CONCLUSION

Pros

Fast DVD Writing at 2.4 Speed
Supports DVD+R Disks
Comes with a 2 Year Warranty
Supports Seamless link (which doesn't require software support as its built in firmware)
Supports Thermo-Balanced Writing (TBW) for CD-R Quality Control
Has Fast & Perfect Audio Ripping
Supports 99min CDs
Very Nice LEDs
Easy Windows Firmware Upgradable
CLV & CAV Writing Modes
Can Produce X-BOX & Playstation Compatible Disks
Can Read & Write CD-Text

Cons

CD/DVD Data Reading Could Be Better
Much More Expensive Than Pioneer DVR-A04
Poor DVD-RW Read Performance
Expensive Media
Cant Read > 85min CDs
+R Less Compatible Than "-R" Burners
Doesn't Support Mount Rainer

 

 

Speed might not be too big an issue in the CD writing market but in the DVD writing market it is a big issue. Philips has done a great job with this writer - 2.4X write once recording and 2.4X re-writing speeds are thoroughly welcomed in the DVD writing race. As we said in the review: once you have a taster for (re)-writing to DVDs at 2.4 X speed you will not want to go back to the single speed 57mins of the DVD-RW format.

We found the operation of this drive to be very good and we are happy to say, it is the best drive we have reviewed so far. We had the drive for 1 month from Philips and during this time we had virtually trouble free operation, it was quiet and gave continuous consistent operation disk after disk (the front LEDs are kind of funky as well). We also noticed that the quality of the final disks produced by the "+" camp were better and we didn't experience any problems reading data on the outer edges of the disk (unlike some DVD-R disks).

Its CD writing was the best in any DVD writer we have seen so far and it also has the ability to write in DAO-RAW mode (which the Pioneer couldn't do). This allows you to back up your protected CDs much more efficiently. The Philips DVDRW228k is much more suitable as a complete replacement for any CD Writer and DVD-ROM drives in any system.

We do think that there is room for improvement in its ability to read CDs and DVDs, for example on several occasions we tried to get it to copy VCDs to the hard disk (and other scratched CDs) from a variety of disks lying around. We found that the drive would fail and give a CRC read error and quit the operation (in Windows). When the same disk was tried in another DVD-ROM drive with the same disk we found that it could be read ok.

We did experience compatibility issues with certain older drives and would have to say the plus recording format is less compatible with drives than its rival the "minus" format from our experience. This issue could improve in the future depending on how well the "+" format succeeds and manufacturers start releasing firmware upgrades.

There is one major disadvantage that this drive has over something like the Pioneer A04 and that is the cost of the media. We looked through all the main retailers in the U. K. and from our findings the cheapest DVD-R disk we could find was £0.57p whilst the cheapest DVD+R disk was £3.60 -- more than 6 times as expensive (and the situation got worse with the re-writeable disks). The drive also costs twice as much as the Pioneer DVR-A04 (which can be bought for under £200 now) and we think a buyer should also take these factors into consideration.

Page 7- Last Updated: 25 July 2002