December has appeared less saturated with different announcements of new devices. There's nothing surprising here: the optical drives technology have been almost "squeezed out" already. Just look, there's already a possibility to write a disk for five minutes (not a word about the quality ; -)), you should not be troubled for data transfer stream continuity when recording at fast speeds because it's up to the Burn-Proof technology, recorders are able to read data as fast as usual CD-ROMs. In case you need to quickly store information that you'll replace with something else in the future, there are high-speed CD-RWs at your service with speeds up to 10X.

But not all technologies here are close to an ideal, and in this field manufacturers still have problems to solve. So, Yamaha CRW2100EZ CD-RW, tested in our laboratory, has demonstrated depressing results. It concerns both RW operation and the recording quality. Unconditionally, it is also up to rather "raw" CD-R disks manufacture technology, and 12X and above speed recording requires very high disk quality. You'll be able to read about this drive in detail in a browse that will be released later.

Despite some silence in the field of CD-RW devices, many new models have appeared on the our market in December, you could have read about them before only in press releases. These are: TDK CyClone CDRW121032, Creative CD-RW Blaster RW121032E, Teac CDW512E (B), Teac CDW58E, the same Yamaha CRW2100EZ. Each of these drives has already been tested in iXBT Hardware's laboratory and the articles are prepared for publishing. If you observe features of each drive, you'll notice a tendency that standard CD-RW speed combination has been practically set up at a level of 12/10/32, and I wrote about it in previous digests. It is also possible to mark that Burn-Proof technology becomes the standard, though I must say that nevertheless the given technology has an alternative – the "JustLink" development of the Ricoh company. The strategy of the Yamaha company is unclear, having in mind that they decided to increase buffer size instead of realizing one of two error control technologies - "Buffer Underrun".

We continue to publish guidelines about purchasing recorders. I shall note that even despite model lines upgrade made by many companies, previous generation CD-RW drives remain more favourable in many cases. It is so due to better operation level and also availability of patches without almost any "bugs" and also due to wide spectrum of software. So …

Professional level CD-RW drives.

The given category means recorder excellence and reliability. Accordingly, prices for such devices will be appropriate. Recommended professional class recorder has remained the same Plextor PX-W1210TA.

Plextor PX-W1210TA

If need an advanced recorder supporting off-the-shelf technological novelties and standards and having an unsurpassed writing rate, then Plextor PX-W1210TA is your choice. Yes, it's expensive, but it costs that money. And the price is just 10% is higher than of PX-W8432Ti model. There's nothing more to say about this drive.

In the BLER (Block Error Rate) tests this drive has demonstrated very high metrics alongside with PX-W8432Ti model, and that is one of major criteria according to the quality of the written CDs. In case you need maximum production output, you should pay attention on a SCSI clone, PX-W1210TS model.

Certainly, there is an alternative to the given drive. I think it's TDK CyClone CDRW121032. I guess TDK's recorder could receive even more popularity than Plextor, but products of this company are almost absent on the Russian CD-RW market, and that's a pity…

Average level CD - RW drives

This category includes rather high-speed devices with low price and with an optimum speed ratios. Nowadays we think such ratios to be 8/4/32 or 8/8/32.

Teac a CD - W58E

By all factors this model is good, and the price ($140-145) is low, both velocity characteristics and recording quality are good, but there's one thing: suddenly this recorder has appeared in the market, and suddenly it has been removed from production. There are still some of such CD-RWs in warehouses, but we don't know for how long they will suffice. In total, if you need a speedy model for a reasonable price, look closely at Teac CD-W58E.

NEC NR-7500A

In the recent digests this recorder was a "beginner", and now NEC-NR-7500A is one of the best-selling CD-RW drives. It can be explained by the low price and high test results. The recording quality is at a quite decent level as well. Therefore, in case you do not need 8X rewriting, and you realize what complexities can await you in an OEM drive, pay the most steadfast attention to recorder of the NEC company.

Initial level CD-RW drives

The purchase of this category recorders means low money resources along with precise understanding of what you want to get for this amount of money.

TEAC a CD - W54EK

Teac CD - W54EK is in great demand, first of all due to the low price and also to reliability of the Teac company itself. This drive is an excellent choice for the people requiring high speed and high recording quality for the low price. The 4X recording and rewriting will cover a large part of requirements of a home user or organizations writing up to hundred disks per month.

Mitsumi CR 4804 TE

I'd advise the given recorder only in case you want to buy it for a price much lower than that of Teac. Today the difference in price between Teac CD-W45EK and Mitsumi CR 4804 TE makes less than $5-6, therefore it's up to you to decide about expediency of the given purchase. Low speeds of both reading and recording do not give the basis to advise the given drive to users who need a reliable high-performance system with probable long work time. But a home user, writing not more than few disks per week and sometimes archiving data on CD-RW, may consider this variant as an optimum. The Mitsumi device is a good choice as an addition to a usual CD-ROM. The drive is one of the most silent among all tested, without almost any vibrations. We even had to look at the LEDs to be sure the drive was working. It's hard to say something particular about reliability of the given recorder. Basing on personal experience and guarantee workshops employees recalls it can be said that the quality varies from shipping to shipping. Sometimes a large number of drives was reset under warranty during first months, and sometimes this happened with only a few drives. Therefore, if you have chose this drive as a purchase, also choose dealers granting 12 month warranty (instead of usual 6 months).

