CDFreaks presents BenQ DW1670 Preview

A lot of companies do that these days and it's ultimately down to corporate politics. BenQ's deal with Panasonic most probably includes clauses that specify the release of new Panasonic-chiped BenQ models at a given timeframe agreed by both companies. In the meantime existing agreements with Philips are still in effect and have to be honoured, hence the release of the 1670 being so close to the release of the 1650/1655 models.

Companies ultimately want to drive down costs and at the same time shift the most units possible in order to keep their shareholders sweet, and releasing new models every few months is a policy that works nicely towards such a goal. A recent example of this is Umax and their range of Yamada MPEG4 players. At some point Umax was releasing a new Yamada model every few months (6100, 6600, 6700 etc). The idea was to make slight changes to existing hardware and software and also make them cheaper each time in order to make the consumers wanting to go "one higher", thinking that the newest model with the higher model number is better than the previous ones. And the newer models were cheaper than the older ones too because Umax used components of worse quality every time a new model was out. So people wouldn't think twice about buying the newest, cheaper, and according to Umax, better model. Total rip off, as the newer models were usually worse quality-wise and the changes were mainly cosmetic. I speak from experience as I've had 3 different Yamada models and they all suffered from the exact same manufacturing fault. They all failed withing a few months of purchase (with the latest, the 6700 lasting only 3 weeks, and I've had 2 of those, both failed with 1 week difference from each other). Many Yamada users had the same problem and it had to do with faulty ribbon cables being used in all models... But that wasn't the only fault. It's not a sign of a quality product when you try to connect your new DVD player to your TV and the scart plug gives way and disappears into the chassis because it is not screwed properly on the casing (this happened to two 6100 models I've had). Incidentaly my top-of-the-range TDK scart cable was more expensive than the player itself... Back on RMA land, and waiting for the courier to bring another substandard product to my door... Eventually I got an H&B 3255 MPEG4 player and it has been great without any problems whatsoever for almost two years now...

Moral of the story: Newer is not always better. Far from it. In many cases it could be worse as companies always use cheaper components to drive costs down. If your equipment works well and does the job you want it to do, stick with it. In the case of the 1670 only time will tell. I personally think that it was a mistake for BenQ to deviate from the Philips chipsets, but then again the BenQ guys may have a (yet unkown to us) ace up their... hm collective sleeves...

Good point but IMO those (DW1650, DW1655, DW1670) are different drives with special purpose for different market.

As we know:
DW1650 = the latest BenQ DVD Burner,
DW1655 = DVD Burner + LightScribe, and
DW1670 = Multi DVD Burner (with DVD-RAM).

I heard some part of the world (the Asian market?) needs DVD-RAM burner more than others and that's probably why they release DW1670 almost the same time with DW1650/55.

Yes, you are very observant.
I accidentally listed one of the partition sizes as the HDD capacity.
The Maxtor drives' total capacity is 78161 MB.

How do you manage the power distribution for so many drives? Won't these many devices cause the SMPS to be overloaded? Please enlighten.

Cheers

cyberman / zevia....both good points. i guess these companies feed the publics desire to have the latest hardware and software. in my opinion if they wanted to please everyone they could have released a drive that had lightscribe and RAM capabilities. i just hope they concentrate on releasing consistant firmware updates for all these different models they have out now.

After reading this preview, I ordered a DW-1650 pronto! Still not sure of the switch to the Panasonic chipset, I guess Phillips wasn't offering a DVD-RAM solution.

But isn't that the market the DQ60, as mediocre as it is, was intended for??

So Im confused, is the dru-820a a dw1670 or a dq60? I probably couldnt tell the difference from use, but id fell better buying the somewhat pricey dru-820a knowing its a newer drive rather than an older and somewhat hated dq60. Im interested in dvd-ram for general system backup / playing with and the style of the sony faceplates wouldnt look too bad against my silver case. (It should also match my future fw900 brand/color wise if I can ever find one on ebay)

Sorry if its a bit off topic, Im very much the opposite of a cd freak and could use some clarification.

yeah i see the exact same thing

Among other differences, BenQ DW1670 supports 5x DVD-RAM and Mount Rainer, which are not supported by DW1655.

