Your DVD Burner is Obsolete
by Kristopher Kubicki on June 10, 2004 8:53 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
After invitation to the AOpen suite at Computex Taiwan, we had a chance to see the newest 16X dual layer DVD recorders in action; and we were surely not disappointed. Recent AOpen recorders, including the DDW8800, were based on alternative OEM designs and re-branded as AOpen. The newest DDW1608, on the other hand, will use an entirely new design and construction from AOpen. However, most intriguing is the Ricoh chipset inside. You may recall Ricoh's involvement in the first DVD recorder chipsets several years ago when 2.4X DVD+R drives were the norm.
Ricoh's newest endeavor in the DVD IC segment sports incredibly enticing features: 16X DVD+R, 16X DVD-R, dual layer support and fast CD write and read speeds. It seems Ricoh has been fairly busy over the last 18 months.
Here is a teaser of AOpen's DDW1608 burning a 16X DVD+R disc. When we actually receive the drive in a few weeks, we will run our typical battery of read, write and error tests.
Click to enlarge.
Below is a screenshot of BenQ's next generation 16X burner writing a disc in under 6 minutes.
Click to enlarge.
For an additional teaser, we included a shot of BenQ's entire next generation burner lineup, including 4X DVD+R9 devices.
Click to enlarge.
Other prototype designs were also featured on the show floor, including 16X LiteOn/Gigabyte designs using MediaTek's 16X MT1818E successor. Philips Taiwan also had a Nexperia reference design in a private booth, of which we were able to snag a picture. NuTech/Quanta has been using the Nexperia chipset design for their recent line of dvd recorders. Feel free to check out this document that we also snagged from Philips, which talks about the upcoming Nexperia 725x chipset.
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quanta - Friday, June 11, 2004 - link
CD or not, I hope cartridge requirements take off. Thanks to the stupid cost cutting manufacturers, the average CDs not only waste half of recordable surface, but makes the product less reliable. Worse yet, it isn't required for DVD, making handling of dual side DVD a hassle, and thus unpopular. Such cost cutting measures should have been banned 20 years ago when first CD is made.sisq0kidd - Friday, June 11, 2004 - link
tfranzese, oriental is what you call a rug, not people... if you're gonna bash someone, do it with the correct information...tfranzese - Friday, June 11, 2004 - link
#14, are you blind? I don't think Kris is oriental.ViRGE - Friday, June 11, 2004 - link
Truth be told, #12, I really hope BluRay takes off because of the cartridges. While I'll agree they're more of a hassle, as we've seen before, DVDs are rather delicate, even compared to CD's. While they still hold up relatively well, there are a lot of scratched discs out there that aren't 100% usable, and that's a problem. While more error correction could also reduce(but not really solve) the problem, more ECC bits means less space for actual data, so a cartridge is ideal from that perspective. With discs approaching 25GB, a scratch that can wipe out a couple of gigabytes is rather on the dangerous side, I believe.bbomb - Friday, June 11, 2004 - link
At least in a cartridge it probably has a longer life than DVD's because just a micor scratch on a DVD can reder it useless. I would think being in a cartridge would eliminate that chance greatly.Pollock - Friday, June 11, 2004 - link
May I ask why screenshots were taken with a camera, and not by hitting Print Screen?Brickster - Friday, June 11, 2004 - link
Kristopher!Loved the article, especially the title! You should be a writer ;)
-brick
tappertrainman - Friday, June 11, 2004 - link
I really hope Blu-Ray doesn't make it. I hate cartridges, and it just sounds bad. At least with HD you know people will still be able to use regular DVD's and probably CD's still. Blu-Ray throws all of that out, for miniscule gains.KristopherKubicki - Friday, June 11, 2004 - link
7: MSI has an unbridged SATA burner; unfortunately it only works with the ICH5/ICH6 southbridge SATA (for now). :'(Kristopher
AlexWade - Friday, June 11, 2004 - link
Shouldn't the title of the article be "Everything you've ever owned is obselete". Or better yet "Even though you just bought it, it is obselete".