Product Listing

Sony BWU-100A (2x Blu-ray Writer)

By Vincent Chang - 20 Dec 2006

Additional Burns

Additional Burns

Despite all the research that goes into making DVD media, it still retains an element of unpredictability, thanks to the various 'dyes' used to manufacture the media that differs from one vendor to another. Throw in the many branded media that actually repackages media from OEMs and it could be quite a messy situation.

Hence, as part of our tests, we put the writer through its paces by testing its compatibility with a range of media, varying in brands and speeds. This will hopefully tell us which media is best for a particular drive and reduce the odds of getting coasters. However, it would be near impossible for anyone to test a truly comprehensive list of media so we have tried to include only the more common brands found off the shelves. If you would like to see the results of a specific brand of media, kindly feedback to us the manufacturer ID of the media and we will try to include that in the next review.

Also, over-specification writing is something that many enthusiasts are interested in. This is the ability to write the media beyond its nominal speed. Not all drives allow this and those that do may be picky about the brand and type of media.

8x DVD & 4x DVD-R Dual Layer

  • Ritek 8x DVD-R = RITEKG05
  • TDK 8x DVD-R = TTG02
  • TDK 8x DVD+R = RICOHJPNR02R003
  • Fujifilm 8x DVD-R = TYG02
  • Fujifilm 8x DVD+R = YUDEN000,T02
  • Verbatim 8x DVD-R = MCC02RG20
  • Verbatim 8x DVD+R = MCC003
  • Verbatim 4x DVD-R DL = MKM01RD30

Since the maximum writing speed for DVD media on the Sony BWU-100A was only 8x, we omitted all the faster media from our tests. Even then, there were a few instances where the Sony could not write at the maximum media speed. For example, the TDK 8x DVD-R and Verbatim 8x DVD-R were both written at 6x instead of 8x. Though our sample size is very small, it does seem to suggest that this drive was more likely to write at slower speeds with DVD-R media rather than DVD+R. As for over-specification writing, there was hardly an occasion to test this, since 8x was the maximum for the Sony and the tested media. However, we had noticed earlier that our 2.4x Verbatim dual layer DVD+R was written at a faster 4x, hence the Sony may be capable of some overspeeding but given its 8x bottleneck for most DVD media, this point may be irrelevant, unless you happen to have older DVD media rated at 4x and below.

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