Ok, a quick question to all. My friend wants me to buy a DVD RW for his PC, what one should I get and most important criteria is Value for Money and 2nd being good at DAE as he wants to start importing all his songs onto his PC.
So what I would like to know is which manufacterers to avoid like the plague and ones to look out for when shopping.

much appreaciated

NEC 3520A or Pioneer DVR-109. They are actually both very good. If you can spend more money, take a look at Plexstor's writers. They suppose to be even better.

Another vote for NEC. I have the older 2510A which performs flawlessly for DAE and for burning.

BenQ 1620. Great DAE, great burns (especially with +R), Riplock can be removed. Works with CDSpeed quality tests. And best of all, it's inexpensive.

I would recommend the LG-4163. It's a great drive - nice and quick, does well at DAE and is fairly affordable. There's a really nice test of the current generation of drives with many types of media at anandtech. I suggest you read it (or at least the conclusion).

I actually have both a Premium and a 712 and I love them as it rips any cd nice and quick. Since this is not my money but my mates, I dont think he can afford the extra cost and get a Plextor

Thanks for the quick replies, it does seem NEC has a good reputation at the moment [my other friend uses one and said great things about it]

Sorry for being a 42 karat plonker but what is "Riplock" ?

Riplock is a 'feature' that slows down the drive (mostly to 2x or 4x) when ripping DVD-Video ... removal is nice if you rip a lot of video DVD's

Ahh that explains why when I upgraded from my old Pioneer 104 to the Plextor why ripping movies was suddenly so much quicker. Thanks for that

LG or Nec

I would go with the benq 1620 or the NEC.
I myself was in the exact same situation a month or two ago. I went with the NEC 3520A and havent been dissapointed, performes perfectly and was about 50 euros.

Although I think the 3540 has been release in the meantime, I guess they speeded up some of the burning options, I'd probably go with that one if I chose one today.

see http://club.cdfreaks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=92

I recommend the BenQ DW1640, LG 4163 or NEC 3540. All support C2/PIF checking now, with the new NEC firmware. Whichever is cheapest is the best among these, really. BenQ has a utility to check a DVD for tracking/focus errors _before_ burning, which is AFAIK unique.
For a few more bucks get a Pioneer DVR-110. It's unbelievably quiet. Pioneer has a utility to change from quiet to fast (ie, adjust your riplock setting) and it's pretty nice.
If you have more dough check out the Plextors, they are excellent for burning and read decently too. Consistently high quality drives for 2-3x the price.
For ripping DVDs I like the BenQ most. It's wickedly fast and has great error tolerance.
FYI the new Plextor 740 is just a BenQ DW1640 with a new name.

Also, is Bitsetting important to you? Not all drives support this, and some only thru hacked firmware.

I don't know what you mean by bitsetting, so I know it's not importtant but I'd like to know what you mean by that so I know for later on like.

Bitsetting allows you set the booktype of + media. You set it to DVD-ROM even though it's recordable for better compatiblity.

As I said in a previous post, I have 2 Plextors but as far my my mate is concerned he doesnt have the money for them and even if he did, his PC would probably want a few things upgrading to keep up.
As I've said in previous posts I have two plextors [premium and a px-712, yes i'm very happy with them and I do have the money to spend on my PC if and when I want to ]

It seems now that 3 manufacterers feature more thn most LG, NEC and BenQ, i personally never heard of BenQ but that won't stop me from pruchasing one. Beleive me i'm grateful to everyone that has suggested options to me and whats clear is that I have to pick from 3 companies now. I do truly thank you all for putting the effort in and making your posts, it is really appreciated and i can never say this enough about HA.org that this is a great forum to participate in , even with my limited posts and all.

sorry didnt see you reply in time as i was busy trying to make my reply up lol

I'd also say BenQ 1620 or NEC 3520, and burn at 8x (not 16x) for better quality.

The real issue is how deep the support in the user community is and how good are the unauthorized firmware updates from enthusiasts. Though BenQ might outrate in reviews of product straight from the box, the community and firmware upgrades by Messrs. Liggy and Dee described at http://www.cdrinfo.com/Forum/tt.asp?forumid=88 make the NEC 3520A the choice I'm glad I made.

There's plenty of support for the 1620 if you read cdfreaks.

Lg doesn't support c2/pif with dvd discs but it does bitsetting out of the box.

Very strange. I have NEC ND-3520A drive and have serious problem with DAE. After quite long time of extraction (2-3 CDs), drive goes mad and just cannot read tracks. It reports errors, reduces speed to minimal and still reports errors. This happens with shiny new CDs, clean and perfect to rip. I even made test with known good tracks: I just re-ripped the same 3 tracks on a CD using Test & Copy mode 5 times. On the 5-th try to read 3-rd track drive started to report errors. I returned drive and they gave me back new one, same model. It has the same bug. So, I guess, NEC ND-3520 is the worst buy for those who is interested in audio extraction.

I guess you've got problems with your OS, IDE-plugs, whatever. Probably, not with the drive. It was designed not to perform in this way (mine never failed like this). Check everything carefully before blaming the drive.

Can you tell me, what exactly should I check? I have correct IDE drivers and using installed ASPI 4.60 (1021) interface. I always used this configuration and had no such problem. Anyway, I can't even imagine, how a driver or anything else could make drive to behave like this. And this is a second ND-3520A, which doing this. I even used different firmwares, all with the same result.

But I can install this drive to another computer and check it there. I'll do it right now.

