It came with my Dell laptop. Allows bitsetting by nero. Anyone know of the burn quality? Junk it for a NEC 6750?

info: http://support.euro.dell.com/support...4/en/index.htm

I have it on my Inspiron E1505/6400. It's a POS. It burned a coaster on Memorex 8x media and none of my DVD+-RW drives can read it.

Wrong conclusion!
Memorex is crap media...

Funny, my Pioneer 12x burner burns the same 8x Memorex DVD-R media at 12x speeds w/o any problems whatsoever (readable on ALL DVD drives).

The Philips SDVD8820 is a 8x DVD-/+ R/RW that burns at 6x with the 8x Memorex, and cannot burn a single readable DVD-R. Conclusion? The Philips drive is a POS.

Maximum PC rated the Memorex DVD-R as one of the best.

I got 2 Dell e1405s, both with Phillips DVD+-RW SDVD8820. I could copy DVDs, however the copies were not readable in either a new Toshiba or 1.5 year old Samsung DVD player. They did work however in an older Phillips DVD player. I swapped the Phillips drive with a Sony DVD+-RW that came in a Dell 630M I bought 5 months ago, and DVD copies made with the Sony worked on all DVD players. Thus I assume the Phillips has compatibility issues. Meanwhile I called I called Dell, and they said they don't guarantee compatibilty of their DVD+-WR with other devices.

Dell tech support was useless for support on the SDVD8820 POS. I got two of those from Dell and neither would burn DVDs readable by any DVD drive. You could see rings around the center of the foil.

The NEC-ND6650A that I requested be sent as a replacement does a better job, but it still doesn't seem to work flawlessly with the best DVD-R media I could find (Verbatim w/ Mitsubishi media code). Considering my Pioneer DVR-109 can burn the Memorex/Ritek 8x DVD-R "junk" at 12x RELIABLY and still be readable in any DVD drive, and that the Philips was 100% in making coasters out of my Memorex and Verbatim discs suggests the drive is FUBAR'd until firmware updates can fix it.

The NEC ND-6650A drive doesn't seem to work as well as my Pioneer but I updated the ASPI drivers and I'm not sure if that has an effect on Nero 7 in an XP environment. The firmware was updated to 103C to no avail. I may try burning at 6x or slower, but otherwise the NEC drive cannot read discs that it burned, but my Pioneer DVR-109 can read discs burned on the laptop.

What does this mean?

The Pioneer DVR-109 was the best $40 I ever spent.

What did you say to Dell tech support to get them to replace the Phillips. When I spoke to them, they had the attitude that my only alternative was to return the systems.

I cited replies on Dell's forums but they wouldn't listen. I finally got tired of spending 1+ hours per call on the phone so the rep could "research" every 15 minutes so I used their online chat program. It looks like the people operating the chat are Americans, or at least the usernames look European. One guy actually heard about Nero and uses it.

Anyhow, I mentioned how everything just doesn't work with the SDVD-8820 and to see if they could send me a NEC ND6650A DVD burner, which was used on Dell Inspiron laptops prior to the Philips SDVD8820. This rep finally said it was OK and he sent one out via DHL. My NEC ND-6650A did not 100% solve my problems, but it could at least burn DVD-Rs that are readably on my other PCs.

I just got off the phone with Dell. They committed to shipping Sony DVD+-RW as replacements for my 2 systems with the Phillips. Note that my experience with the Sony in my 630m has been good.
Thanks.
PS. Meanwhile I suspect the problem with the Phillips may have something to do with bit-setting.

I am probably going to call Dell and request a new drive for my Inspiron E1505. I have the Phillips one, and I have also had problems reading certain discs. Also, it rips DVDs slow as hell. Should I/Can I request a specific drive? If so, which one? Are they just going to send me a new drive that I can install myself, or will they force me to send away the computer?

Im in exactly the same possition.I have been on the phone to dell tech support for over an hour yesterday trying downloads and such.Result...nil.I'll be the phone to them monday.This philips is useless....out of 120 excellent copied dvds I can only play about 10 and some of them intermittantly!!!The guy from tech support said 'because of the high quality and speed of the philips it makes it prone to imperfections in the discs your playing'

Besides unable to read the DVDs that were burnt with Philips SDVD-8820, does anyone have problem with READING DVDs burnt by other DVD writers? I'm having problems with the drive reading some discs that I burnt with my sony dvd+-rw.

Dell replaced the SDVD-8820 with a NEC unit that still has some trouble burning to DVDs. I no longer rely on my notebook's DVD burner and instead rely on a desktop PC's Pioneer DVD burner.

So would you recommend me calling them for a replacement RMA?

Yes! But make sure you ask them to replace it with another brand/model. I made them swap it for a NEC ND-6650A.

I see, thanks for the tip. Does anyone else have experiences with other models of DVD+-RW drives from dell? What if they don't have the NEC drive?

I, too, was having trouble with my Philips SDVD8820 that came on my Dell D820. Specifically, it would not burn to "lower quality" media -- although it burns fine to Sony discs (both single- and dual-layer). In any event, I had Dell ship me a new drive and they sent me an Optiarc AD-5540A. Optiarc is evidently a spinoff of the former NEC and Sony optical drives divisions, but I don't know what to think. Is this a good drive? Is it better than the Philips? Is it comparable to the ND-6650A discussed above?

I note that on the Dell website it says that it won't burn DVD-R DL discs. Is this a problem? Right now all you can get in the major big box stores are DVD+R DL discs anyway, but will the inability to burn -R in the future be a bad thing?

Basically, I want to know if I should send this back and stay with the Philips (and buy higher quality media) or what.

Any thoughts?

Thanks, all!