Can you see the difference now?

Hmm, is this the first BenQ without a nexpedia chip from philips then? So it's not really comparable to the latest drives like 1640/1650, right?

cu,

Jackie

I have a different theory as to why the 1670 is coming out so soon after the 1650 and 1655. Remember the 1650 is basically a bug fixed 1640. The 1640 is quite old. I expect that Benq was working on the 1670 to be the ultimate replacement for the 1640 then they had the bug so released the 1650 (of course if they didn't have this, the 1670 will probably be named the 1660).

Meanwhile they must have been working on a 1645 (1640 with LS). However when they realised they had the bug problem, they probably delayed this a bit and finally released the 1655. Benq LS drives always come out a while after the non LS variant don't forget

Eventually the 1675 will come out unless the 1670 is buggy then perhaps we'll get the 1680 and 1685! The engineering sample was December 2005 and the Sony drive which everyone thinks is the Benq 1670 is out already. This suggests the 1670 is ready. I expect the 1670 may have been delayed to give the 1650 a while to settle in.

Can't agree on that 165* drives are "basically a bug fix".
If you look at DW1625/1640/165* Nexperia chipset revision history you can see why BenQ had to release DW165*'s. Simply from a corporate economics perspective, combined 1625/1640 features in one drive.

Keep in mind, there is still a demand for LightScribe (LS) from OEM's and the release of 1655 (note same chipset used both in 1655 and 1650) keeps OEM's happy and in the same time the 1625/1640 series gets an update. This is not a simple bugfix but more likely smart corporate politics by BenQ.
Here I think you forgot something, 1655 drive was released/for sale before 1650, indicating once again my theory above, this drives not being a 1640 "bug fix".

But the true reasons only BenQ knows...

No offense intended but you're completely missing my point here. I never ever said that Benq wasn't going to release a new LS drive. As I said, they were always planning to release a new LS drive. It had been in planning/development for a while. The original plan was that the 1645 would be the LS drive based on the 1640.

However there was a problem. The 1640 was buggy. Releasing the 1645 as a buggy drive when they had the new chipset available and could use it with minimal modifications wouldn't make sense. So cancelled the 1645 and instead spent a bit of time making the 165* product line which is the bug fixed 164* product line. The 162* history further proves my point. Benq didn't release a 1635 before releasing a 1630 which was litttle different from the 1620 except for a minor bug fix. They release the 1625 after the 1620 had been out for a while and was a fairly mature drive. Of course, there was no reason to release a 1630/35. The 1620 was working as expected and so keeping it for the 1625 made a lot of sense.

Which just proves might point. It is abnormal for Benq to release their LS drive before their non LS drive. Why would they do so with the 1650 then? Simply put, as I suggested earlier, they were planning to release the 1645 which is the LS variant. However it became clear that the chipset was buggy and given that there was a new chipset, it was very stupid to release a buggy LS drive. So they delayed the LS drive and used the new chipset with the LS drive and released the 1655. However having released their LS drive with the new chipset, they had a dilemma. They had the 1640 but it was buggy and the 1670 was a while away not to mentioned a completely new drive for them in many respects. Even when it was released, they would want to keep their old, fairly mature drive around for a while. Furthermore, it clearly makes sense for them to centralise on one product line since clearly the 1655 is just a modified 1650 (which is a bug fixed 1640) with the LS components included and with the same chipset any everything, it would surely be simpler and easier for them to keep only one product line. Keeping the 1640 and the 1655 was silly then, different chipset and different product lines. Therefore their only option was to release the 1650 (after they had got rid of all their 1640s of course).

N.B. It's possible that Benq delayed the 1645 for longer then we expect. Perhaps they had planned to release it quite a while ago but released it was buggy and therefore waited until they had a solution. The solution that came out was the new chipset so they cancelled the 1645 and made the 1655 instead, but everything else is the same. The only real question is whether Benq had the chipset ready before they were planning to release the 1645 or waited for the chipset...

