Sony DRU-820A DVD Burner Review

DVD+R Double Layer writing speed and quality:

The Sony DRU-820A supports the DVD+R DL standard for writing Double Layer discs with a size around 8.5 GB at a writing speed of 8x.

Testing procedure: We used Nero CD-DVD Speed to create a test disc, this way we could also see the writing strategy the drive uses.

The scan is excellent and with smooth transfer rate curves! However, the drive only wrote the 2nd layer at 6x, it’s probably due to early sample of Verbatim 8x DVD+R DL we received from Verbatim.

This is a very nice result considering that the disc is only 2.4x certified and written at 6x. No problem reading the disc on BenQ drive at 12x either. The Sony drive, however, surprisingly reads this media at 8x only.

The drive overspeed this Maxell 2.4x DVD+R DL media at 6x write speed with good result. From the high speed read back curve on the Plextor drive, we can see small problem at the layer brake but the rest is fine. Read-back curves on the Sony drive is smooth, though again the Sony drive read it back at 8x only.

The drive overspeed this 2.4x rated media at 4x with good result. There is a single PIF spike of 5 which is nothing to worry about. Nice!

Here are some comparison results against other drives in respect to DVD+R DL performance:

*1 Verbatim DVD+R DL (MKM001)
*2 Traxdata/Ridata DVD+R DL (RITEK D01)
*3 Ricoh DVD+R DL (RICOH JPN D00)
*4 Datawrite DVD+R DL (CMC MAG D01)
*5 Verbatim DVD+R DL (MKM 003)

As we can see the Sony DRU-820A is not the fastest DVD+R DL burner however the write quality results are very good.

DVD-R Dual Layer writing speed and quality:

The Sony DRU-820A supports the DVD-R DL standard for writing Dual Layer discs with a size around 8.5 GB at a writing speed of 6x.

Testing procedure: We used Nero CD-DVD Speed to create a test disc, this way we could also see the writing strategy the drive uses.

The result is very nice. Unfortunately the Sony drive cannot recognize the burnt disc!

The drive managed to burn this media and read-back test is smooth. Unfortunately PI errors are quite high.

Standalone DVD-Player compatibility:

We only have 2 standalone DVD-Players available to test the DVD+R DL media (Book Type: DVD-ROM) and the DVD-R DL media (Book Type: DVD-R):

• Pioneer DV-656A
• Koss DVP2161

Compatibility results: 

All brand of DVD+R DL play nicely in both players. However, the Verbatim DVD-R DL freezes at the layer break in one of our standalone player Koss DVP2161. Meanwhile Ridata DVD-R DL is unable to be recognized in both standalone players.

We would like to mention, that the compatibility issue with standalone DVD Players and the DVD-R DL media format is also caused by incompatibilities with the standalone devices used in this review, as we know the DVD-R DL format has inferior compatibility compared to DVD+R DL especially with older standalone player.

Summary:  The Sony DRU-820A burns DVD+R DL very nicely but needs improvements on DVD-R DL.

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