or does the FW B7L9 seem to give better quality burns on medium & high quality media than P9, S9 & T9. I burned a 8x Prodisc +R and was quite shocked at the quality of the burn as opposed to P9, S9 and T9. I gather the main reason for updating to P9 was for the 4X DL but since they are so pricey I’m not too hyped about that option. I somehow think I’ll be stepping back to L9 for a good long while. I mainly burn TY, Verbatim, Maxell and Ridata. Speed is of absolutely no consequence to me I’m strictly after quality. What do the gurus think?
I’m not guru, but you scan disk with L or T? what i understand T making more accurat scan. if i scan same disk wit P or T, on T i have more PIF.
Now that is very interesting and has certainly stirred the pot. I will scan that disc right now since I’m still using T9 and get back to you.
Not only is that true, but that firmware is a bit faster than some of the others.
However, the popular CMC discs did not have have their data integrity issues fixed until T9. Playback issues for many discs (can’t find documentation) were not acceptable at maximum speed until T9.
In this example, the always pretty CMC scans got about 12% worse looking with the new firmware. Playback was improved considerably and files on the discs were valid files. Previous firmware would make a prettier scan, yet there may be corrupt unreadable data files on the disc–yes, on that same disc with the pretty scan.
I wonder if you ran into a flash problem? S9 and T9 have been a real pain to get to flash correctly on my two 1620’s (retail models). One of them had to be flashed back to L9 because it was SO confused! Then I flashed it to T9. Really bad scans. So, I flashed it to T9 again. Acceptable scans, much better data integrity, and a surprise bonus:
Now discs can be burned at maximum speed, AND to my surprise, will play back smoothly in my very easily irritated set top DVD player (a dust spec sends that player into fits of hysterics).
Before T9, I was stuck at 4x to keep the irrational set top-player happy.
Despite the scan results, this (change to the new firmware) does document an impressive increase in real-life burn quality.
Yes, the scans look worse, but the movies look better.
I think that if you had more than marginal differences with T9, then flash it again. . .maybe twice. . .
Well this is a scan of a Prodisc R03 8x DVD+R burned at 8x using B7L9 and scanned using B7T9. Also I only burn discs at their rated speed or lower. For example I’ll burn an 8x at 8x or 4x but never over the Manufacturer’s rated speed. The below scan had one PIF spike of 7 and one of 5 all the rest were 4 or lower.
General Information
Drive: BENQ DVD DD DW1620
Firmware: B7T9
Disc: DVD+R (PRODISC R03)
Selected speed: 4 X
PI errors
Maximum: 11
Average: 2.41
Total: 20782
PI failures
Maximum: 7
Average: 0.07
Total: 817
PO failures: 0
Jitter
Maximum: 9.6 %
Average: 8.24 %
Scanning statistics
Elapsed time: 19:00
Number of samples: 17500
Average scanning interval: 8.00 ECC
Glitches removed: 0
Quality Score: 96
Good scan, maybe if you scan with 16X you got litlle differnt score, but if L work for you, stay with L,
“don’t fix, what not boken”
For me same type (TYG02, yes -R) was on L 88-90% and have problem playing on standalone;
on T 96-99 and no problem with playing.
Now this is another Prodisc R03 8x DVD+R burned also at 8x on B7T9 and scanned using B7T9. Now even though this disc is 400MB smaller than the previous burn notice how the PIEs are higher yet the PIFs are way lower. Jitter is also a little higher. So am I correct in assuming the B7T9 burn is better because of the lower incidence of PIFs? Man I really like this burner but am sorry sometimes I ever used CD speed because it’s confusing the hell out of me in my endless quest for the perfect burn.
General Information
Drive: BENQ DVD DD DW1620
Firmware: B7T9
Disc: DVD+R (PRODISC R03)
Selected speed: 4 X
PI errors
Maximum: 15
Average: 3.24
Total: 26230
PI failures
Maximum: 5
Average: 0.04
Total: 299
PO failures: 0
Jitter
Maximum: 9.7 %
Average: 8.56 %
Scanning statistics
Elapsed time: 17:26
Number of samples: 15509
Average scanning interval: 8.00 ECC
Glitches removed: 0
Quality Score: 97 
For me real Quality Score mean: DVD can play on any
player: in my house and everybody else. In this way B7T9
better for me.
CDSpeed bases its quality rating totally on the PIF’s.
DVD’s have two layers of “extra” error protection data.
The PIE’s represent all of the data errors BEFORE any error correction is applied. The PIF’s are the errors that are left over after the first line of error correction data has been applied to the PIE’s. Hence the name “Failures”, since the first line of error correction logic failed to correct all of them.
Since there always seems to be at least a few PI Failures, it’s fortunate that there’s a second layer of error correction data available. This second layer must be thorough enough to eliminate ALL of the remaining errors (PIF’s), or you will end up with a coaster. So it’s best that the PIF’s be as low as possible at this point.
Anyway, given a choice between data with higher (but more correctable) PIE’s and data with lower PIF’s I’d take the lower PIF’s, since this is the data that’s fed into the secondary (and final) error correction unit.
Thanks for the explanation. I guess B7T9 isn’t that bad after all, they’ve obviously done some PIF tweaking since the days of L9.