As I've understood it, you have access to a whole bunch of Almedio A-Bex test discs in DVD format.

If you have any A-bex discs that vary the low level characteristics of the discs, consider testing those discs:

1) Test them in CATS
2) Test them in a LiteOn drive with kProbe
3) Test them in a Plextor 712 with Plextoos
3) Test them in a BenQ DW8xx with DVD Info Pro

Report results back by showing what A-bex test disc you scanned and what does that particular disc test for.

My particular choices of test discs would be:

- birefringence
- thickness
- reflectivity
- eccentricity
- defect / print
- scratch
- vertical deviation

The idea is of course to try and find some clues as to what lower level characteristics cause Plex/LiteOn/BenQ/Pulsetec drives to have problems and start reporting higher PI/PO error rates.

The point with the testing is to try and find out the strengths and weaknesses of each drive.

It is already pretty evident based on your testing and those done by others that sometimes a Plextor produces a nice scan and somtimes a LiteOn produces a nice scan (but not necessarily both at the same time, even when scanning the same disc). These results don't always correlate with CATS either.

This is evidence pointing to the fact that none of the drives excell in all of the above lower level characteristics. Few excel on some, while other few on other characteristics.

This would be an interesting and very revealing test.

Not only, because you would scan all the drives using the same disc, but because you would be using very high manufacturing tolerance A-Bex test discs, FOR WHICH YOU KNOW which lower level characteristics are bad.

With DVD-/+R burns you don't know which lower level measures are bad.

Of course, it's up to you to decide, but if you have the disc and the time, please consider this test scenario as well.

Thanks for your excellent work already. I'm itching as I wait for more results from you.

Best regards,
Halcyon

[Deleted by Admins]

(in reply to Halc)

in addition to what Halc suggested:

Mutliple media types need to be considered. I think for the moment we can ignore re-writable media, since it will probably bring with it a "whole new can of worms" and we have enough on our plates to consider as it is!

Multiple units of the same drive model... I know this sounds expensive and overkill, but it is of the utmost important to those of us that like testing our media to know which drives have consistant results between units of the same drive model, and which do not. We have already seen lots of variation from LiteON DVD burners... but I am curious about the BenQ, NuTech, and Plextor DVD burners, and also the new LiteOn 167T DVD-ROM which faired very well previously.

of course mutliple testing speeds must also be used in order to find where each drive performs their best, and also where they become as equivilant as possible to the CATS Analyzer.

In the end, a simple play test on a fairly picky DVD player would be nice too, since all the CATS scans in the world are pointless if in the end the DVDR won't play in a regular DVD player! So I for one would like to see where according to the CATS device, do problems start occuring in real world enviroments?

Yeah, I know it's a crazy amount of work! But I think if Emperor and crew can pull it off, it could quite possibly become like the rosetta stone for DVDR testing! Good luck guys!

(in reply to Deleted User)

Very good additions Dolphinius!

If this all seems like too much work (it probably is), then if you could even test with a couple of A-Bex discs, using some popular drive maker/models, it would be better than nothing.

Really, anything that would give us some hints to the lower level margins of some of the most common drives.

(in reply to Dolphinius_Rex)

Halc and Dolphy thanks for your suggestions, from our point, we are looking at this subject, hopefully we can start this survey very soon.

(in reply to Halc)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Halc

Really, anything that would give us some hints to the lower level margins of some of the most common drives.

Agreed!!!

(in reply to Halc)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dolphinius_Rex

in addition to what Halc suggested:

Mutliple media types need to be considered. I think for the moment we can ignore re-writable media, since it will probably bring with it a "whole new can of worms" and we have enough on our plates to consider as it is!

I happen to think re-writable media is very important since it cuts down on the cost of backing up anything from hard drives to whatever!

(in reply to Dolphinius_Rex)

DVD re-writable media, shouldn't be considered as very safe...

(in reply to Cal 01)

quote:

ORIGINAL: emperor

DVD re-writable media, shouldn't be considered as very safe...

Agreed! It's tempory storage at best. The sort of thing you burn, watch and then expect to not work again until re-burned

(in reply to emperor)