Perhaps the controller switched to PIO mode? Read this page: http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm

another vote for the Benq 1620

even though this topic is a few a week or so old

First results: drive stopped to extract audio without reporting anything.
Screenshots:

http://home.shad.pp.ru/nec/nec_bug_1.png
http://home.shad.pp.ru/nec/nec_bug_2.png

Looks like the same pictures, but time differs Green lamp on the drive is off.

Nope. It's in DMA mode.

Vasya, lets move here with your problem

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=34468

i second that
this not only i an excellent dvd burner but also burns cd-rs and cd-rws with excellent quality (at least those which i use.. ritek)

-andy-

If you want the best, it is the Plextor 716 which will burn about anything but watch out for bad quality DVD. There is some real crap DVDs out there, to purchase blanks I think you can trust to buy from "SuperMediaStore" or "www.discmakers.com" or "www.meritline.com"

Meritline is a very poor recommendation. Try Rima instead.
The PX-716A may be a good choice if you're willing to go through the exchange/RMA process in case you get a lemon (there are a few of thse out there). Once you get a good one, you'll be happy. A lot of PX-716s seem have problems with CDs, though; read the Plextor subforum on CDFreaks.

JeanLuc...

I remembered your recommendation of that BenQ - DW1620 DVD-R drive from last year, and your update from February about it being overrated for DAE, but top rated for DVD writing.

Shopping around, I see a number of online stores selling these for $36-$50. But there are different model designations: DW1620, DW1640BG, DW1620-0C4, DW1610-0C2, DWI-1620. I’m wondering if you, or someone else might know if there are any differences in the hardware between these models.

Then there’s the newer DW1640 which also is available with another model number: DW1640BG. This only runs a few dollars more, so I’m also wondering what this model may feature over the DW1620.

All feedback much appreciated.

Thx… TS

I have a NEC-3540a. Wonderful drive. Good DAE features. Cheap considering it is a DL media writer. I ripped a bunch of CDs in secure mode. Average speed was about 5x (Rips a whole CD in about 25 minutes max). I checked the CRCs of the ripped files using Accuraterip. Perfect matches on all counts. I would highly recommend this drive.

There's basically only one DW1640, but it comes in white or black, retail or OEM. Guess that BG means black.

I'd get the DW1640 or the NEC, they both are top of the line.

Personally I'd get Plextor's 716A.

Back when I got my very first CD burner (an HP CD Rewriter Plus 8210e or something like that), they were still kind of expensive. I paid something like $300 for mine, and keep in mind that this was a clunky 4×/4×/6×.jalopy that ran off of USB.

So I have absolutely nothing against paying what some people think is "a lot of money" ($150) for an amazing drive.

I'll still throw my vote at the BenQ 1620, and from what I hear, the 1640 is just as good

I would go for the NEC DVD-RW writers. Wait for the new models tho: ND-4551A with Labelflash (writing blue labels onto special discs) or ND-4550A (w/o Labelflash), the ND-4xxx will support DVD-RAM class0 writing and class1 reading and will hopefully remain being the safest DVD burners again.

DW1620 and DW1610 share a chipset, you can cross-flash between them. The DW1620 firmware is highly superior.
The DW1640 is new, and it can learn from your previous burning. This allows the drive to compensate for media propensities beyond the standard writing strategies embedded in the firmware. Mine just arrived

One huge advantage of BenQ drives is the error correction ability. NEC firmwares from L&D are OK, but all the features that L&D offer are basically stock features of BenQ firmware.. anything else can be provided by tdb.rpc1.org, and MCSE.

For those recommending Plextor drives, I would not buy anything from them until the PxScan / PxLinux threat is dropped. That is not the kind of company that I, or I believe most of the HA population, want to support. Any Plextor owners or fans should write to them and tell them you don't like what they're doing and that it *will* cost them sales.

Though I'm personally not the biggest plextor supporter anyways. I've only owned one drive, a 16x cd-r. Back in the cd days their stuff was really superior to the average burner, even though it cost twice as much. Now they're really not that much better, only in a few special features. The price is not proportional to the value you get. The coolest stuff, like gigarec, you have to pay 3 times the cost of a NEC or Pioneer.

Somewhere on the net the other night I read where the 1640 has an entirely different optical reading device. And since the drive is pretty new, its performance & reliability hasn't yet really been proven to be equal to or better than the 1620 (aside from it's new 'smart function' for learning as it goes) . I was just about to order a 1640 before I read that. Anyone have any further info on this?

TS

Check the cdfreaks forums, DW1640 is teh p1mp.
Or, if you'd rather, you can get both. That's what I did

BenQ DW1640 is about the best you can buy right now.

While it may not be just as super as Nec ND3540 on high quality discs, it burns them very well regardless.

Also, unlike other burners, it can actually produce usable quality on a larged number of crap / cheap discs.

The advances with Solid Burn technology (real-time jitter adaptibe burn control) also look promising.

I've tested it extensively (against LiteOn SOHW-1693s, LG, Samsung and Nec ND3540). BenQ gets my vote.

About the only gripe I can find is patchy quality on cd-r burning.

The c't magazine says it's great, and they know their stuff. Of course, good media and a good burner go hand in hand, it can't do miracles if the media is crap.

Hmm... I wonder if anyone has done a direct comparison between the 1620 and the 1640.

TS

have a look here:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=146386

-andy-

Umm, that's not too impressive... New drives today should be able to do secure mode in ~10x, which my 3540 does... Strange that you get such low speed. Is that for CD:s with lot of errors btw? And 25 minutes is also really bad... That's ~3x at most...

My 3540 rips ~10-12x in secure mode and it doesn't take more than 6-8 minutes to rip a whole CD.

Review of the BenQ 1640 (they don't get much more extensive than this): http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/index.php?reviewid=270