Does anyone have any knowledge or experience of this drive or Company? So far all I can find out is that it uses the MediaTek chipset that the Lite-On drives use.

Can't find any prices for it either, but as it has only just been announced I guess that isn't much of a surprise....

BTC is fine. A large optical drive manufacturer in Taiwan. Not as large as Lite-On IT yet but one of the big five. BTC DVD+R/-R writers will be sold for less than US$200 soon.

Thanks Kenshin.

I've never heard of them, until now. I'm looking for a cheap dual format writer, and don't really know which to get. I've had bad experiences with the early Pioneer DVD-RW drives so I don't want one of those, the NEC seems possible as and can't afford the Sony yet.

When I saw the BTC uses the MediaTek chipset I wondered if it would be a contender, after all the MediaTek chipset is well regarded in the CD-RW world. Guess I need to wait until they've been around for a while.

A german electronics discounter (Media Markt) offers this drive for 169 Euro. I would like to buy this drive, but I would als like to hear from others, if they recommend this drive.
The technical data sounds pretty good. 4*DVD+/-R, 2*RW, 40*CD-R, 24*CD-RW. But what about writing quality or media compatibility? Did anyone already test this drive or can anyone tell us, if the drive is able to do correct EFM when writing on CD-R? (I think so, because of the builtin Mediatek Chipset)
On www.btceurope.nl there is already a new firmware for this drive.

Hi All,

I have a BTC DUAL DVD, which I bought for Euro 169.95.

Initially I had some strange Region Errors, which only appeared
by certain DVD's. But after loading the new Firmware all went fine.

As to speed I am very happy, even as I am using currently a PIII-900mhz.

A DVD I burn in about 25 - 30 Minutes., and that is one a PC that is over 3 years old, and had no real hardware upgrades except memory.

An audio CD is burned extremely fast. Under 1m30 seconds, the CD is ready.

I have been using a spindle of "white brand" DVD+ discs and all
without any problems sofar.

Have you ever tried writing to DVD-R and afterwards reading this disc with a DVD-Rom Drive. It was almost impossible to read DVD-R written with this drive without lots of read errors. No matter if I used Noname-Discs or with for example Fuji (Taiyo Yuden) or Verbatim (MCC)

yes the BTC dvd dual is not very good, i wish i had not got one now. i backup my xbox games with a 104 but just bought this dual and primodvd does not recognize the drive, i have burned 9 dvds different medias and different burning programs and not one will boot up. nero finds the drive but still the disc will not boot up. the drive is flashed to v0040 and still wont burn dvd-r.
complete waste of money ...

There's nothing more to add. Either it writes DVD's which can't be read afterwards or it fails after a couple of writes. I have not read anything good about this drive, no matter in which forum I was reading.

Dear all,

I'd like to post some comments from the manufacturer's point of view, if you don't mind.

Just because you don't see any good comments on the BTC DRW1004 doesn't mean that the drive is bad !

We have been selling hundreds of thousands of these drives over the last few months with low failure rates and good quality and all I can find on these chatrooms is negative comments.

On one hand understandable, because why would you turn to a chatroom if your drive is working fine.

On the other hand, these chatrooms give a very wrong impression on the quality of a product. The few negative messages that appear about a product are repeated by others a zillion times, thus creating the impression that the product is bad. The funny thing is that most of these users have never even bothered to contact us, the manufacturer, to help with their problems.

Yes, there have been some defective drives, which after a couple of times burning suddenly couldn't read any DVDs anymore. When you sell a few hundred thousand units, you'd expect some of them to come back defective. It's not realistic to expect to have a 0% failure rate, no matter who hard we try and hope.

And yes, it is a challenge for us to keep up with all the latest MID Codes which are entering the market every day.

But the overall defective rate of the DRW1004 is still very low, and all of these drives have been replaced by new ones, and we keep close contact with all the major media manufacturers on the market and make sure new firmwares are coming out regularly to enable users to use more and more media.

In general, I would say 99% of complaints are due to the use of incompatible media, which mostly can be solved by updating the firmware.

Currently the latest firmware for the DRW1004 is V0040, though we have a V0042 beta version available as well.

