Philips DVDR1648 DVD-Writer Review

The Philips DVDR1648 supports the DVD+R DL/-R DL standard for writing Double Layer/Dual Layer discs with a size around 8.5 GB at a writing speed of 8x/4x. Let us first take a look at the media’s we will use:

Let’s find the manufacturer and media information too, for this we will use CD-Speed:

This media is manufactured by Mitsubishi Kagaku Media. Thanks to Verbatim (D) for sending us this media.

The media is made by Ricoh Co. Ltd. (Made in Taiwan).  Thanks to Ricoh Europe (Germany) for sending us this media.

Testing procedure:
We created an ISO Image from a pre-authored DVD-Video compliant file set, with a total on-disc size of 8103 MB. We then wrote this image file using Nero Burning ROM 6. Below are the results:

Ricoh Media

Nero reported a successful burn with the Ricoh media in 28 minutes 26 seconds. According to the total writing time, there must be a slowdown at 4x since the writing time is too high for 8x.

Verbatim media

Nero once again completed the burn successfully with the Verbatim media in 15 minutes and 43 seconds.

Let us take a look at the K-Probe results:

According to KProbe the PI errors is higher in the near of the layer change then the rest of the disc.

Excellent result!

Let us compare the Philips DVDR1648 results with some other DL capable drives.

*1 Verbatim DVD+R DL
*2 Traxdata DVD+R DL
*3 Ricoh DVD+R DL
*4 DataWrite DVD+R DL

DVD-R DL:

As mentioned in the beginning of this page, the Philips DVDR1648 supports the DVD-R DL standard at 4x. Let us first take a look at the media we will use:

Let’s find the manufacturer and media information too, for this we will use CD-Speed:

This media is manufactured by Mitsubishi Kagaku Media. Thanks to Verbatim for sending us this media.

Again, we used Nero Burning Rom 6 to write the DVD Image:

The Philips DVDR1648 used 30 minutes and 14 seconds to write the Verbatim DVD-R DL 4x media at 4x.

Overall this media was burned with good quality.

Standalone DVD-Player compatibility:

We only have 3 standalone DVD-Players and 1 standalone DVD+R/W recorder available to test the DVD+R DL media (BookType: DVD-ROM) and the DVD-R DL media (BookType: DVD-R) with:

• Aiwa DVD Player XD-DV370
• Medion DVD/DivX Player MD7457
• Medion DVD/DivX/NeroDigital Player MD80796  
• Red Star DVD-Player 230G
• Mustek R100A DVD+R/W Recorder

Compatibility results: 

All DVD Standalone devices played both the Philips DVDR1648 burned DVD+R DL media. But only one DVD Standalone devices would play the DVD-R DL media.

We would like to mention, that the compatibility issue with standalone DVD Players/Recorders and the DVD-R DL media format is caused by incompatibilities with the standalone devices used in this review, and not the Philips DVDR1648 or media format used.

Summary: Good writing quality on the Verbatim DVD+R DL/-R DL media. The DVD standalone compatibility results, for the DVD+R DL media is very good.

Before we round off this review, let us run the drive through some advanced tests at next page…