DVD Capabilities

DVD-Video Dual Layer

We tested the drives performance with a dual layered movie (the movie title was "Terminator 2 : Ultimate Edition Disk 1"):

The dip in the graph is due to the layer change delay, in this case it took 800ms. Overall the drive performed well in this test giving an average reading speed of 5.45 X.

Playstation 2

We copied the game "Tekken 4" using a DVD+R disk and it booted successfully on our PAL Playstation 2 (swap trick aided by Action Replay). It is highly recommended to use something other than FAT32† as a file system for creating large Playstation 2 files. We also made a DVD+RW backup but it did not work.

†Note: FAT formats (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32) use a 32-bit value for the file size, this means a maximum file size of 4,294,967,294 bytes -- short of the 4.7GB needed for the imaging of a full DVD (XP and Windows 2000 use NTFS which uses a 64-bit value but only 44-bits are used for the file size).

X-BOX

Microsoft's X-Box games console is also capable of reading DVD disks. The console comes with a Thomson / Philips DVD-ROM Drive that can read various media but has been designed specifically to ignore certain media types i.e. CD-R media.

The consoles games are stored on single layered (dual layered is possible but not used) DVD-ROM disks that have been written from the outside in - a scheme once employed by the defunct Dreamcast console (this is done to prevent piracy).

With a suitably chipped games console that allows you to run unsigned .xbe files (we used a homebrew 29-wire Xtender 1.1 for our tests), you can back-up and boot your original games.

Unlike the Playstation, you can not make 1:1 copies using disk copying software on the PC, you must transfer the files from the console first (download from the net, use an alleged hacked firmware, transfer to the PC using an Ethernet or dev kit).

The Philips DVDRW228k can make X-Box backups on DVD+RW and +R disks. Both disk types were recognised and booted - the X-Box favoured the +R disks more due to the better reflectivity, but you must eject and re-insert the +RW disks up to 5 times to get the console to recognise them. We successfully backed up the following games: Halo, Dead Or Alive 3 & RalliSport. The disks must be mastered with Record Now Max (not NERO) as it supports the required UDF bridge format for the X-Box.

DVD Writing Performance

To test the drive's writing performance we used Nero 5.5.9.0 and wrote 4469MB of data to the disk and timed it.

Note: You can only write to DVD+RW and DVD+R disks at one speed (2.4) and if you try to select a slower speed (such as x1) it still writes at 2.4 x speed.

What struck us about this drive is how fast it was when it came to writing to DVD+RWs, it completed the task in 23mins and 19 seconds. The speed increase is huge and the drive had no problems burning at this speed. (Once you have had a taste of writing rewriteable DVD's at 2.4 x speed you will not want to go back to writing at x1!)

Compatibility Test

Compatibility is one area that has been much debated between two recordable formats ("minus" and "plus") below we will also start a table showing which PC DVD-ROM drives can read which type of disk and hope to expand it when we test other drives. This table is not done from user contributions.

‡Only with the latest firmware upgrade (version 1806 or later).

Although the table is in its inaugural stage, we can see (even with some set top DVD-Video players not listed) that the DVD-R/RW format has better compatability. The DVD "minus" camp also has an ace up their sleeve with the DVD-Authoring disks which can copy protected DVD movies 1:1 but it is very expensive and for this reason not included in our test.

Page 6 - Last Updated: 25 July 2002