Disabling WOPC on the BenQ 1620 - is it worth it?

[SirQUK]

Further to our news about a leaked version of QSuite being available, we decided to do some early testing to see what the benefits may be. At the moment QSuite only supports a couple of BenQ writers, our 1620 being one of them and firmware version B7U9 is required for QSuite to work. These tests are on going and I will update as tests are done. The first test disk is a Philips C16 under the Memorex brand and is 16x rated. The first test includes running a TE/FE test to see how well the laser can focus and track whilst simulating the effect of a recorded DVD. This was a quick scan on the outer edge of the disc where the media was in theory to be recorded at its highest speed. Next test is a 16x recording with the WOPC feature disabled. This means the BenQ 1620 will forgo its usual walking optimal power calibration and so only the minumum of checking is done during the recording of this disk. This is only recomended for high quality media or to help aide in the recording of low quality 4x media that the BenQ drives may struggle with. A recording time of 5 minutes 41 secs is very impressive compared to a normal average 16x recording time for DVD+R media of around 6 minutes. But of course the question is this: Does the 20 second saving with WOPC off result in a recording so bad that the saved time simply is not worth it? The Disc Quality scan in CDSpeed at 8x with the BenQ 1620 showed very high PI failure levels for the first 1Gb of the recording and also a 'blanket effect' during the same point. Would a high speed transfer of this disk have any issues due to this large grouping of PI Failures? Also will the reported jitter of 13.7% at the point were the PI Failures where at their highest have any effect on a high speed transfer. For our transfer test we chose to really push the BenQ 1620 to the limits. As we reported Here Ala 42 has found a way to increase the read speed of single layer recordable media on the BenQ 1620 to 16x. So would the disc recorded in the BenQ 1620 with WOPC disabled turn out to be good or not worth the time saving? For Philips C16 media at 16x WOPC is recomended to be left on under the current firmware of B7U9.

[SirQUK]

As promised the results of the Philips C16 under the Memorex brand with the BenQ 1620s Walking Optimal Power Calibration(WOPC) enabled. Results show that with WOPC disbled the recording was 25 seconds faster than with WOPC enabled but the Disc Quality and transfer tests clearly show that WOPC should be left enabled for Philips C-16 based media on the BenQ 1620 under firmware B7U9.

[CDR-Zone.COM]