Pros and cons of DVDR1640 @ DW1620
| BenQ / Philips Writer Discuss, Pros and cons of DVDR1640 @ DW1620 at CD, DVD and Blu-ray Writers forum; Hi, I'm new at this forum, only started reading it about a week ago so first of all... "Hi all" ;-) Today I'm going to pick up a brand new Philips DVDR1640, my first DVD recorder. As far as I can understand from the info in the forums, the latest |
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Posted:
19-11-2004
- # 1
Hi,
I'm new at this forum, only started reading it about a week ago so first of all... "Hi all" ;-)
Today I'm going to pick up a brand new Philips DVDR1640, my first DVD recorder. As far as I can understand from the info in the forums, the latest official Philips firmware for it is P2.4.
Since it's hardware is identical to DW1620's lot's of people seem to cross-flash the Philips to BenQ's latest FW B7P9 (?). What are the pros and cons of doing this? Does this offer extra functionality or media/software compatibility? Do you loose any functionality or media/software compatibility?
As far as I remember, I already read somewhere the cross flash disables the LEDs at the Philips' front but I don't really care about that.
It would be nice though to be able to do 4x DL burning with the Philips, maybe not for now since media prices are pretty steep, but maybe in the (near) future.
Thanks in advance for replying,
Wim
- Today (MyCE Staff)
- Posts: 15,596
- Posted:
20-11-2004
- # 2
Well, I would test your Phillips first for a few weeks (unless you have Nvidia chipset IDE drivers running) to be sure that the drive is good. After establishing a "known good" then you can upgrade to BenQ's firmware and find that the BenQ firmware gives you better quality results--slightly better.
You get:
1) More frequent updates from BenQ to support the latest media
2) More quality--slightly more quality
3) More support, both hardware and software
4) More variety of media that you can use--slightly more
5) Less light from the front of your drive
So, unless you have the documented Nvidia problem, there's no need to hurry to update your drive. Wait a couple of weeks, but not past the vendor's return period. - Posted:
20-11-2004
- # 3
Thanks for your reply. Sounds like the sensible thing to do
The feature I'm interested in most is the 4X DL that the latest BenQ FW seems to offer. It's not included in the Philips P2.4 FW afaik or am I wrong?
Anybody knows of any rumours for such an official Philips FW that will support 4x DL?
Wim