So please, all you users who have bought a DRW1004 and are experiencing problems, please check our website regularly for firmware updates and contact our technical support people for help first before starting to complain on chatrooms about the product.

I thank you for your attention.

Marco
BTC Europe Support

i have had a lot of problems with mine but i must admit marco from btc has been very helpfull and given me a lot of his time. i am going to try the v0042 and see if i have anymore luck.
i will keep you updated ...

Thanks Kwaka750, I recognized your handle. I'm glad you contacted us.

I was wondering if the fact that so many endusers don't contact the manufacturers anymore about their problems might be due to the often lack of good support on the side of the manufacturers.

In that case, I can only promise every BTC enduser that I'll always answer their mails within 24hrs. on working days and will always reply.

For your information, V0042 beta adds OPTODISCK001 MID code support and also solves a problem with Princo DVD-R 4X, among others.

Marco
BTC Europe Support

Hello Marco,

although I already returned my drive, I'd like to answer to your comments.
My negative opinion about this drive is due to my experiences I had with it. I bought the drive for 169 Euro. A good price for what the drive offered at that time.
I immediately installed the drive, started my PC and found a BIOS message, saying that I have no 80pin-IDE-cable installed, which is absolutely false and the message dissapeared immediatle, after I disconnected the drive.
Strange, but not too bad, since the transfer rates were not that high, I would run into problems with that.
Because the shop where I bought this drive didn't have many different media and I didn't know, what my standalone DVD-Player ist capable of (unfortunately only DVD-R ), I bought one Platinum DVD+R and one DVD-R. (which were not very cheap there, although they are relatively low priced)
I wrote to the DVD-R and the disc could be read. Happy about that, I bought some different media. Some cheap, others not so chep.
I tried to write to a DVD-RW, but the writing failed for some reason. On the disc, I could see written areas and some areas which were not written. So I tried to erase the disc and that was it. I was not able to read or even write any DVD afterwards. I guess there are seperate laser units for CD and DVD and the one for DVD got damaged somehow.
One day later I returned my drive to the dealer and exchanged it for a new drive. (This drive caused the same BIOS message for my IDE-cable, but I expected it somehow, although there was a little hope...)
I tried writing to different DVD-Media, but none of them could be read till the end without getting errors - either across the whole disc or at least for the last 10-50% (tested with Nero CD/DVD-Speed). Few of those discs could be read in the writer, but none of them in any other DVD-ROM or my standalone DVD-Player. No matter which media I used or which speed I selected. I've burned at least 10 coasters without even one successful burn. I certainly tried upgrading my firmware to 0038 or 0039 (0040 wasn't out at this point) but that didn't help either. I got a little angry about the wasted DVDs, which cost me a good amount of money and very much time. So I returned the drive and fortunately got my money back - at least for the drive.
Your support might be OK, but on your websites the DVD-Burners only appeared in a short press release and in the firmware update page. That was all. While some of that has changed now, on the tech support page, DVD-Writers still aren't mentioned. (except for "other products") That doesn't look like an overwhelming support for those drives. Maybe you can give a hint to your webmaster.
I would not have minded some coasters, because they were really cheap discs (optodisck001), but I would have expected that at least Verbatim (MCC) or Fuji (Tayio Yuden) media would be written without problems.
Even the supplied DVD+RW disc from RiData could be written exactly once. After erasing and rewriting the disc, it was full of errors. I would not call this rewritable
That was not what I expected for my money.
I didn't have many problems with DVD+R media, but if the drive claims to be able to write to other media as well, then I want to be able to do that without getting lots of errors.

It might be possible that I grabbed exactly those two drives out of at least 100 they had in the store, but 2 out of 2 drives I bought is 100% for me, considering the time needed even for driving to the store and back. (3 * 30 km) So I must ask you, if you would recommend a drive which doesn't work for you?

And before I forget asking about it: When will the DRW1008 be released and are there chances, it will once be able to write 8x to DVD-R?

@Marco BTC

yeah the reason i goto forums when i have problems is that if there is a fix that can be done without going thru the hassle of talking to or emailing "Stupid Techs" i do it. (read below before you get mad)


Im not calling all techs stupid... i was a tech at one time in a call center and i knew my job and did it well.
just the vast majority that start a job and are throw on the phones or in front of a pc with a manual and have no clue not to help or fix or do anything...
and the turn over rate is horrible in those jobs...

its takes 5 to 10 calls to get soemone that knows anything and with email its harder to explain problems or you get blown off as ur not having that bad of a problem or a problem at all!

i do not have a BTC drive... just reading the threads because ive never seen this brand before...

