Sony DRU500AX Firmware 2.0C!!

[wizard]

don't know...i think i'm going to see if i can find out more on it....but it will be hard cause other then me contacting them to ask about it i haven't been able to find much about it.

actually...it confused me as to why they came out with a different model number anyway...seems they would have just left it at dru-500a. but...those of us with 500a's can always hope that what they told me is true...only a side by side actual comparison would tell....

i've got the cash...and also know the local best buy out here has the 500ax's...maybe i will head over there and buy the 500ax just to see if it works equally on my puter...i can always sell one of them again anyway...

[cfitz]

You've contributed some good information already, wizard. I have doubts about its accuracy, but that has nothing to do with you. My doubts center on Sony. Configuration control, while conceptually simple, is in practice a gigantic pain in the behind. Because of this, I can't imagine why a company would artificially branch model numbers and firmware versions and force themselves to keep track of the exact same thing under different guises. It just doesn't add up.

It would be a tough sell, since many a company has released products with minor cosmetic, packaging, or firmware updates without changing model numbers, but I might be convinced that the model number change to AX served some useful purpose such as distinguishing between the software included in the boxes. However, applying different revision numbers to the exact same firmware is much, much harder to swallow.

cfitz

[arklab]

Maybe I can help to shed some light on this question soon.

Please see my post this morning
http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=9364

I suspect that the PCB is different, as the AX is accpted by one of my PC's that rejected two 500A's.

I thought the first and easy step would be to compair the color of the circuit board, which is turquoise on the AX. I think the A's were different.

If so, I'll open my AX case and take some digital pictures of the board and chips.

[wizard]

that sounds interesting....i agree for a fact that it doesn't seem to make sense that they would even need another model number for it if they are the same...not to mention the so called "same firmware" under 2 different version names......


i might go buy a new 500ax today and trade them out and just sell the 500a to someone i know at a discount...that way i would be covered either way...

[wizard]

Jan 17 - Sony Enhances Its Line-Up Of Dual RW Drives For The PC. Sony Electronics is building upon its leadership in the DVD-recordable market with a new generation of its Dual RW drives, the first combination drives for the PC to support the DVD+RW, DVD+R, DVD-RW and DVD-R formats.

The internal DRU-500AX and the external DRX-500ULX drives are capable of recording to both 4X compatible DVD+R and DVD-R discs at up to 4X speeds, offer enhanced software for mastering and drag-and-drop file management, and playback DVD recordable media faster than before.

Like their first-generation predecessors, the new Dual RW drives encompass four DVD recording formats for recording functionality and playback compatibility. By supporting all the popular DVD recordable/rewritable formats, the Dual RW drives allow computer users to transfer home movies from tape to DVD discs, customize and edit them for a personal touch, and then play them back in nearly all consumer DVD players and DVD-ROM drives without worrying about format variations.

Sony's DRU-500AX and DRX-500ULX models are also the industry's first to support both up to 4X DVD+R and DVD-R recording when using 4X speed media, making them among the fastest on the market. Users can now create write-once discs in approximately half the time of drives writing at 2X speeds.

The new drives additionally support up to 2.4X DVD+RW/+R recording and 2X DVD-RW recording, as well as 24X CD-R and 10X CD-RW recording (using high-speed CD-RW discs), making them ideal all-in-one recording devices.

The internal Sony DRU-500AX drive comes with an ATAPI interface for easy installation inside a PC, while the external Sony DRX-500ULX drive features both an i.LINK (IEEE 1394) and a USB 2.0 interface for simple set-up and maximum flexibility.

The DRU-500AX and the DRX-500ULX DVD/CD rewritable drives will be available in February for an estimated retail price of under $350, and under $430, respectively. The DRU-500A and DRX-500UL first generation models are currently available.
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if i'm reading this correctly they are calling the 500a's and 500ul's 1st generation and the 500ax's and 500ulx's 2nd generation drives.

why would they consider them 1st and 2nd generation if they are the same thing? keeps u wondering....

[freeloader]

I have to agree. It makes no sense that Sony would add complications to their tracking and marketing systems for the A/AX versions if they were the same.
It does make sense that they would say that they were the same if the changes were, to their point of view, minimal and they did not want to impact the sales of the remaining A versions.
With the number of reported problems that have been experienced with the A version I will wait for the AX to show up on the shelves. Last week I found 2 A's on the shelf at the local CompUSA. I expect to see the AX soon.

[cfitz]

Of course, if the drives and firmware do end up being truly the same, then the model number and firmware revision number changes are nothing but marketing gimmicks designed to provide some flimsy justification for pretending the "new" drives are truly "second generation" drives as quoted by wizard. That would be disturbing in and of itself. It wouldn't necessarily mean the drives are bad quality, but if true it wouldn't reflect well on Sony's ethics. (Yeah, I know - there is no such thing as an ethical company. But still...)

I really can't find a positive spin to put on all this.

cfitz

[wizard]

if u have a nearby best buy check with them...the best buy out here by me has the 500ax's in right now and have had them for about a week now...

[freeloader]

Thx Wiz. I keep thinking that CompUSA is the only big-box 'puter store around here. Your post reminded me that a couple of weeks ago a friend told me that we now have a Best Buy in town too. It's almost across the street from CompUSA. I'll hit them both tomorrow.
Thanks again.

