This is perhaps straying off the original topic, but I was under the impression that Dr Schenks analyzers can measure the whole disc are in seconds using CCD camera technique. This gives measurement results of all the basic disc characteristics without a rotational transport.

regards,
halcyon

(in reply to sp)

Halc you are correct, but it measures not Error rate but physical charateristics of the disc.

(in reply to Halc)

Yes, that's what I meant. I meant measures of true disc charateristics.

All other measures are not disc measures anymore, like I have stated.

They are measures of "disc in use", that is measures of a certain transport/drive reading the disc. Hence the results are always a combination of the characteristics of the drive and the disc.

Thanks for the clarification.

I'm just trying to make sure I've understood things correctly and you (at CDRInfo) seem to know a lot on the issue.

best regards,
halcyon

(in reply to emperor)

Halc thanks for your clarification...we try to investigate the writing quality issue, since most people don't have idea what is about, throwing kprobe scans its just...useless

(in reply to Halc)

The raw disc characteristics might be indicative of some aspects of the manufacturing proccess, but not decisive ones.
Actual reading is what matters, and this again requires a rotating device.

Considering this is not true. Taking into account the spiral pitch and the actual pit dimension, it is prohibitive to use any other electronic device. It might be the case for casual inspection of a particular disc spot when trying to explain some particular bit patern, but this can not be feasibly extrapolated for measuring overall disc qualities.

(in reply to emperor)

SP,

yes. I completely agree (re: rotational reading in a drive need needed for causal error rates). A drive is needed to get error rates, because error rates are from the disc+reader combo. Errors don't exist if one of them is missing.

I was merely trying to make a distinction between true disc characteristics and to point out that even the Pulsetec drive based CATS scans are "non-ideal". They are the results of the disc and the reader (Pulsetec drive).

As such, I expect the reading capabilities (and hence error rates) of future consumer dvd burners to start nearing that of Pulsetec drives and in some cases even surpassing them.

Now as to how long this might take, I can only guess. But extrapolating from CD-R burners a 2-4 years off might not be such a bad guess.

Thank you for your informative comments!

regards,
halcyon

(in reply to sp)

There is a "big" difference about how "science" people see real world phenomena and how field engineers try to resolve practical problems.

Coming from both fields myself, I must admit it takes some time (and some "courage", sometimes) to be able to apply the appropriate view on each specific problem.

In our case, what we essentially need is a device able to reproduce over the time identical or near-identical test results. This is something that some professional equipement are able to do. We thus use, or should use, these equipement for doing our tests. These require a carefull design and double checking of the results. I expect emperor and the rest of our team will be able to prove this concept in the near future.

(in reply to Halc)