Dear Joerg,

Based on your experiences, I would have probably also thrown in the towel after trying 2 drives in a row which appeared to be defective.

Regarding disc compatibility, we use Verbatim in our test lab as a sort of reference and also Taiyo Yuden and all the other wellknown media (Ritek, CMC, Ricoh, Mitsubishi Chemical (MCC)) have all been supported from day 1, so it puzzles me to see that you couldn't get any of the discs working properly. To find out, I'd really have to take a look at those drives and test them, but that's too late now.

The other thing that struck me as being peculiar is the fact that your system gave an error message during startup. Can I ask which mainboard you are using and whether there were any other devices present on the (secondary ?) IDE port to which the DRW1004 was attached ?

Regarding the DRW1008, you've probably seen the news on the CDFreaks newssite, you'll find them in stores by the end of november. It can write at 8X. Currently, only DVD+R 8X media are available. Our R&D is not able to test any DVD-R 8X simply because they don't exist. However, the drive is capable of writing at that speed, so by the time DVD-R 8X comes out (last I heard was that they might become available around february 2004), a simple firmware upgrade will probably all that is needed to support them.

Marco
BTC Europe Support

Hello Marco,

first of all thanks for your fast reply.
My guess is that the first drive had a problem with its DVD-unit and the second one was not calibrated correctly in some way. I think it would be a little problem supplying you with the defective drive because of warranty issues in germany. (My local supplier is the first one that should be contacted if I don't want to risk getting problems with that)
The drive was connected as a secondary slave together with a Toshiba 1612 as master. The Toshiba together with my LiteOn 48125 don't have this problem. My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA7IX with BIOS F4a. I hope it helps in finding what went wrong here.
Upgrading DVD-R to 8x with just a firmware upgrade would be great, but I'm not sure yet if I should waint until dual-layer DVD-Burners are available
It's great to see that BTC is trying to give support that way although it's too late for me now. But I don't say I would never buy BTC again

Edit: Typo fixed

Thanks for the information, Joerg. I'll discuss the issue with my colleagues in Taiwan. Even though it's too late to solve the problem for you, we might be able to help the next enduser who encounters the problem.

It's not clear yet if the dual layer R(W) writers will require a new drive design or can just be supported by firmwares on current drives. As a matter of fact, the specs aren't really ready yet, though they claim they are. The announcements of both the -R(w) and +R(w) camp regarding this technology is purely a PR battle at this moment. In my opinion it will take at least a year before we'll see workable solutions in this field. By that time we'll probably be at 12X anyway. If you can wait that long, you should wait.

By the way, it's probably a typo, but MSI is a different company than BTC. I'm aware of the fact that many people have never even heard of the name BTC, even though we've been around for a while, to say the least.

BTC = Behavior Tech Corporation (www.btc.com.tw). We are a manufacturer of input devices (keyboards, mice) and optical drives (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CDRW, Combo drives, DVD Dual drives, etc.) and NFREN LCD monitors. Originally we were in the top 3 of keyboard manufacturers in the 80's, but added an optical storage department in the beginning of the 90's. Starting from the time when 4X CD-ROMs were considered the hottest stuff around, we have built up over 20 years of experience in developing and manufacturing optical drives.

Currently we have factories in Taiwan, China and Korea and we supply optical drives (and input devices) to many large companies under our own BTC name and others. Our headquarters is in Taiwan, where we have 200 people working in the OSD division alone, among which are more than 100 R&D people.


