Philips DVDRW885 Dual layer DVD-Writer

To round off this review we will run some advanced tests on the Philips DVDRW885. These tests are: making backups of protected data and audio discs as well as some special disc test.

Copy protected data discs:

For this test, we will use CloneCD 4.3.2.2 and Blindwrite 5.1.10.136 to make a backup of games containing some of the most popular copy protections. In the screenshot below we see that the Philips DVDRW885 supports all available write and read features except writing CD+G RAW-DAO:

Philips DVDRW885 supports DAO-RAW96 recording mode, which basically means that it can write uncorrected data and subchannel data. Below are our results for all the tested games:

Motoracer 3 is protected with Tagé¨s, a protection that uses a very special sub channel protection. So far no drives have been able to backup this game successfully.

Flé¥klypa grand prix is a Norwegian game that is protected with CD Cops, again a very special protection that is added during the manufacturing process. So far no drives have been able to make a 100% working backup, a few drives in combination with a few media types may make a backup that works in a few drives.

Desperados: Wanted dead or alive is protected with Laserlok, a protection that takes very long time to read for most drives, but most drives is able to make working backups of this game.

The Diablo 2 expansion set is protected with SecuROM version 4.62.00 0100, a widely used protection scheme. Writers able to read and write subchannel data correctly should be able to backup this Game.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice city is protected with a newer version of SecuROM: namely version 4.84.69 0071. Very few (if any) writers could reliably make working backups of this protection. There are a few tricks that advanced users may use in combination with some writers to make a backup that will at least work in some drives, but this is still not a perfect copy.

Max Payne 2 is protected with one of the most recent SecuROM versions: version 4.85.04. Very few (if any) writers could reliably make working backups of this protection.

Max Payne is protected with the very popular Safedisc protection; the version used on Max Payne is version 2.30.33. If a writer supports ‘Almost correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns” it will be able to backup this protection without problems. If it does not support this you need to enable the ‘Amplify weak sectors” option in CloneCD. This is a software trick to make most writers able to backup most Safedisc protected games with weak sectors.

Serious Sam is also protected with the very popular Safedisc protection; the version used on Serious Sam is version 2.51.21. If a writer supports ‘Correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns” it will be able to backup this protection without problems. If it does not support this you need to enable the ‘Amplify weak sectors” option in CloneCD. This is a software trick to make most writers able to backup most Safedisc protected games with weak sectors.

Command and Conquer: Generals is another game protected with the very popular Safedisc protection, the version used on Command and Conquer: Generals is version 2.80.10. If a writer supports ‘Correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns” it may be able to backup this protection without problems. If it does not support this you need to enable the ‘Amplify weak sectors” option in CloneCD. This is a software trick to make most writers able to backup most Safedisc protected games with weak sectors. Note that some writers may still have problems with this version.

The protection on The Sims: Superstar expansion pack is also Safedisc protected, this time it’s version 2.90.40. Very few writers are able to reliably make a working backup of this protection. . If a writer supports ‘Correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns” it may be able to backup this protection without problems. If it does not support this you need to enable the ‘Amplify weak sectors” option in CloneCD. This is a software trick to make most writers able to backup most Safedisc protected games with weak sectors. Note that some writers may still have problems with this version.

And Vegas: Make it BIG is yet another Safedisc protected game, this time it’s version 3.10.20. Very few writers are able to reliably make a working backup of this protection. . If a writer supports ‘Correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns” it may be able to backup this protection without problems. If it does not support this you need to enable the ‘Amplify weak sectors” option in CloneCD. This is a software trick to make most writers able to backup most Safedisc protected games with weak sectors. Note that some writers may still have problems with this version.

The table below shows the backup capabilities of the Philips DVDRW885:

*Only with Amplify Weak sectors enabled
**Only when using Blindwrite 5 to back it up, CloneCD backup does not work.

Settings for CloneCD: Read subchannel data and write them uncorrected. Fast Error Skip: enabled. Intelligent bad sector scanner: enabled and set to 100-error skip. First we tried to write with AWS(Amplify Weak sectors) disabled, if that did not work we wrote again with AWS enabled, as a last attempt we tried the emulate option as well.

Drives used to verify that the backup works: Toshiba SD-M1612 and JLMS XJ-HD165H, No emulators or ATIP hiders are running while testing the backup copy.

As we could see the Philips DVDRW885 is not the perfect drive for backing up protected discs as it does not support ‘correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns” and is pretty slow at reading safedisc protected discs.

Copy protected Audio:

For our protected audio test we used the Exact Audio Copy program. We inserted the protected audio discs and if the drive was able to recognize the disc we tried to extract the music tracks to the hard drive. First let us look at the discs we had available for this test:

Westlife: World of our own is protected with Cactus data shield 100.

Natalie Imbruglias White lilies Island. This disc is protected with Cactus Datashield 200

Shakira: Laundry service, which is protected with Key2Audio version 2.

And finally Celine Dion: A new day has come, that is protected with key2audio version 3

Results:

We had to use secure mode with all discs ‘“or else we got a lot of timing errors, this makes the Philips DDVRW885 one of the less good choices for backing up protected audio discs.

Overburning:

To test the overburning capabilities of the Philips DVDRW885 we used the overburning test in Nero CD/DVD-Speed. According to Nero CD/DVD speed the drive can overburn to more than 99 minutes:

To make sure that it actually works we wrote a 99 minutes long disc in Nero Burning ROM:

It failed writing right before writing the lead out, but we guess this may be a bug in Nero as it wrote up to 100 minutes using Nero CD-Speed;

No problems here ‘“ it wrote fine all the way up to 100 minutes, below is the reading test for the created disc:

Impressive! It reads the disc at full speed, reaching over 47x near the end.

8CM CD-R and pocket card CD-R discs:

Now we will try to read and write 8cm CD-R discs and pocket card CD-R discs from Memorex.

8cm CD-R disc:

The Philips DVDRW885 did not have any problems with writing and reading the 8cm CD-R disc.

Pocket card CD-R:

The Philips DVDRW885 did not have any problems reading/writing the credit card disc either.

Now, that concludes our Philips DVDRW885 review, head on to the last page to read our conclusion…