Hi there,

anyone knows if there is a chance getting a feature request to NEC? I am happily using a brandnew ND3500 writer for a week now. Just two minor things about the drive I dislike and a third, something for the wish list.

1) The HD/Drive disc activity LED of the computer is permanently lit when the ND3500 is active. For all other drives, (HDD, CD-ROM, CD-RW) it is flashing according to the disc activity. I think that's major flaw.

2) The drive indentifies itself with a name starting with underscore: "_NEC DVD_RW ND3500AG". Well, yes, this couldn't be a problem in any way. It just looks silly and I can't imagine a logical reason for the underscore.

3) Support overburning. I tried to overburn (just and only 3 MB!) with Nero, but it failed with an error report from the drive, "illegal track" or something similar.

If NEC doesn't want or dosen't listen, is it possible to incorporate that in an unofficial release?

NEC is not concerned with a single user's opinion. Their only concern is the needs/wants of their large corporate customers such as companies who rebadge their drives or sell their drives in computers.

Welcome

I can only answer on your question #3. NEC-3500 supports CD overburning
(90 min) at full burnspeed.

Hmm well yes of course. But for 1), I think I am not the only one who dislikes that - maybe those rebadgers too! Concerning 2), okay I will be just happy if you or anyone can explain why the drive's name should start with a "_".

About overburning, I am thinking of DVD overburning and probably many people would like that too.

The rebadgers or other OEMs like Dell should request PI/PO checking.

well said liggy!!

As soon as the OEM customers are no longer interested in them they will crawl back to retail and love every support they get.

I wonder on that one too. Probably it is because in alphabetical lists, the underscore comes before the 'a' and so NEC drives will be first in the list (where they belong )

And yes, PI/PO would indeed be a huge improvement in future firmwares. Maybe there's also some hardware involved for these tests?

I heard that the chipset supports this feature (just like DVD-RAM), only the firmware implementation is missing

I think NEC could sell considerably more drives when they implemented it. Many people buy a LiteOn just for PI/PO. I'm also considering this...

I think I agree, but what exactly is PI/PO?? Thanks.

PI = Parity Inner
PO = Parity Outer

Copy/paste from: http://drivel.com/dvd/

"...DVDs use an error correction scheme that has three levels of errors, called PI, PO and uncorrectable. PI errors are the first level of error and every disk will have lots of these. PO errors are the second level, and most disks will have some. Some of the best grades of media from Ritek, Mitsubishi or Taiyo Yuden will sometimes test with 0 PO errors, but this is rare. The last level, of uncorrectable are errors that could not be corrected.

The DVD Recordable specifications state that a disk read at 1X speed will have less than 280 PI errors per 8 blocks when calculated over 8 ECC blocks, and less than 4 PO errors per block when calculated over 1 ECC block. And it should go without saying that there should be no uncorrectable errors at all."

mk40

And of course, let's not forget DVD+R bitsetting.

Even Plextor, who's attitude towards bitsetting was "over our dead bodies", has now implemented this feature. Dare to say, this only happened after the Plextor owners used the Plextor thread to effectively apply some good pressure on them (this also included a letter sent to their US Headquarters asking for this feature and providing a reference to the relevant CDFreaks thread and also individual e-mails sent by quite a few people to both their US and EU tech support). Given that even dyehard anti bitsetting camps like Plextor gave in, I really don't understand why NEC is not implementing this feature in their official firmwares too. Technically speaking it is a very simple and quick process ... the only thing required from their side is a bit of willingness.

By not doing it they are in fact forcing the users to use unofficial FW ... not that I see anything wrong with using unofficial FW if this is better than the official one Perhaps because of the very existance of all these unofficial firmwares, NEC can afford to take it slowly, both in fw development time and the features implemented.

And there's of course DVD+RW bitsetting ....

Is all too nice that they sell their units to their OEM partners ... however there are a lot of customers who bought a OEM NEC drive, and as such I don't think NEC can afford to ignore all these customers ...

Maybe we should try (harder) to convince them ... why don't we start a thread (or use this one) to compile a list of most requested features, and then forward it to NEC tech support together with a (hopefully large) list of signatures It might worth a try ...

Even if they don't care too much about their ordinary customers, I don't think they can afford to ignore a collective request comming from a sizeable community of cdfreaks NEC forum members ... after all, doing so will be a negative signal for the users and constitutes bad publicity for NEC ... let's not forget that the power is in numbers (most of the time) Maybe individual requests can be easily ignored, but collective ones are a bit more difficult to reject

So why don't we try the same approach used by Plextor owners ... we have nothing to loose and much to gain!

PS. Of course, if possible, PIPO scanning will be very nice indeed ... and in the process, I guess it will also "releave" LiteON by quite a few customers

After seeing the quality of the burns I have gotten on all the different media types I use, I think I can see why NEC skips PI /PIF measurement. You don't need it, as every burn is close to perfect. I also got my Liteon 812S to do scans and +R burns and after I switched to NEC from Pioneer I found I no longer needed scanning. The only use I have left for the Liteon is for bitsetting on +RWs as I have found no decent -RWs.

Part of what I assumed when I bought the NEC was the total disreguard for customers. If that had bothered me I would have gone with Pioneer. I never would have gone with NEC if it weren't for this forum.

HERE'S another good link by OC-Freak entitled "Interpreting PI/PO error scans" for your perusal.