Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9 DVD Burner

DVD-Writing performance:

First, we shall take a look at the writing technology used for DVD+R and DVD-R writing.

16X DVD+R Writing speed:

The MD-16XDVD9 uses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity) to write at DVD+R at 16X.

16X DVD-R Writing speed:

The MD-16XDVD9 also uses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity) to write at DVD-R at 16X. Let us compare this to the write strategies used by some other drives:

The Pioneer DVR-A08XLA uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity) to write to DVD+R and DVD-R discs at 16X.

The BenQ DW1620 uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write DVD+R discs at 16x. The constant dips you see in the graph are caused by the BenQs’ running OPC technology, which is used to improve burn quality.

Next we will test and measure the time for writing to DVD-R and DVD+R discs within Nero. We used Nero burning Rom to burn an ISO compilation containing 4483MB of data. We used the Disc-At-Once write method.

DVD+R test burn

DVD-R test burn

How does the MD-16XDVD9 compare to other writers on the market? We have built a table to analyze these write times. Please reference the table below for comparisons:

*Actual writing speed was 12X in these areas for the Pioneer A08.

As we can see, the Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9 is about average for 16X speed DVD±R writing. It is faster than the Samsung and Pioneer drives, but slightly slower than the BenQ & Philips drives.

Please note that the MD-16XDVD9 uses a Z-CLV (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity) write method when burning DVD±R at 12X, 8X, and 6X speeds and CLV (Constant Linear Velocity) for 4X DVD±R writing.

A more important question would be; how is the DVD±R/RW write quality of this drive? Afterall, you do want to be able to produce discs that are readable and useful. Let us find out now!

Write quality:

You should first take note that this is not a scientific and professional way to test the discs. But according to our testing done in the past, we would conclude that there is a clear link between the quality reported when scanning the disc and the playability of the disc in different devices. Also notice that different drives report different amounts of errors. K-Probe was designed to work with Lite-On DVD-Writers. So we recommend using a DVD-Writer from Lite-On, in these tests we use a Lite-On SOHW-1633S DVD-Writer, as already said; remember that scans done with a Lite-On DVD-ROM or Lite-On combo drive can’t be compared with the results obtained with a Lite-On DVD-Writer. Also remember that different PI/PIF ECC sum settings along with different reading speeds in K-Probe will affect the result, we use these settings;  PI (Parity Inner) set to summarize 8 ECC blocks, PIF (Parity Inner Failueres) set to summarize 1 ECC block, reading speed: 4X CLV (Constant Linear Velocity). Setting the PI sum to 8 and the PIF sum to 1 will give a result that we may compare to the standards for DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW.

But what is a good scan? That is a discussion that we don’t think will end soon. This is due to the fact that different drives report different amounts of errors, some players are more picky about media than others and many other factors. For comparison purposes we present you with a scan from two pressed DVD discs.

Please note that the example scans below were performed with an older version of Kprobe. In this older version, PIF is mistakenly labelled as ‘PO”.

This scan shows the results from a pressed DVD-ROM disc (Baldurs Gate DVD-ROM).

This scan shows the result from a pressed DVD-Video disk (Indiana Jones and the last crusade). Notice the error jump when shifting to the second layer (the error level actually drops from the end of the first layer to the beginning of the second layer).

If you read below you will see that both the pressed DVD-discs are well within the standards.

Download the ECMA 267 Standard for DVD-ROM, the ECMA 337 Standard for DVD+R/RW and the ECMA 338 Standard for DVD-R/RW at http://www.ecma-international.org if you want to look at the standards for yourself. Here is some data from the ECMA standards (same for DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW):

Random errors:

A row of an ECC Block that has at least 1 byte in error constitutes a PI error. In any 8
consecutive ECC Blocks the total number of PI errors before correction shall not exceed 280.

Here we see what a PI error is defined as a row in an ECC block having 1 byte or more containing errors. And that the sum of PI errors in 8 ECC blocks after each other should not exceed 280 PI errors.

But what is a row and what is an ECC block? Again we refer to the ECMA standards. We do not copy and paste everything but if interested look in the ECMA standards. A row is 182 bytes long where the last 10 bytes contain PI (Parity Inner) information. An ECC block is 208 rows long where the last 16 rows contain the PO (Parity Outer) information. This gives us a maximum possible PI error amount of 208 errors per block and for 8 blocks after each other this sum is of course 8 times higher giving a maximum possible amount of 1664 PI-8 errors. In practical use a disc with 1664 PI-8 errors is unreadable.

According to our tests the specified max PI-8 sum of 280 for good discs seems to be a good guideline, as some readers have problems reading discs when the PI-8 errors is over 300 and most players starts to have problems when the PI-8 error level reaches 600 or more.

