NEC ND 4550 DVD writer review

DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-R DL writing tests

Note:

For a full explanation and fuller understanding of the tests we carry out here please see page 2. Below is a brief reminder of what each test can tell us.

• PIE: Indicates the number of Parity Inner Errors and should not exceed 280 with single spikes above this level usually ignorable.
• PIF (Parity Inner Fail): indicates the number of PI Errors and should not exceed 4 with single spikes above this level usually ignorable.
• Beta: the beta value is an indication of how well the recorded signal pits and lands are in balance. A horizontal line would mean perfect balance and would give the best read­ability result.
• Jitter: this function shows the average jitter rate in the 3T~11T range. A lower jitter will give better results for readability and less chance on (un)correctable errors.

All tests in this section of the review are completed using the drives maximum recording speed for any given media. The firmware used for all these recordings on the NEC ND-4550 with the latest available firmware 1.06 available from the link on page one of this review ( at the bottom of the 'other' section the specifications table ).

During the scanning we dicovered that our Liteon 1673S was unable to scan some of the high speed DVD+/-RW media and so for these results will be done using the PIE/PIF test in PxScan. Although a different scanner to the Liteon we are still looking for PIF under 4 and PIE under 280 with single spikes outside these limits ignorable. For all other DVD+/-RW results the Liteon 1673S will be used as normal.

DVD-R media Writing Tests Several tests on a variety of DVD-R media have been performed on this drive. Click the images for a set of results on each media. Plextor 8x DVD-R Datawrite Grey 16x DVD-R Datasafe Yellow 16x DVD-R Infiniti 8x DVD-R Traxdata 8x DVD-R Verbatim 16x DVD-R Traxdata 16x DVD-R TDK 16x DVD-R Miflop Xtreme 8x Printable DVD-R Miflop Xtreme 16x Printable DVD-R Smiley 16x DVD-R Panasonic 8x Printable DVD-R Verbatim 8x Printable DVD-R Ridisc Xtreme 16x Printable DVD-R Datasafe Printable 16x DVD-R Piodata 4x Printable DVD-R 8cm Bulkpaq 4x DVD-R 8cm Datasafe 4x DVD-R 8cm Traxdata 4x DVD-R 8cm BeAll 16x DVD-R Panasonic 4x DVD-R Sony 8x DVD-R Fuji 8x DVD-R Maxell 8x DVD-R HP 8x DVD-R

The DVD-R media support was very good overall with all the tested brands of media attaining at least their maximum rated speed. Sometimes faster than rated speed was achieved with the likes of the Sony and Maxell 8x media achieving 16x under present firmware. All the tested 16x DVD-R media was supported at its rated speed.

DVD-RW and DVD-R DL media Writing Tests Several tests on a variety of DVD-RW and DVD-R DL media have been performed on this drive. Click the images for a set of results on each media. Verbatim 6x DVD-RW Verbatim 4x DVD-R Dual Layer Traxdata 6x DVD-RW Verbatim 4x DVD-RW Traxdata 4x DVD-R Dual Layer Miflop Lite 4x Printable DVD-RW Traxdata 2x DVD-RW 8cm Traxdata 4x DVD-RW

At the time of writing this article only 2 types of DVD-R Dual Layer media where available to us for testing. The NEC ND-4550 offered some very good high speed DVD-RW support with both the Traxdata and Verbatim 6x DVD-RW media at their rated speeds. All other tested media also achieved their rated speed.

One final test we carried out on the NEC ND-4550 in this section of the review was to see if it was possible to over burn DVD-R media past its rated capacity of 4481 MB. As you can see, according to Nero CD Speed, the NEC ND-4550 is unable to overburn to DVD+R media. Although not always a good idea, sometimes just getting that extra 10-20 MB out of your media can save some headaches such as recompressing,leaving out of files or spanning across 2 DVDs.

A lot of media used in this review has been reviewed indepth on a number of popular DVD Writing devices in our Media Review Section. Please have a browse through these reviews to see how well the NEC ND-4550 did compared to our other tested writing devices.