Yamaha in Cebit 2001

As it was expected Yamaha presented in the Cebit 2001 show their newest CRW2200 series. There was at least 5 CRW2200 drives (either in glass chambers or installed in PCs) and there were people from Ahead, which presented both Nero 5.5 and NeroMAX (for MAC) since Yamaha CRW2200 series come with Nero 5.5! The drive will come in May of 2001 first at internal ATAPI (and SCSI) and in external SCSI/Firewire/USB 2.0 versions.

As you may have noticed from the press release of Yamaha CRW2200 the drive supports 20x writing partial - 16x writing in start and increasing up to 20x around 15mins. Why Yamaha chosen again this solution? Well the explanation is simple according to Yamaha "....Most current CD-Roms/DVD-Roms in starts reading at maximum 16x-17x. Since they are using CAV technology the reading speed increases as long the time passes. Also the vibrations for a drive rotating at 20x are very high and will cause shorter life of the recorder mechanisms. That is why Yamaha uses Partial CAV as their writing technology..." What the competition does? Follows the same practise. No other manufacturer offering a "CLV" writing solution above 16x. :)

Another interesting feature is the "Optimal Write Speed" feature. The Yamaha CRW2200 keeps looking the quality of the CD every sec. Let's say that we set the writing speed at 20x. The quality of the media is not very good after a certain point. The Yamaha CRW2200 can detect the problem and lower the recording speed to 16x, 12x or 8x as long the quality of the produced CD is in what the specifications order. If the drive decides that the quality of the media is in normal levels it will speed up the writing speed to from 12x to 20x! Also the included 8MB of buffer according to Yamaha reduces the need of "SafeBurn" technology which makes the final CD more reliable. Last the drive supports real 10x CLV re-writing and 4x-10x (full CAV), which according to Yamaha is faster in packet writing.

Here you can see the first real life picture about the CRW 2200 specifications:

The picture is in German language but you will understand the important features: 20x writing (3000kb/s) , Firmware 0.88beta (since the drive is still evolving), supports overburn, DAO , Simulation, CD-Text and 8MB of buffer. For the new drive 2 more options are available in Nero 5.5: "Buffer Underrun Protection" and "Optimal Write Speed". We told that the drive would support DAO-RAW reading/writing - no information if the drive supports SD2 backups yet....

The first option feature (Buffer Underrun Protection) is there to avoid buffer underruns. The technology comes from OAK Technology (1chip) and Yamaha (2 chips) and with the included 8MB of Buffer will supposed to produce perfect CDs. Yamaha said that their technology (SafeBURN) produces 0 gap length! (not yet 100% confirmed). What about the media? Where is above 16x certified media? For the testing proposes Yamaha used both Verbatim 16x and 24x certified media:

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--------- Future Plans ---------

Yamaha has many plans for the future. For sure there would be faster recorders (above 20x) to reach the competition from Sanyo and Plextor (24x) based in the same partial CAV writing principal.

There are also some plans for MultiLever recorder from Yamaha as the TDK's press release states: "...TDK has established a dialogue with leading CD-R/RW drive manufacturers such as Yamaha Corporation and the Optical device division of Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd about joining the ML alliance..."