Well - I'd rather an OPTIARC drive than this or a QSI or a LiteOn [which were all horrible to me]. It would be similar to the NEC I think, which would be the better burner for a laptop, along with Pioneer [although expensive].

It's no biggie not being able to burn DVD-R DL discs. DVD-R DL are rare-ish and have large compatibility problems in devices, especially with fixed layer break position. People have reported a lot of players that won't recognise or read them past the first layer and hence I don't think you'd need to worry. After all, I don't feel safe burning these sorts of discs using a laptop drive because they generally give sub-par quality compared to their desktop counterparts anyway.

Good luck wth your optiarc drive!

Had one of the 8820A's and it was crap. It finally failed and I RMA'ed it. They replaced it with the Optiarc DVD+-RW AD-5540A

Nero InfoTool 4.03

Drive Information
------------------
Drive : Optiarc DVD+-RW AD-5540A
Type : DVD±R/RW DL Recorder
Firmware Version : 102C
Buffer Size : 2 MB
Date : ?
Serial Number : 69I3H79C
Vendor Specific : Jul04,2006
Drive Letter : D:\
Location : 1:0
Mechanism : Tray
Read Speed : 24 , 20 , 10 X
Write Speed : 24 , 20 , 16 , 10 , 8 , 4 X

Read CD Text : Yes
Return C2 Pointers : Yes
Read CD-R : Yes
Read CD-RW : Yes
Read DVD-ROM : Yes
Read DVD-RAM : No
Read DVD-R : Yes
Read DVD-RW : Yes
Read DVD-R DL : Yes
Read DVD+R : Yes
Read DVD+RW : Yes
Read DVD+R DL : Yes
Read Digital Audio : Yes
Read CD+G : Yes
Read VideoCD : Yes
Write CD-R : Yes
Write CD-RW : Yes
Write DVD-R : Yes
Write DVD-RW : Yes
Write DVD-R DL : No
Write DVD+R : Yes
Write DVD+RW : Yes
Write DVD+R DL : Yes
Write DVD-RAM : No
Write BD-R : No
Write BD-RE : No
Write HD DVD-R : No
Write HD DVD-RW : No
Write HD-BURN-R : No
Write HD-BURN-RW : No
Buffer Underrun Protection : Yes
Mount Rainier : No
SolidBurn : No
Labelflash : No
Modes : Packet, TAO, DAO, SAO, RAW SAO, RAW SAO 96, RAW DAO 96

Region Protection Control : RPC II
Region : None
Changes User : 5
Changes Vendor : 4

It can read -R DL but not write them....

I had the same problem when i recieved my e1705...what you need to do is remove the secondary ide controller and scan for new hardware after, this will reinstall the controller and the dvd-rom. (should fix the problem)

For some reason the controller is reconizing the dvd-rw in pio mode, it should be in dma-2 mode.

Thanks Maestro. I had the same problem too. Looked everywhere for a fix. Got in a shouting match with Dell support (useless - wanted me to uninstall a whole bunch of software et al). Your suggestion worked like a charm (easy too) wrt to my main problem (excruciatingly-slow DVD copy speeds > 3 hrs); however, I've still found this drive fairly slow and unpredictable under normal usage.

In response to your statement "The Philips SDVD8820 is a 8x DVD-/+ R/RW that burns at 6x with the 8x Memorex, and cannot burn a single readable DVD-R. Conclusion? The Philips drive is a POS."

I just got a new dell 1505 with the the philips dvd drive in it I first had some issues with it when trying to burn movies using nero and dvdshrink, dell was not a whole lot of help, I loaded nero 6.3 and was able to burn movies using memorex dvd+r's and it did burn at 8X, at least thats what the dvdshrink ouput stated.

Thanks Mickey50

I have one on my work Dell D820 latitude laptop - I have just tried a quality check on a disk I burned at home and it couldn't even get as far as spinning up the disk. I put the DVD (Datawrite Titanium DVD-R written at 8X on an NEC 3520A latest firmware) into an Evesham laptop with a Sony DW Q58A UY53 and the disk passed the test at 8X read speed pretty well. One spike above 3 on PI Failiures (spiked at 6) and the PI Errors never got above 50.

I tried a few more of the Titanium data backup disks that I keep at work (in case my house burns down) and every one that passed quality testing at home (and seems OK on the Evesham laptop) struggles on the Dell. In other words, this DVD-RW drive is pants! Also, not only does it read disks poorly, but sometime it sounds like a rotary lawnmower when spinning up!

I have had a DELL Latitude D820 for a month now with a SDVD8820. I have burned DVD's and CD's.
I found issues with CD errors. I selected a slower speed 20x even though the CD's were rated at 52x and the drive is 24x rated. After messing around more, setting the software to the drive rated max write speed seemed to solve the CD write issue.
Now for DVD's. I have generated a bunch of coasters. I use generic and store brand. The 4x seem to work 100%. The 8x, depending on brand vary. I set the burn speed to 6x for the 8x media. This seemed to improve things. I still get a coaster once in a while, but not 50% of the time.
I would not use "MAX" write speed settings, set to something below the media speed.
Unfortunetly, the software coming with the Dell "Sonic Record Now" does not have a write speed setting, so I have to use other software.
As far as playing, I get more glitches (clean media) on my old Apex player (6 years) and little or none on my 3 year old Apex player. They play best on the Dell D820. I think I had one disk readable from the laptop but not from the DVD players. But, thinking back, it may have used the just burned image.
Anyway, just try slowing down, don't use MAX. And buy cheap media, then the coaster don't hurt so much. Your just wasting more time.
Oh, and I have burned DVD-R and maybe DVD+R (don't have any with me to see). The CD's were -R and not sure about the others.