The development of modern technologies

There was an interesting trial at the end of November. The thing was that there was an action against Hewlett Packard in Germany. GEMA, the largest german license group has required 12DM from HP for each CD-R/CD-RW drive sold since 1998: users could have illegally written music with them! The most interesting is that HP has paid 3.60DM for each drive sold since that time, and has agreed to pay 12DM for every sold hereafter.

In the beginning of December the I-O Data company little-known in Russia has announced an external CDRW-SX1610B model of SCSI CD-RW with speeds of 16/10/40X. As it has already became usual recently, on the chassis from Sanyo. The shippings are expected in the beginning of January for rather high prices of about $445.

Pioneer, one of the main "combiners" has announced a writing CD/DVD combination - DVR-103 drive, having declared thus, that it counts it "as one of the most important products in history of the company", the product which should appear for sale in the first quarter of ‘2001. It also features CD rewriting. It's a first such combination. It also the first to write DVD-R at double 2X speed. The price wasn't mentioned.

The computer industry is such a thing that if one company has started talking about "combines", all others will not stay aside. For example, the Oak company. In middle of December it has presented the integrated controller for optical drives – a single OTI-9897 chip. This controller provides necessary functions both for operation in CD-RW mode, and for operation in DVD-ROM mode. In other words, it allows to create inexpensive CD-RW/DVD combines. However, though IDC predicts 139% average sales growth for the nearest four years for similar drives, nevertheless their major part, will surely be used in notebooks. Such drives are more necessary there.

LaCie, the manufacturer of peripheral units for Mac-compatible PCs, has decided to not go deep into combine things and has presented the PocketDrive CD-RW device. This an external CD-RW capable of connecting to the computer both via USB and FireWire (IEEE1394). PocketDrive CD-RW automatically determines, what it is connected through and activates the appropriate controller. Accordingly, is compatible with PC and Mac.

U&I (USB and IEEE) technology will also be used in PocketDrive hard drives from LaCie of 10 and 20 GBytes. The shippings of PocketDrive 4x4x24x will begin soon, the guiding price is $450. PocketDrive 8x4x24x will be released approximately in the beginning of ‘2001 for a price of about $500.

TDK was active as well. In middle of December TDK Europe has announced the new CyClone 161040 CD-RW drive. The drive, as it is already clear from the title is capable of writing at speed of 16x, rewriting at 10x and reading at 40x. Taking into account, that the drive is based on Sanyo chassis, the support of BURN-Proof technology is present. A new CD-RW drive package includes usual software for TDK - Nero Burning ROM 5.0, Digital Mix Master and InCD. The shippings will approximately begin in January ‘2001. The price has not been declared for the moment of announce.

I hope that given recorder will reach us nevertheless and then we shall see an actual alternative to a 16x CD-RW from Yamaha.

TDK has reminded again about itself a bit later, having announced the new CD-RW drive distinguished by rather exotic interface – it has dual Firewire and USB. And taking into account different bandwidth of these buses, the speeds are 12/10/32 and 6/6/6 accordingly. The rest is quite standard: 2 MBytes buffer, BURN-Proof, 150ms access time. The price for this device is $380.

In the same time there was rather interesting information in WWW about an LG-8083B recorder. It has appeared "tweakable" (!) without any physical interference into drive's interiors. It can be slightly "accelerated" by changing 1.06 patch for LG-8080B. In any hex editor you should replace "GLC-DWRC DE8-80B0" with "GLC-DWRC DE8-80B3" and "CD-RW CED-8080B" with "CD-RW CED-8083B", then the drive must be repatched with this file, and after reboot you get 8/4/32 LG-8080B instead.

On the 18th of December, Philips has announced the distribution of Orange Book Part II CD-R Volume 2 Version 0.9 Multi Speed – a standard defining CD writing speeds up to 16X. Accordingly, the company starts checking all released CD-Rs for correspondence to this standard, promising to publish the list of models which have shown good results on their site.

The Iomega company, in the end of the month has begun shippings of the new external Predator CD-RW drive, having announced it on Comdex. It features nice design, upper loading instead of traditional frontal, and speeds are 8/4/32X. Though it is a maximum speed limited by the interface: this combination will be available only for a FireWire model, and USB Predator will have only 4/4/6X. Within ‘2001 another two interfaces will be added: PCMCIA and USB 2.0. USB variant will be out in January at the price of $270, FireWire variant - in the first quarter at the price of $350.

3. Modern DVD technologies

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