[mariegriffiths]

This might be worthwhile kicking off as a new thread but it seems strange to me that a media company Sony with many movies, games and music interests are producing a very competitively priced DVD burner almost assuring market dominance and perhaps squeezing out the competition.
Now if you might suppose they had a interest in you burning with their technology and not someone else's. But what would be the difference?
Now if they put a digital watermark into each cd tied to the DVD burner then they could trace which burners produced which DVDs. They only need the police capture your burner to identify you with pirated copies.
Digital watermarking has been around for ages in images.
See Digimarc. All they need to do is hide a few extra bits within the 4.6 gb of the DVD. Remember at the hardware level there is a great deal of redundancy to cope with the errors on teh disk, manufactuiring errors, scratches, dust. It is within these errors that they would hide the mark.
You could only read the message if you knew where to look, otherwise it would just appear as noise. You could see that there was information there using statistical techniques and an expensive £30,000 cd analyser.
You could not read the message though. i.e. you would compare a sony burnt disk and a non sony burnt disk on the same media.
I'll have to ask my friends with cd analysers to take a look.
I am sure the internet privacy guys would have a field day over this.

[Pradeep]

Interesting theory. But even assuming it's true, unless you are trying to sell your DVD copies on the streets of Manhattan I don't think it's anything to stay up at night worrying about.

There's two things that have to happen in any case.

1) You have to be churning out DVDs and selling them to others, already an illegal act.

2) Law enforcement gets a warrant and comes and takes your burner and computer and you away, you spend a couple of years in the big house.

How to avoid such a trajedy? Don't commit piracy.

Sony is also heavily into the computer industry, they make a lot of money from it, no company in their right mind is going to give upmarketshare to competing companies if they can avoid it. They were first with a combo product, and the marketplace was waiting for such a device.

Surely you could just compare the burnt Sony DVD against the original?

[mariegriffiths]

It is already here

Pit signal processing (PSP)
http://www.goldenpi.no-ip.org/drm/protection.shtml

Wobbletrack
http://www.oto-online.com/may01/dvd.html

An interesting artcle about the implications
http://cryptome.org/jg-wwwcp.htm


http://www.digimarc.com/company/news/re ... newsID=114
http://www.macrovision.com/solutions/video/dwm.php3
http://www.sony.com/SCA/press/990219_2.shtml
http://www.audiorevolution.com/news/080 ... mark.shtml

[Pradeep]

Sorry I wasn't clear. I know that digital watermarking technology exists. But I don't think it's in the Sony 500A. The reason is that whilst Sony would like to protect their content, they also want to sell hardware. Given that CSS is trivially cracked, it would be unwise of them to implement a content protection system at the moment. The loss of sales would be large. Now in the next gen of DVD (HD-DVD?) I am sure there will be all kinds of content protection that will make even the most elite hacker cry.

Fortunately the computer industry is resistant to copy protection schemes in terms of such crap like "trusted systems" etc. You need to buy new compliant hardware for the effectiveness of the protection to be useful. With older, non compliant hardware, the protection simply won't work. Sadly we will see certain things such as DVI with HDCP to protect the stream between video card and monitor. But if you are legally watching the content, shouldn't be a prob.

[mariegriffiths]

Looking more deeply into it, I have found that they are indeed working on the technology and it might be inthe Sony DRU500 or maybe one of those strange upgrades.


I don't intend to go down the car boot sale with lots of DVDs. I deserve to be arrested in that case.

I have no problems with the industry copy protecting their material BUT I do have a problem with your id being stamped onto any DVD you press, your own personal data, that is an invasion of privacy. Especially as it is not publised if such watermarking is taking place.

Comparing the DVDs would take some expensive hardware and some tricky mathemetical techniques but is achieavble.

If someone found such a code before Sony went public with it then this would be very bad press for them. Maybe they feel confident that noone would find such a code.

Interesting theory. But even assuming it's true, unless you are trying to sell your DVD copies on the streets of Manhattan I don't think it's anything to stay up at night worrying about.

There's two things that have to happen in any case.

1) You have to be churning out DVDs and selling them to others, already an illegal act.

2) Law enforcement gets a warrant and comes and takes your burner and computer and you away, you spend a couple of years in the big house.

How to avoid such a trajedy? Don't commit piracy.

Sony is also heavily into the computer industry, they make a lot of money from it, no company in their right mind is going to give upmarketshare to competing companies if they can avoid it. They were first with a combo product, and the marketplace was waiting for such a device.

Surely you could just compare the burnt Sony DVD against the original?

[Pradeep]

I've noticed that most/all? DVD-R media has a unique number printed in the hub. You could be tracked that way if there was a record kept of who bought what batches.

[mariegriffiths]

I've noticed that most/all? DVD-R media has a unique number printed in the hub. You could be tracked that way if there was a record kept of who bought what batches.

Good point. They use a whole host of digital watermarking techniqes.
This one id mentioned here:-
http://cryptome.org/jg-wwwcp.htm

[Pradeep]

There is one inaccuracy in that article, there are now plenty of consumer DVD-Recordable machines that can be used for time-shifting of TV etc.