OPTORITE DVD RW DD0405 - Page 1

After the award winning DD0401, Taiwanese manufacturer Optorite released the DD0405 DVD writer. The new Optorite drive supports 8x recording for both -R and +R formats and 4x for rewritable media. With CD-R format, DD0405 supports 40x max writing speed, just as with its predecesor, the previous DD0401. The drive differs from the DD0401 only in the burning speed for +R, which has been boosted to 8x.

- Features

This dual burner offers 8x DVD+R/-R and 4x DVD+RW/-RW writing and 12x DVD-ROM reading. The drive is also a 40x/24x/40x CD-RW writer.

 

• HD-BURN

Developed by SANYO Electric, a high density recording technology that doubles the recording capacity of conventional CD-R media (700MB).

• BURN-PROOF

"Safe-BP" has achieved enough detection performance at more than 40x speed with the improvement of the electric circuit for the detection of disarrangement of pickup servo. When a disarrangement of this servo is detected during high speed recording conditions, the drive stops the recording immediately and restarts recording at a lower recording speed.

• EXACT-REC

Shock-BP always monitors the condition of the focus servo and tracking servo and stops the recording when it detects the change in rapid servo condition, then, restarts the recording at the stop position after the servo condition is recovered.

• FlexSS-BP

A generic name for Flexible Speed and Flexible Strategy. 'FlexSS-BP' technology, which automatically selects the optimum recording speed for each disc, because some CDs cannot stand high speed recording with a high recording power.

- Specifications

Interface	ATA/ATAPI-5	E-IDE / ATAPI(Ultra DMA mode2)
Buffer Size		2MB
Data transfer speed (ATA I/F)		33MB / sec
Write Speed	DVD-R	8X
	DVD-RW	4X
	DVD+R	8X
	DVD+RW	4X
	CD-R	40X
	HD-Burn CD-R	24X
	CD-RW	24X
Read Speed	DVD-ROM (Single)	12x
	DVD-ROM (Dual layer)	8X
	DVD-R	8x
	DVD-RW	8X
	DVD+R	8X
	DVD+RW	8X
	CD-ROM/-R	40X
	CD-RW	40X
	CD-DA (DAE)	40X
	HD-Burn CD-R	78x
Support Media Type		DVD-ROM, DVD single layer / Dual layer, DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM [Mode1, Mode2 (Form1/2)], CD-ROM / XA, Mixed mode CD, CD-R/RW, CD Extra, CD-TEXT
Support Formats		DVD-ROM (UDF Bridge), DVD-ROM (ISO 9660), DVD-ROM (UDF), DVD-VIDEO, DVD-VR
Write Format	DVD-R	Disc at Once, Incremental Recording (Multi-Border Support)
	DVD-RW	Rigid Restricted Overwriting, Incremental Write
	DVD+R	Incremental Write (Multi Session Support)
	DVD+RW	Random Write
	CD-R/CD-RW	Disc at Once, Session at Once, Track at Once, Packet Writing (Multi Session Support)
Random Seek Time		DVD (-R/RW)(+R/RW): 130 msec DVD-RAM: 140 msec CD: 120 msec
OS Compatibility		Windows 95/98/ME/XP/NT/2000

According to Nero InfoTool, the Optorite DD0405 uses 2MB buffer memory and supports Raw writing while Mount Rainier and DVD-RAM reading/writing are not supported.

The Optorite DD0405 uses the RPC II region control, allowing a user to change the drive's region at most 5 times. For our tests, we set the region code to 2 (Europe).

- Retail package

The Optorite ships with an array of Nero applications that include Ahead Nero Express 6, InCD and EasyWrite Reader.

The rest of the bundled software consists of Cyberlink PowerDVD, Sonic MyDVD and Arcsoft Showbiz.

Besides the software inclusions, the retail package contains the Optorite drive, mounting screws, an easy installation guide and the audio cable.

- The drive

The front panel of the drive is identical to the DD0401.The usual DVD/CD and R/RW markings located on the left, centre and right hand sides of the tray door, with the eject hole on the lower rim and right of centre. The lower half of the drive's front panel, includes the headphone jack and volume control situated on the very left, the power/activity led directly below the eject hole and right of centre, and the next track and stop/eject buttons on the right. Both buttons are round with the stop/eject being slightly larger.

On the rear panel there are the analogue audio output, the IDE connector and the power input.

Removing the screws and opening the drive's cover voids the drive's warranty. For reference reasons, we post the following photos. The Optorite DD0405's mainboard (based on the Sanyo LC897490 chipset) and drive mechanics have been designed by Optorite, which was also the case with their previous model, the DD0401. Actually the drive is exactly the same as the previous model, but the new firmware adds 8x recording for DVD-R. Click on photo of the mainboard below for a higher resolution image:

- Installation

Our test PC was a 1.8 GHz P4 configured with 512Mb RAM, an 80GB 7200rpm hard drive and Windows XP Professional SP1. The drive was connected to our test PC and was identified as "Optorite DVD RW DD0405". All reading tests were done with firmware v140E. For the recording tests we have updated the firmware to the latest v150E, released just a few days before. The new firmware changes the recording mode with DVD+R media to the P-CAV (Z-CLV before), and is expected to offer even faster recording.

The following pages include the test results of the Optorite drive in comparison to two other dual DVD burners, the Memorex True-8x and the NEC ND-2500A.