I've got mixed impressions of my new Philips 1620K/1640P (firmware P2.4), I'm mainly getting good quality burns but some are not coming out too good (certainly within the DVD spec, but still pretty poor).

Also the drive seem to be in the habit of burning some media at 2.4x instead of the rated 4x or 8x (and I dont mean its slowing down part way though a burn, but it starting at 2.4x and completing the disk at that speed). This seems to be completely at random and not just on one type of media.

I know I can flash this drive to the Benq 16xx firmware but am I likely to see any improvement in write quality? Perhaps I should just wait for P3.0 firmware release?

The medias I'm mainly using are RitekG04, RitekG05, IS01001 and MCC003. Most of the media appears good quality (with the exception of some of the G05 and IS01 media) and burns with my Pioneer 108 seem to show this.

Also one very bad feature of this drive if that if it detect major defects/or dirt on the disk during a burn instead of quitting the burn with an error, the drive just locks up with the burning (red) light on and the burning program often locks ups too and cant be termimated. Neither can you eject the disk as all you get is the pinkish light if you try. Other drives I've used/seen quit the burn if they detect major defects/problem with disks.

Just the as the Benq 1600/1620 the Philips 1620/1640 is a real +media burner. Why don't you buy some +media and see how the results are with +media. You can use the bitsetting tool if necesarry!. What are your computer specs, what chipset, is dma enabled??

The IS01001 and MCC003 (Verbatim) are +R media, as for buying more +R well I'm afraid there simply isnt much choice over here (either locally or in the UK generally) as most stores sell -R media almost exclusively. The few that do have a very limited selection of poor 4x +R (that how I ended up with the not so good IS01001 media), to get better media of any type you have to pay through the nose (and I'm not paying 70p/disk for Taiyo Yuden media, especially as it only sold in 100x spindles).

I know +R is Philips media of choice, but I'm getting the best burns on Ritek G04 (-R media), the best +R media I got seem to be the MCC003, with absolutely superb quality burns up until the about 3GB mark but after this point the scans turn into cr*p.

I ask again, is the Benq firmware likely to give any improvement in writing quality over the Philips P2.4 firmware?

As for specs:-
Athlon2500XP-mobile (O/C to run at 2.4Ghz), 1GB PC3500, ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (Nforce2), WindowsXP-SP2, DMA is enabled.

MCC03 (Verbatim) is very good media, strange that the problem starts after 3GB you say. What speed do you write this media? Have you tried lower burn speed, turn off virus sanner..things like that. Maybe you should take a look in the media thread http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=113166. Some people have problems with the nforce IDE drivers I've heard, so they install the intel IDEdrivers to solve their problems.

from another post:
If your system is an AMD motherboard with NVidia nForce IDE drivers installed, beware. Many people have had problems with XP, even with the latest firmware (myself included), in particular with XP hanging on boot. My recommendation is to go with the Microsoft drivers and stay away from the nForce drivers altogether.

Already tried Philips 1640P firmware P2.5 ?
http://users.skynet.be/guido_ke/firmware25.zip

I'm writing the Verbatim at 8x (its rated speed), I tried 4x and the scans were quite a bit worse over the whole disk, but again around the 3GB mark the writing quality appeared to rapidly decline. These are also one of the media where the drive occasionaly decides to write at 2.4x and sometimes 4x for the whole disk.

Tried on a fresh install of XP with only SP2, no difference. Only result of not using the Nforce IDE drive was a reduction in HDD transfer rate not a difference as far as the writer is concerned.

The hanging I did initially get when I first got the drive, it had firmware P2.1. I would get no POST if the drive was set to master (with Pioneer 108 as slave), with the drive as slave to the Pioneer (or on its own), 9 times out of 10 windows would lock up while booting or cause windows to lock solid after a few minutes. This was fixed when I flashed to P2.4, I've had no lockups in POST or in windows since.

Just ordered some more MCC003 (this time non Verbatim as they were sold out), just so I can maybe prove/disprove my hunch that I got a relatively bad batch.

@ Prototype

I'm quite happy with my Philips 1640K at Benq B7P9.
Why don't you give it a try?
Won't hurt you and you can always return to Philips 2.4.
See also this thread: http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=113543

No, I havent tried tried P2.5 as I've been unable to find it on any of the Philips sites (P2.4 is latest I found there). Going by the release note (some where in these forums) doesnt P2.5 just simply add support for one more media type or are there fine tuning in it too?

I'll give it a go anyhow, thanks guido_ke.

@guido_ke - Just tried P2.5 and didnt notice any difference, MCC003 media still burns superbly up to 3GB mark but cr*p after (although a couple did burn better, they still couldnt be called particulary good and appear to have been a fluke, judging by other burns later).

@Razend just took a look at that thread, ran the flashing tool but the philips drive doesnt even appear on the available drives, but my Pioneer does. Any reason for this? A different version of the tool needed perhaps?

I'm not going to get very far if the flashing tool doesnt even recognise the drive.

Did you allready do something about the nvidia ide drivers?
As you probably have seen on many threads in this forum these are the cause of many problems with the Benq drives (and probably also with the Philips, cause they are identical, at least on the inside).
Maybe this link works for you: http://club.cdfreaks.com/showpost.ph...3&postcount=37

Good luck!