DVD-ROMs TRUE speed - How to tell & how important?

[BlueFlame]

Hey all :)

I plan on buying the new Sony DRU-500A, (specs can be found ->Here (http://www.cdr-info.com/Sections/News/Details.asp?RelatedID=2729#)<-). The CD-R writing seems to be fast enough, agree?
The DVD-ROM Read is 8x.
Would you buy a separate DVD-ROM for movies? If so, how important is the speed and do you need to check the buffer size also when buying?

The above is my main question. If you feel venturesome, try to dive in, and help me figure out my other dilemma.

After looking at the above speeds, I remembered reading CDRLabs.com's reviews of the LG GCC-4320B 32/10/40/16 CD-RW/DVD-ROM and the Samsung SM-332B 32/10/40/12 CD-RW/DVD-ROM.
They say these newer "Combo Drives" are now up to snuff. They look sweet with 40x CDR Write & 16x DVD-ROM Read.
They seem to be just what I was looking for. CDRLabs seems to do thorough testing.

Can anyone give a :tup: to either of these drives? Also, would they make a good combo with the Sony DRU-500A? You can browse the conclusion of both below. Thank you for helping. :)

The LG can be found -> Here (http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/index.php?reviewid=145)
The Samsung can be found -> Here (http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/index.php?reviewid=141)

[colebert]

Anything over 1x is gravy for movies since (like audio CDs) they only play at 1x. You only want faster drives if you are A) ripping DVDs or 2) using DVDs for data.

-Cole

[alexnoe]

The cdrlabs tests are OK, but I consider them to lack in-depth-tests.

For the LG combo drive you mentioned, they did not do reading tests on crap discs or badly scratched disc, they did no C1 scans for CD recording, they didn't check the behaviour of the drive for K2A and cactus discs. Neither did they test how the drive performs with high-dsv sectors or reading of discs containing intentionally lots of bad sectors (sd, laserlok...)

If you want to do more than reading dvds with it (which would be then more a topic for www.cdfreaks.com), then you won't know if the drive is good for your purposes without testing it on your own.

[jesoonster]

drives claim they go at 16X (DVD-rom) but i NEVER get such read speeds when i use dvddecryptor....maybe i have a crappy system (i do) or maybe it's a program limitation.

[alexnoe]

To get 16x your disc must be single layer. Otherwise your drive will limit speed to 12x, 10x or even 8x.

[jesoonster]

i'm talking about single layer...........if it's double my speed drops to 2X....

[alexnoe]

That's not due to dual layer, but due to css encryption. There are several drives which play CSS discs only at 2x (only movie discs have css, so 2x replay avoids noise when watching a movie)

Another issue could be: Crap chipsets, such as VIAKT133A, sometimes run ATAPI devices only at MW-DMA when connected to the secondary IDE.

It's impossible to go beyond 12x speed with MW-DMA (even 10x is fast for MW-DMA!)

[thxtof]

Originally posted by jesoonster
i'm talking about single layer...........if it's double my speed drops to 2X....

Your problem should be easy to solve, many of my friends got the same one...

In Windows 2000/NT Go to
Control Panel->System->device manager-> select IDE/ATAPI drivers->Select Primary IDE Channel or Secondary IDE channel depending on where your DVD is connected->properties->for transfer mode select "DMA if available"

After that instead of having the x2 limitation because of PIO, you should get up to x12 with DMA... if you have a 7200 RPM hard drive. Otherwise with an older HD you might get slower speed, but definitly more than x2.

Also it does not make any sense to have a DVD player faster than x16... simply because then you're limited by many other factors like the speed of your HD. Furthermore, in my experience commercial DVDs cannot be read faster than x14 for single layer, and x8 for double layers...which is already super fast in my opinion -- 7mns to copy about 5Gb of data is not that bad ;)

(I'm using a $35 x16 Lite-on DVD player).

Hope that helps, good luck

[jesoonster]

yeah i have it on dma and it's still that slow. Problem is my shi-ty computer. I have an athlon 600.........don't laugh.

That's the reason probably.

[alexnoe]

It's obvious that your DMA was enabled! If DMA had not been enabled, then you had had low speeds also for single layer!

Todays fastest hard discs, such as WD-JB discs, can easily sustain 35 MB/s. 16x DVD, which is about 20 MB/s, is not even close to the limit set by the hard disc.

A Athlon 600 is more than enough for 16x DVD speed. Maybe the descryption doesn't work faster than 12x, this might be, but nonencrypted single layer discs can easily be read at max speed with an Athlon 600. There must be another problem with your configuration.

[hoops10]

@thxtof

What about for a dvd-rom drive that is SCSI? I have a 6x Pioneer slot-loader that when I rip DVDs, I get nowhere near 6x.

[alexnoe]

(a) your drive might not support 6x for dual layer and/or css discs. Try to copy data from a single layer non-css disc.
(b) synchronous transfer might be activated. This would limit speed to 3x-4x