Philips DVDR1648 DVD-Writer Review

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Review:
Philips DVDR1648
Reviewer: Jan70
Provided by: Philips Europe
(NL)
Firmware: P2.2
Manufactured: May
2005

Philips was kind
enough to send us the Philips DVDR1648. This drive supports 16x DVD±R, 8x/6x DVD+RW/DVD-RW and 8x/4x DVD+R DL/DVD-R DL writing technology, allowing Double/Dual Layer
discs of 8.5Gb to be written.

Philips has a long
history for developing optical drives and has in the past joined up with BenQ
for manufacturing and developing optical drives. This strategy alliance seems to
gain both BenQ and Philips. BenQ has the production facilities, while Philips
designs chipset/electronic components as well as being on of the main DVD+R/RW
developers.

Company
information:

We are sure that
most of you know Philips already, but let us take a look at some of the company
information found at www.philips.com. 

Royal
Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is one of the
world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of EUR 29
billion in 2003. It is a global leader in color television sets, lighting,
electric shavers, medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, and
one-chip TV products. Its 165,300 employees in more than 60 countries are active
in the areas of lighting, consumer electronics, domestic appliances,
semiconductors, and medical systems.

Global Leader

Royal Philips
Electronics is tenth on Fortune's list of global top electronics corporations.
We are active in about 60 businesses, varying from consumer electronics to
domestic appliances and from security systems to semiconductors.

We are a world leader in digital technologies for television and
displays, wireless communications, speech recognition, video compression,
storage and optical products as well as the underlying semiconductor technology
that makes these breakthroughs possible.

We have world class solutions
in lighting, medical systems (particularly scanning and other diagnostic
systems) and personal and domestic appliances where our investments in design
and new materials are critical to success.

Translated into figures, we
produce over 2.4 billion incandescent lamps every year, and some 30 million
picture tubes.

Around 2.5 million heart procedures (scans and
interventional procedures) on X-ray equipment are carried out each year using
our technology.

One in seven television sets worldwide contains a
Philips picture tube, and 60 percent of all telephones contain Philips products.


Thirty percent of offices around the world are lit by Philips Lighting,
which also lights 65 percent of the world's top airports, 55 percent of major
soccer stadium, and 30 per cent of hospitals.

The strength of
Philips' global operations is reflected in its (value-based) leadership position
in many of the markets in which it is active:

Company
strategy:

'BEST"


- BUSINESS EXCELLENCE THROUGH SPEED AND
TEAMWORK '“

The BEST program is
Philips' chosen path to achieve business excellence. It describes a set of
methods and tools by which we continuously improve our efforts. Previous
successful initiatives are incorporated in the program to make sure we learn as
much as possible from our successes in the past.

Business
Excellence

We are all committed
to improving processes in-line with the company's strategic targets. To this
end, Philips has adopted BEST to reach this goal. It is our ambition to be one
of the best companies in the world: the best to trade with, work for, and invest
in.

Our
Measures:

• 
  
  Customers are
  fully satisfied by the quality of Philips' products and
  services


• 
  
  Employees develop
  and use their full potential


• 
  
  Shareholders get a
  premium return on their investment


• 
  
  Suppliers choose
  to work with us as this generates superior value for both


• 
  
  The larger
  community appreciates our contribution to the quality of life
  

Speed and
Teamwork:

Speed and Teamwork lie at the heart of the BEST initiative.
Each and every individual within Philips knows that only by fully cooperating
and working together we are able to perfect our business processes. That's why
we focus on:

• Working smarter and reducing the
  cycle-time of processes
  
• Working in teams and learning
  from the best practices of others

The tools and
approaches in the BEST initiative all are based on these two focal areas and all
fit in the improvement cycle:

"Plan -
Do - Check - Learn"

If you are
interested in reading more company information, please visit www.philips.com.

 

Drive specifications:

Now let us
take a look at the specifications of the Philips DVDR1648, found at Philips' UK
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 drive itself
  
• Nero 6 OEM
  Suite
  
• Guide and
  Help documentation (How to…..?)

Now it's time
to take a look at the drive itself:

As we can see, there are some
changes on the bezel this time compared to previous models. On the bezel we
found; an eject button, an emergency eject hole and a LED (green - for read and
write - we prefer a different LED colour though for writing). The logos include
the CD-RW Ultra+ logo, the Philips company logo, the model-series logo, a DVD Alliance DVD+R
DL logo, and a DVD Forum DVD-R/RW logo.

On the underside of the drive we
found two stickers, and we can read it was manufactured in Malaysia, dated May
2005.

On top of the
drive and on the right side, we can see the ventilation system/feature called
Air Flow Cooling System (AFCS) and Anti-Dust Cooling System (ADCS).

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:

 

From the
screenshot of Nero InfoTool above, we miss Mt.Rainier and a larger buffer size.
Our drive came shipped with firmware P2.2 (which support the SolidBurn
feature).

And 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…………

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