Disc Quality Tests
Having recorded the maximum amount possible onto the InfinitiPro 16x DVD+R media at its rated recording speed of 16x to our review drives with CD Speed, the next stage of our review will concentrate on Disc Quality.
Now normally it is here where we would show you the Disc Quality scans using CDSpeed or KProbe with a Liteon writer such as the 1653S, or the Benq 1620. But now in a new revised Disc Quality structure we can offer what we believe to be the most indepth look at the various effects and that we can build a better picture of potential quality with any given Media/Hardware/Speed combination. It has taken 3 months and over 300 various DVD tests to come up with this new structure so we believe it has been tested fully and holds up well.
"As the whole purpose of reviewing media for our readers is to try and obtain a good idea of the average quality of a given media, we have come up with this new methodoligy for determing these factors. These are our own personal views and by no means as accurate as an Industry CAT scanner for measuring the quality of a disc but we believe we have come as close as we possible can do with the equipment available to the average user."
The first part of our Quality tests involved scanning the 5 pieces of InfinitiPro 16x+R
media recorded on each review recording device with our Liteon 1673S. This enabled us to
obtain which of the 5 recorded pieces of media most matched the average result based on the well excepted method of PIE/PIF scanning on the Liteon 1673S to show in this stage of the review. But that only allows us to see the amount of potential PIE/PIF errors that may need to be corrected by any given DVD playback device. Now we can further examine the average result using the Plextor PX-716 and the excellent PXScan. With this combination of the Plextor and PXScan we can show you even more detailed information on the potential issues that may have to be corrected by playback and transfer devices.
It may look a little scary at first but if like us you take the time to have a good read
of the well explained information on the PXScan Website, it will become clear just how these tests work but briefly here are what the new tests can tell us:.
The PIE and PIF results show us how many potential errors a playback device may need to correct.
The beta and jitter tests tell us how well balanced a recording is at any given speed.
The TA and peak shift tests tell us how well the actual recording pit of the media has been produced at 3 measured stages during the recording.
"We thank Alex Noe for his very informative website and very useful software on behalf of ourselves and any readers that may benefit from the information provided by his Free software."
We will of course still back up these results with a transfer and playback test later on in
this review.
Overview of PXScan results:
The PXScan results show that the NEC based review recording devices seemed to handle the recording of the Infiniti Pro 16x+R media as well if not better than any other of the drives with the most pleasing results in all 5 of the PXScan tests. The Plextor managed a good result but this was with a slowdown near the end of the recording with its Power Rec feature enabled. The BenQ scan has a few single PIF spikes above the recommended 4 limit but this is normal we feel for a BenQ 16x recording. The Pioneer drive produced a very nice scan but this recording was only at 12x and the Liteon drive produced a very nice result until near the end f the recording where quality of the recording pit is to be considered less than perfect.
"Please note that you will need a compatible drive for doing these scans such as the
Plextor PX-716 and Liteon 1673S we have used in this review for making our decisions on the potential quality of this media. Other drives you could try include BenQ, NU TECH and ASUS branded writers, but only the Plextor PX-716 offers the full range of tests."
The less PI/PIF errors that are found on a media then in theory the better the chances
are of longer archival life for the media without data loss becoming a problem. Different
scanning devices scan slightly differently but basic guidelines using either a Plextor or Liteon drive are that PI errors should not exceed 280 for sustained periods and PI failures should not exceed 4 for sustained periods. Jitter and beta must remain within set specifications for a Plextor scan ( these will highlighted red in the Disc Quality results if they exceed limits and we would like to see a well written and uniform recording 'pit' during the TA tests for an optimun result at any given speed.
We will expect that not every piece of media is capable of producing this
with such influences as excepted media/ hardware tolerance levels having an impact but we will expect the results not to consistently stray too far from set standards for a recommended media.
If using a Liteon Writer to scan single spikes are usually ignorable due to a bug in the
Liteons Mediatek chipset but we will confirm the readability if the recordings with our
transfer tests."
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