However I agree with you, only Benq knows, and I would say even they may not really know why they did what they did. There's probably not too much point speculating too much. I just wanted to let you know my suggestion since it appeared you didn't understand it...

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Last edited by Nil Einne; 09-03-2006 at 12:45.

@Nil Einne,

You keep saying the 1640 is "buggy".
Would you give detail and evidence of what the bug is?

I think it is a matter of speaking, 1640 is not buggy just older.

Said it before and I'll say it again: The 1640 is a legend among writers. And its firmware has matured nicely too. I don't think anyone can describe the 1640 as buggy, at least mine has been brilliant with most quality scores between 95 and 98 for a great variety of expensive, middle-of-the-road, cheap and very cheap media. A lot of writers can produce good results with good media, but not many can do the same on very cheap discs. The 1640 can not only write well on nasty discs, but it can also overspeed my cheap Datawrite Classic x4 +R media up to x12 with average quality scores of 95 to 97, great numbers for such drastic overspeeds. I hope the BenQ guys can do the same with the newer models, my 1650 is not as good, it doesn't have the reliable consistency with a wide variety of media that my 1640 has.

There have been 9 firmware updates for the 1640 while the 1650/55 only once.

And perhaps we can stay on topic in this DW1670 preview thread, please.

There is no firmware for the 1670 yet so we really cannot judge it. The review firmware, as I understand it is a beta firmware. Until we see a real BenQ DW1670 I don't think anyone will really know how good or bad it is.

When will this be available as an external model? preferably with both USB2 and Firewire800.

It's rather well established that the Benq 1640 has problems with DVD+R media, writing at 16x with spiking problems even with the latest firmware. This particular problem is NOT present with the Benq 1650 despite the fact the firmware is significantly less mature. If you don't believe me do a search, I'm not the first person to point this out, indeed I haven't tested it myself however numerous people HAVE pointed this out and numerous people have called the 1650 a bug fix...

Anyway the point is, this would seem to indicate the drive is simply NOT able to write at 16x reliably, otherwise Benq would have resolved this problem a while ago. Of course, Benq may choose to call this a design feature or limitation but call it what you want, when one of your drives has trouble writing at an advertised and officially supported speed whereas the other does not, many would call that a bug. I agree that this if off topic so it will be my last post about this here.

NB, I use the Benq 1640 and am unlikely to ever want to use the 16x. Personally, I think 16x is unnecessary and therefore don't consider it a bug of any consequence. But this doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered a bug or that a new drive of which the only major change appears to have been a newer chipset of which the only noticeable change or improvement has been to 16x DVD+R writing shouldn't be considered a bug fix.

@Nil Einne,

I was looking for clarification on what you considered "buggy", that was well stated.
Thank you.

Is there any country you can buy this drive?

Kudo's to the preview, but I purchased a 1655 based off the extensive work done by the members here and I've come to the same conclusions that the Phillips chipset is a tried and true contender. I do not think I will purchase a 1670 seeing that I have no need for DVD-RAM support nor do I like the initial quality scans. I get very good results as it stands. I'm of the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of thought.

I agree about the x16 speed (which incidentaly I never use with any of my writers either, I always burn at x12 max, unless I want to stretch-test certain media). As you said this is not really a bug, a lot of writers out there have a problem with a lot of media at x16 (and some don't, but those are the exception that verifies the rule).

Anyway, returning to the 1970 topic:
In my opinion BenQ has never been really good at producing great initial frmwrz, but they seem to solve a lot of the issues with subsequent releases (and seemingly taking into account input from end-users). The fact that these three models (1650, 1655, 1670) are being released so close to each other makes me wonder whether BenQ will continue to invest the same effort into supporting and perfecting the 1650/55 models, or just shift their efforts and attention to the 1670 and any subsequent models that may be released in the near future...