Marco
BTC Europe Support

Sorry. It was a typo which is now fixed :-)
Sorry, but when reading so much in the different forums that might happen. (Both companys use only 3 letters for their name...)
I know that it might take some time until we have dual layer. That's why I'm not sure yet, what I will do. Even if it would be possible to upgrade the drives simply with a new firmware, most companys will be selling new drives I guess.
I hope your colleagues in Taiwan find out what causes the problems (especially that one with not recognizing DVDs any more - try writing to PrimeOn DVD-RW)
But in my opinion DVD-Recording is still not very advanced at the moment. It might be a result of bad quality media, but with my current CD-Writer (LiteOn) I can use whichever media I want to. Even the cheapest discs can be written without any problems. That's what I expect from DVD too. I will not only blame the drive manufacturers for that, I think it's also a question of media. But maybe the specs for burning DVD weren't defined clearly enough. But if they were and some company continuously does not respect them, their license to use DVD+/- must be withdrawn. So it might probably get a little more expensive, but customers see that they get reliable technology.

BTW: Where are you located? BTC Europe in the netherlands?

Hi Joerg,

You are right, and I've been thinking the same thing many times before. However, you're talking about a perfect controllable situation, which is not the reality.

Basically, in my opinion, all the problems with DVD writers are due to the fact that this technology is still new and the speed of introduction of products + media is higher than ever before, and higher than any other business in the world ! Even though DVD writers might seem similar to CD writers, the technology behind it is still new. You can compare the situation to when CD writers just came out. At the time there were also a lot of incompatibility problems. Afterwards, the move from 4X all the way up to 52X wasn't so difficult anymore, but it took a couple of years. This time, the move from 4X up till (max.) 16X will probably take a little bit over a year or so (!!!), which is incredibly fast. End of this year will see 8X drives, Q2 of next year we'll probably see the first 12X drives becoming available, and 16X drives will probably see the light of day by the end of Q4 already. The biggest problem will be the media, which will probably not be able to keep up with the drive speed (as usual).

By the way, BTC headquarters is in Taipei, Taiwan. The factories are in Taiwan, China (Dongguan) and Korea. Branch offices are in France (near Paris), Netherlands (near Rotterdam) and USA (California).

I'm located in the branch office in the Netherlands.

Marco
BTC Europe Support

Hi Marco

I am really satisfied with this drive, I've never had a problem or a coaster or whatever.
Can you tell what's changed on new firmware that I found here

http://www.magnex.it/download/firmware/drw1004_v42.zip

In fact mine is a Magnex DRW1004 wich is a BTC DRW 1004IM.

Dear LedZeppelin,

We just released V0043 today. It's an official release, not a beta version. Please send a mail with subject:

Request for DRW1004 V0043 firmware

to support@btceurope.nl
then I'll send you the firmware and the update list.

This firmware will also be posted on our website by the end of this week.

Marco
BTC Europe Support

Marco, why don't you just post a link to the firmware and post the complete update list here?

In that case anyone here knows what good stuff you guys are doing at BTC.

Namoh,

Good idea, but unfortunately the website is handled by our Taiwan HQ. I gave them the order to put the new V0043 firmware onto our site as soon as possible, probably it'll be available tomorrow.

So at this moment I have the firmware only on my own PC and can mail it to anybody who can't wait until it becomes available on our website.

Please find the update information below:

This firmware update will also be available from our website by the end of this week at:
http://www.btceurope.nl/english/3-1-...d_dvd_dual.htm

Please note that we are also busy making a media compatibility list which can be found at:
http://www.btceurope.nl/english/3-2-1MediaSupport.htm
At this moment the media compatibility list is still under construction, so it might not be completely finished when you visit the above URL at this moment.

Changes in firmware version V0043 compared to V0040:
(1) Added +RW MID codes
RICOHJPNW11
MKM-----A02
MBIPG101W03
INFODISCA10
PRODISC-W02

(2) Added +R MID codes
MEDIA-ID001
OPTODISC0R4
OPTODISC0P1
SKYMEDIAR01
AML-----001
-------001

(3) Added -R MID codes
DAXON004----
MBI-01RG20--
OPTODISCK001
AML---------
TAROkO.MX4--
AN31--------
TDKG010000d9

(4) Added support for SACD discs

(5) Improved DVD+RW write stability

Please note: this is an official release, not a beta version.



Marco
BTC Europe Support

Thanks you're doing a great job.

It's good to have people from BTC (and other manufacturers) on these forums.

Keep up the good work.

I agree with Namoh, a really great job!

Does this mean that this drive can read SACD disks
(not the cd layer but the ture sacd layer, of course)