Review:
NEC ND-4550A
Reviewer: Jan70
Provided by: NEC
Germany
Firmware: 1.07
Manufactured: October
2005
NEC Germany, was
kind enough to send us one of their latest DVD-writer the NEC ND-4550A. This
drive supports 16x DVD+R/-R, 5x DVD-RAM, 8x/6x DVD+RW/-RW writing and 8x/6x
DVD+R DL/-R DL writing technology - allowing Double/Dual Layer discs of 8.5GB to
be written.
Company
information:
Let us take a look
at some of the company information found at the NEC Germany
site:
NEC
Deutschland GmbH, based in Ismaning near Munich, was established as a
wholly-owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation in 1987.
The product portfolio
includes the most modern presentation technology, such as Video, LCD and DLP™
projectors and plasma monitors as well as peripherals such as CD-ROM, DVD drives
and floppy disks. Telecommunications products and biometric security solutions
round off the product range.
The sales territory covers Central Europe,
including Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as the Benelux countries and
Eastern and South East Europe
1987 | NEC NEC offers one | |||||
1988 | With the LC | |||||
The MultiSync® | ||||||
1989 | ||||||
1991 | NEC introduces | |||||
1992 | NEC | |||||
1993 | NEC creates a | |||||
1996 | NEC develops | |||||
1996 | NEC, together | |||||
1997 | NEC is the | |||||
2000 | On the 1st | |||||
2001 | NEC is the | |||||
Facts &
Figures:
NEC Group
Structure
NEC
Corporation will position its business on "providing integrated solutions
(including services) for mission critical systems in open environments" and
concentrate further on IT and network integrating solution
businesses.
NEC Electronics Corporation which concentrates its management
resources on system large-scale integration (LSI) business will strengthen its
global competitiveness, expanding its business as a specialist enterprise that
empowers its global customers by providing semiconductor solutions for high-end
system needs.
Through this new NEC group structure, NEC aims to increase
the corporate value of the entire NEC group.
If you are
interested in reading more company information, please visit: NEC
GERMANY
Drive specifications:
The official
listed specification of this drive was found on the NEC Germany
website:
What's inside
the box?
On this page
we will take a look at the drive and its technology.
Below you will
see the contents:
- The
internal ND-4550 drive itself
- NEC Writer
CD-ROM:
- Documentation for NEC DVD
Writer
- Software
documentation
- NeroExpress 6.6 for Windows
98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP and 2003 Server
- NeroVision Express 3 &
ShowTime 2 for Windows 98SE, ME, 200 and XP
- Documentation for NEC DVD
- MPC Audio
cable
- Screw
set
- IDE
Cable
Now it's time
to take a look at the drive itself:
The NEC
ND-4550 uses the same bezel that previous NEC DVD Writers have used. A simple
and clean design that includes a few logos, a single green coloured LED, an
emergency eject hole and an eject button. (We would prefer different LED colours
to distinguish between reading and writing operations). The logos located on the
right side of the drive tray include a DVD
Forum logo, a DVD
Alliance DVD+R DL logo, and a CD-RW Ultra Speed logo.
Top
On the
top-side of the drive we found one sticker and we can read it was made in
Malaysia '“ October 2005.
Underside
On the
underside of the drive we can see a pattern of holes, which is used for
ventilation.
Side
On the back of
the drive starting from the left, we can see a digital audio connector; analogue
audio connector; pins and jumper to set the drive to cable select, slave or
master; IDE connector and finally the power connector.
We installed
the drive without any problems and here is a screenshot from Nero
InfoTool:
Our drive came
shipped with firmware 1.06 and was later updated to 1.07 (see below):
A screenshot
from Nero InfoTool after the firmware update:
From the
screenshot of Nero InfoTool above, we miss Mt.Rainier and a larger buffer
size.
Another shot
from Nero Burning ROM:
But let us continue
this review and see how it really performs.
On the next page we
will take a look at the test machine, the software, the drive
features…………