But what are the PIF errors that K-Probe reports? They are Parity Inner Failures, meaning errors left after PI correction. Only the ECMA 337 standard describes the Parity Inner Failures. So how is a Parity Inner Failure defined? Here are what ECMA 337 states:

‘If a row of an ECC Block as defined in 13.3 contains more than 5 erroneous bytes, the row is said to be ‘PI-uncorrectable“.”

In theory an ECC block may in the worst case have 208 PIF since every ECC block is 208 rows long. But the ECMA 337 standard goes further and specifies the max amount of accepted PI Failures (uncorrectable errors) allowed on a good disc:

‘- In any ECC Block the number of PI-uncorrectable rows should not exceed 4.”  

This means that when the PIF sum is set to 1 the maximum error value should not exceed 4. The theoretical maximum value for PIF is 208 errors.

But what makes a disc unreadable? A POF (Parity Outer Failure) error will make the disc unreadable, but K-Probe does not display the POF’s.

Notice that there are other aspects such as disc reflectivity, jitter, tracking errors and so on that also will affect the readability of a DVD disc ‘“ but for this we do not have measuring equipment available.

And another note is that we have scanned the discs at 4X CLV speed, by lowering the speed to 2X(DVD-R/RW)/2.4X(DVD+R/RW) or 1X the amount of reported errors may drop on some discs. We use the 4X CLV scan speed for all of our PI/PIF tests.

To see if there is a connection between the reported amount of errors and readability of the discs, we also include a transfer rate test reading curve from the Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9 DVD-Writer. A small speed reduction near the end is still accepted on good discs, but serious reading problems or reading failures is a bad sign.

Easier explanation on how to read the test results.

Maybe this got too technical, and you are wondering what to look for in Kprobe reports?

Use this as a guideline for good discs:

PI(Parity Inner): No larger areas on the disc should exceed 280 PI-8 errors, do not worry too much about high single spikes that exceed 280. Lower error levels are always better.
PIF(Parity Inner Failures): No larger areas on the disc should exceed 4 PIF-1 errors, do not worry too much about high single spikes that exceed 4. Lower error levels are always better.

What about the reading curve? If the graph looks clean with no dips then the disc should be very good. A small slowdown near the end is acceptable.

DVD+R media compatibility and write quality:

The PI/PIF levels are higher than what we would have liked, but the read-back curve is perfect. We tested with both Made in Singapore as well as made in Taiwan MCC004 discs. Both types had spiking issues and discs that were written with DVD Video content would pause at some points during playback on our standalone player. We believe the strategy for this media type needs some improvement.

PI error levels are very good. There are a few PIF spikes, but this is nothing to worry about, especially since the disc can be read back perfectly at 16X. Highly recommended media for this burner.

Near perfect results! Highly recommended media.

It is too bad that these RITEK R03 revision 1 discs are only supported at 4X. The 4X burn was absolutely perfect, and IF the drive supported 8X burning on these discs, we believe the results would also be very good.

The RITEK R03 revision 2 discs are supported at 8X. These results are near perfect. Highly recommended.

Very good results here and we can definitely recommend this media type.

We can see some PI spiking near the end of the disc, but the PIF levels and the transfer rate test both look excellent. These discs should not cause you any trouble with this writer.

This is one of the best results we have ever achieved with these discs. The transfer rate curve did have some trouble near the very end of the disc but the read test was able to be completed, which is good.

Very bad results here with PI/PIF levels way out of specification. However, we do not blame the writer in this case because we believe that these specific PHILIPS discs that we possess are lower grade. The resulting disc was not recognized by our MD-16XDVD9 drive after the burn, so we were unable to perform a transfer rate test. Not recommended.

Again, it is unfortunate that 8X discs are only supported at 4X. The resulting disc does look very good though, and there should be no problems writing these discs at 4X.

Wow! Perfect results from a 4X certified disc that was burnt at 8X. Highly recommended.

The Kprobe results here look pretty good but there were some reading troubles in the transfer rate graph.  There is some room for improvement here.

We also tested some other media types to see if they are supported at certified speed. We include the following table:

As you can see this drive has some major problems here with 16X DVD+R media support! Three out of four 16X DVD+R disc types are not supported at 16X.  Mad Dog has a lot of work to do here. This will cause many users a lot of grief when their 16X media is unable to be burned at 16X.

DVD+RW media compatibility and write quality:

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Very nice results here and we can highly recommend these DVD+RW discs!

The PI/PIF levels on reported here are higher than what we would have like to see, but there should be no problems using these discs.

Summary: DVD+R and DVD+RW burning quality is very good on most media types. We would like to see an improvement in MCC004 and YUDEN000T01 write quality. We are also very disappointed to see that 3 out of 4 of our 16X DVD+R disc types are not supported at 16X!  PHILIPSC16 and RITEKR04 have been available for quite some time now and there is no reason to be missing support for these discs.