I-O DATA BRD-AM2B/U Blu-ray Disc Writer

Nero CD Speed v4.53 - DVD-Video:

For these tests I am using the US version of Transformers: The Movie on DVD. The disc is over 4GB and single sided.

The BRD-AM2B/U wasn't as fast when reading single layer DVD-Videos. In our tests, it reached a maximum speed of only 6x when reading both single and dual layer discs.

To see how well I-O DATA's new drive worked as a DVD player, I watched a few scenes from Transformers: The Movie and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace using WinDVD 5 and PowerDVD 5. The BRD-AM2B/U had no problems playing back these movies with either program and was fairly quiet.

DVD Write and ReWrite Tests - Nero Burning Rom 6.6.1.4 andDLA 4.95:

To test the DVD writing performance of Pioneer's new drive I used Verbatim 16x DVD+R, 16x DVD-R, 4x DVD-RW and 4x DVD+RW media. To get the writing times, a 4.38GB image was burned to our test discs using Nero.

When writing to DVD+R and DVD-R media at 8x, the BRD-AM2B/U uses Z-CLV, or Zone CLV. By looking at the screenshot above, you can see that I-O DATA's new drive starts writing at 4x. When it reaches the 1.6GB mark, the writing speed increases to 8x and stays there until the very end of the session.

The BRD-AM2B/U also features 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW writing speeds. While the drive uses CLV when writing to DVD-RW media, it uses Z-CLV to reach its maximum DVD+RW writing speed.

I-O DATA's new Blu-ray Disc drive performed relatively well here. While not nearly as fast as some of the DVD writers we've looked at, it was a good minute faster than the BDR-101A when writing to DVD±R discs at 8x. Thanks to its 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW writing speeds, the BRD-AM2B/U also had a considerable advantage when it came to rewritable media.

To check the media compatibility of the BRD-AM2B/U, I ran a few tests using some of the media available in my area. The media types, along with the average time it took the drive to write our 4.38GB image, are listed below.

So what about writing quality? Testing a drive's DVD writing quality isn't easy. Until now, there were very few options, unless you wanted to shell out thousands of dollars for a certified test machine. Thanks to KProbe, we can test a disc's PI (Parity Inner) and PIF (Parity Inner Fail) rates.For these tests I used a Lite-On SOHW-1673S and read the discs at 4x with the PI and PIF ECC sums set to 8 and 1 respectively. For comparison, I also tested the discs on a BenQ DW1655. When combined with Nero CD Speed, the DW1655 is able to report PI Errors, PI Failures, Parity Outer Failures and even jitter levels. For this test, the discs are read at 8x with both the PI and PIF ECC sums set to 8.

So what are "good" results supposed to look like? With KProbe, the PI errors should not exceed 280 and the number of PIF errors should stay below 4. When testing with CD Speed, the number of PI errors should stay below 280 as well. However, because it scans with an ECC sum of 8, a higher number of PIF errors is acceptable, as long as they do not exceed 32. Since POF errors are uncorrectable, we really don't want to see any of them at all.

I also put these discs through a "stress test" by reading them back at 16x with the DW1655. By reading these discs back at this speed, we can see if there are any readability issues caused by the number of errors or high levels of jitter.

The BRD-AM2B/U's writing quality was fairly good with most of the DVD+R media we tested. In most cases, the PI/PIF rates stayed well within acceptable limits. The only exception being Memorex's 16x DVD+R media. In the beginning of the disc, the PIF rates were a little higher than we'd like to see.

When it came to DVD-R media, the BRD-AM2B/U yielded some mixed results. While the results were fairly good with KProbe, there were a small number of PO Failures on the discs from Memorex when scanned by the BenQ DW1655. Also, if you look at the transfer rate graphs for the Memorex and RiDATA media, you can see that they failed to complete our stress test, returning an error part way through.

To test the BRD-AM2B/U's packet writing performance I used DLA 4.95. Verbatim 8x DVD+RW, Verbatim 6x DVD-RW and Maxell 5x DVD-RAM media were used once again.

Unlike the BDR-101A, the BRD-AM2B/U had no problems completing our packet writing tests. Looking at the scores above, you can see that it took the drive about eight and a half minutes to write our test data to DVD±RW media and more than 25 minutes to do the same with DVD-RAM discs.

Double Layer DVD Write Tests - Nero Burning Rom 6.6.1.4:

To test the double layer DVD writing performance of the BRD-AM2B/U, I used Verbatim 2.4x DVD+R DL, Verbatim 4x DVD-R DL and RiDATA 4x DVD-R DL media. I created about 8GB of random files and directories on my hard drive and then burned them to our test discs with Nero.

I-O DATA's new drive had no problems writing to the Verbatim 2.4x DVD+R DL, Verbatim 4x DVD-R DL and RiDATA 4x DVD-R DL media at 4x. Unfortunately, the drive would not write to the DVD+R DL media from RiDATA (RITEK D01) or PlayO (RICOHJPND00). No matter what speed I chose, the burn process failed.

With Nero, it took the BRD-AM2B/U about 27 minutes to write 8001MB of data. If you do the math, this is a good 16 minutes faster than the drive from Pioneer. So what about writing quality? Take a look below.

The writing quality was pretty good with the DVD-R DL media from Verbatim and RiDATA. In both cases, the PI/PIF rates stayed well within acceptable limits and there were no readability problems. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Verbatim's 2.4x DVD+R DL media. While there weren't any PO Failures, the PI rates were very high on the second layer.