW disks were out months before the +R disks were and this test was a good result for the drive:

It averaged 5.99 X speed and the drive did even better in this test than with the pressed disk, achieving 7.79 x speed on the outer surface of the disk.

DVD+R

Surprisingly the drive reads the +R disks a lot slower:

It averaged 2.89 X reading speed (which was the best score out of the 3 +R disks we tried).

DVD-RAM

For completeness we checked how it behaved with a DVD-RAM disk out of its caddy (the Toshiba SDM-1612 DVD-ROM can read DVD-RAM disks like this).

We didn't expect the drive to read them and it didn't.

ERASING DVD+RW Disks

We timed how long it took to do a FULL erase of a DVD+RW disk:

A full erase only took 23 mins and 19 seconds (compare this to a DVD-RW disk's 57mins).

Quick Erase

The drive is very fast at erasing DVD+RW in quick mode and only took 16 seconds to finish the job.

DVD CSS RIPPING

Next we examined the speed at which the drive could rip movies with the content scrambling system (CSS).

The ripping speed is often not revealed by the manufacturers of DVD-ROM drives, for example the Toshiba SD-M1502 is a x16 DVD reader but it can only read CSS disks at x2 speed.

There are legitimate uses for ripping movies to the hard disk, for example you might want to rent a DVD movie and watch it at a later date. In this case programs like CladDVD XP or DVD Decrypter will come in handy for storing it to your hard disk.

I 02:39:38 DVD Decrypter Version 3.1.1.0 started!
I 02:39:38 Found 1x DVD-ROM!
I 02:41:08 Source Device: [1:0:0] PHILIPS DVDRW228 1.29 (D:)
I 03:22:23 Operation Successfully Completed! - Duration: 00:41:15
I 03:22:23 Average Read Rate: 3,087 KB/s (2.2x) - Maximum Read Rate: 9,088 KB/s (6.6x)

Pioneer DVR-A03 Rip Speed: 2.1 x

Panasonic LF-D311 Rip Speed: 5.8 x

Philips DVDRW228k: 2.2 x

The drive had a slow average rip speed of 2.2 X and the Panasonic in this case is much faster.

Page 5 - Last Updated: 25 July 2002