You are an anonymous user. You can register for free by clicking here
Hot Stories
Battle of the Burners
PIONEER DVR-108 vs. NEC ND-3500AG
Page 1 FUJIFILM03 8X speed
Posted Aug 14, 2004 - 02:00 AM
These tests are going to take me a few days to complete
So I will publish each complete test individually
After testing the Pioneer DVR-108 I was advised of the availability of the NEC ND-3500AG 16x speed DVD Dual Layer Dual Format burner and I decided that it would be a good idea to do a comparison between the two drives performances and here it is.
The drive arrived Thursday 12/08/04 as promised and as is normal with OEM drives it came just as a bare drive with no manual or accessories. This was not a problem to me as I have come to expect drives this way and it helps to keep the price down to the consumer.I installed the drive in the same PC as the Pioneer DVR-108 replacing one of the Pioneer DVR-107 Drives. I now have Pioneer DVR-107, DVR-108 and NEC ND-3500AG drives in the same PC for a direct comparison
My favourite burning program Record Now Max 4.5 with PXEngine 507 failed yet again to allow selection of the burning speeds as was normal with most new drives! I modified the PXDRV.DLL to recognise this drive and now can select all the available burning speeds with the absence of 12x for some unknown reason.
The modified PXDRV.DLL can be downloaded from HERE
The first thing I noticed with the NEC is that they had followed in Pioneer's footsteps and removed the headphone socket and volume control something that was not really needed on a DVR drive. The rest of the front of the drive is the same appearance as the ND-2500A
Quote:- It also offers significantly faster recording speeds, for example a 1 hour DVD can be recorded in less than 4 minutes. In addition, the NEC ND3500A is able to store up to 8.5 GB onto one DVD
Less than 4 minutes to burn a full DVD is hardly believable as this means the drive has to burn at a constant 16x from start to finish to accomplish this (We shall see)
Quote:- The ND3500A benefits from NEC’s “high resolution writing strategy” which uses advanced laser modulation to boost the accuracy of the written data. The drive also includes an enhanced version of NEC’s “Active Optimized Power Control” (Active OPC). Active OPC monitors writing power and reflection of the media in use, calculating the optimum laser power and adjusting it in real-time.
Sounds impressive (but does it work?)
The drive is installed so lets try some comparisons between this and the Pioneer
Region information
Media code/Manufacturer ID
Format Capacity
Free Blocks
Free Capacity
Book Type
Media Type
Media Id Code Speed
Available Write Descriptor
Available Write Descriptor
Available Write Descriptor
Available Write Descriptor
Write Strategy Speed
2x Speed OPC beta
2x Speed OPC power
2x Write Strategy field 1
2x Write Strategy field 2
4x Speed OPC beta
4x Speed OPC power
4x Write Strategy field 1
4x Write Strategy field 2
4x Write Strategy field 3
4x Speed OPC beta multi-pulse
4x Speed OPC power multi-pulse
4x Write Strategy field 4
4x Write Strategy field 5
4x Write Strategy field 6
Data area starting sector
Linear Density
Track Density
Number of Layers
Datawrite FUJIFILM03 8x speed media Test burning at 8x speed
You can clearly see the difference in burning patterns The Pioneer starts faster at 6x speed and quickly jumps to 8x speed whereas the NEC starts at 4x speed then jumps to 6x and finally 8x speed. This different pattern reflects in the time taken to complete the test burn. The 108 finishes in 8:05secs and the NEC come way behind at 9:39secs, taking over 1:34secs longer.
Next test is the Burn Quality of the media above above
Both these results are very good but as you can see the PI error rate of the NEC burnt disc is double that of the Pioneer and with the NEC you can clearly see the error peaks at the burn speed change point there is also a jump in the % jitter at the first speed change point on the NEC although the initial 4x burn is better than the initial 6x burn of the Pioneer. These graphs are both good graphs and both have produced good burns.
Next test is on the Readability of the burns carried out above Pioneer NEC Here the graphs are almost identical showing perfect burns for both drives
Next Test is How Fast is the drive at reading DVD-R media
Both these read speeds are good but this time the NEC has the edge starting the reading faster and finishing faster. The Pioneer took 6:20secs to read the disc whilst the NEC took a mere 5:01secs. So as far as reading high speed DVD-R media the NEC comes out tops by 1:19secs
PIONEER DVR-108 vs. NEC ND-3500AG
