Have you ever wondered what your favorite company is up to? Would you like to know more about their decisions, (new) products and background information? Now you can! CD Freaks is organizing a series of interviews with digital storage related persons. The coming time we will ask them what you want to know!

Here some examples of types of questions you could ask:
- Current products
- New products
- Company information
- Market details / outlook
- Future opportunities
- Personal questions for the person

What’s next?
This week we will ask questions to Sony NEC Optiarc.


Please post your questions below in this thread. Next week, all questions will be collected. We pick the best ones and report the answers back on CD Freaks.com!

Sony NEC Optiarc wont play burn dvds what can i do

Maybe a moderator can redirect your post, Welcome to the forum. Also what software are you using. Can you give more details of you problem please?

Why don't you support bitsetting DVD+R media on your own drives, while you support it on OEM drives. I cannot see any disadvantages in adding this feature to your own firmwares, but it can improve compatibility with older DVD players that some people still have.

Why don't you release firmware updates more often, especially for older series like 4570/4571?

1. Why is Sony-NEC Optiarc turning to LiteON for production of some drives (e.g. AD-7190A/S) whereas other drives in the same generation use Optiarc's own design (e.g. AD-7170A/S)? The use of multiple drive designs is extremely confusing for the consumer.

2. Will Optiarc introduce a more attractive front bezel design for OEM drives?

3. Will Optiarc market drives in retail packages under the NEC brand name?

4. Do you feel that it is worthwhile to continue investing in DVD technologies when Blue-Laser formats are quickly becoming mainstream?

5. Why are firmware developments for Optiarc drives so few and far between? Your competitors will strive to improve their drives using firmware updates and quite often drives are completely "transformed" during their lifetimes.

6. Within the firmware for Optiarc-designed drives, why are there entries for DVD media codes that will probably never exist? What procedure do Optiarc's engineers have to go through in order to add support for a new type of media?

Regards,
TerminalVeloCD

Do Optiarc have any plans to release a Blu-ray or HD DVD burner in Europe?

what actually tracking error is and how it can be read using atapi commnds if possible and if not then how

How much influence does Sony NEC Optiarc get from other Sony divisions, specifically Sony Music and Sony Pictures in coming up with new Products? Are they putting pressure on the Product Design to make it difficult to make back up of personally owned Sony released CD music or DVD?

I have a DRU830A and DRU840A recorders. When should I update the firmware? How do I know what firmware I have now? Thank you.

What advantage is there by updating the firmware?

I'm interested if NEC Optiarc know about the DVD-R Reading Problems with almost all of their drives, and if they do, why are they so quiet about it.

When you prepare your questions for Optiarc, don't forget to check this thread as well.

Have you a dedicated LASER production plant or are you using a pre-exiting facillity ?
In either case please tell me it's the NEC design and quality not Sony.
Historically NEC drives have read almost anything and recovered many damaged discs for me, reversely Sony are renowned for low power unreliable read mechanisms, I suspect Sony devices are calibrated only to read discs with a high refractive index.

Why have you turned to Lite-on for production?

When can we expect 20x burner based on Optiarc design?

Now that there is Optiarc, will there be any more updates for NEC drives?

Could you please support Labelflash in USA as well? Gateway, Toshiba computers at store come with Labelflash drives now.

Why does Sony/Optiarc charge so much for 4x Blu-ray drive, when competition (LG) has 6x reader and burner for less.

The same question I had for the PLDS guy:
Do you visit forums about optical storage, like CD Freaks?

Answers have been posted here: http://www.cdfreaks.com/reviews/Comm...ny-NEC-Optiarc

Unfortunately only a few questions have been answered and well, read for yourself...

Answers to most questions sound as if they have come from a politician. Only a few questions are answered directly, and even those answers don't tend to agree with available evidence.

5. Why are firmware developments for Sony NEC Optiarc drives so few and far between? Your competitors will strive to improve their drives using firmware updates and quite often drives are completely "transformed" during their lifetimes.

Lol, the honest answer would be:

We just want to make more money and by improving firmware instead of releasing new drives, we'd sell half the drives we do, so we just bring out a new drive with some "new" features.

And that would apply to so many manufacturers. Technically, drive manufacturers who've released four or five 16x drives could have simply released one or two instead and worked on the FW. But unfortunately that doesn't make money like releasing a "new" drive does.

Why there isn't any info about AD 7530B on the Optiarc website?
Why we don't receive firmware updates for them?

Probably because the 7530 is only distributed as an OEM drive and the OEM is responsible for providing firmware updates.