Available speed and recording tests
VSO Inspector from VSO Software was used for gathering our information about the available recording speeds this Infiniti 16x DVD+R media could be recorded at on our review recording devices. This media information utility allows us to easily see the rated speeds available for the Infiniti 16x DVD+R media according to the hardware used during this review as well as tell us the full Media ID code for the media.
As mentioned on page one of this review, the hardware used for these tests consisted of the NEC 3500AG, NEC ND-3520, Pioneer DVR 108, BenQ 1620A, Plextor PX 716A and the Liteon-IT 1653S, all of which are maximum recording speeds of 16x.
All the review drives saw the Infiniti 16x DVD+R media has capable of recording at its rated speed of 16x except for the Pioneer DVR 108 which even under its most recent firmware of 1.19 was only able to see the media as 12x rated.
Once the maximum available recording speeds for each device had been discovered using VSO Inspector, CD Speed from Ahead software was used to record a test DVD of maximum capacity to see if the review recording devices achieved their maximum recording speed. The DVD's created here with CD Speed will be used later on during the Disc Quality, Transfer and Verification tests. Tests carried out included the recording of 5 pieces of media to each drive with the exception of the Plextor PX-716 which had 5 pieces tested with both the Power Rec feature enabled and disabled.
The Liteon-IT 1673S and the BenQ 1620A reported the fasted recording times. Both NEC drives reported very similar times for their recordings to the media. The Plextor PX-716A managed 6 minutes and 24 seconds with the Power Rec feature enabled and the Pioneer DVR 108 recording achieved the slowest recording time due to the fact the maximum speed available was 12x. The Plextor PX-716 would only attain a 16x recording speed to the Infiniti Pro 16x DVD+R media with its Power Rec feature disabled ( more about this later on in the review ).
Overview of recording times
These are the recordings that come closest to being the average recording times in each of our review drives.
| | Writer used: | Average recording time | | DW 1620A BenQ (firmware: B7V9) | 5:58 | | | 1673S LiteOn (firmware: JS07) | 5:58 | | | 3500 AG NEC (firmware: LDv2.TC) | 6:03 | | | ND-3520 NEC (firmware: 3.04) | 6:04 | | | PX-716A Plextor (firmware: 1.06) | 6:22 | | | DVR 108 Pioneer (firmware: 1.19) | 6:52 | |
|
All other pieces tested besides the ones mentioned above did attain a 16x recording speed during the tests.
Of course achieving the fastest recording speed does not always mean you achive the best quality recording as we will be quick to point out to our readers. There is no point in
having the fastest recording if the quality suffers! Hardware manufacturers do sometimes slow media down in firmwares or limit the maimum speed for each particular piece of media recorded to achieve the maximum quality possible and prevent a bad recording.
Please read on to see what our other tests discovered about the recorded media during our Disc Quality, Transfer and Playback
tests.
|
