You can find it here: http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/152



Feel free to comment the review in this thread.

This drive roxxx for dvd+r. Me wants one.
Thanks for the review and the images on the dvdpacks really help.

Another good review from you.

A pleasure too read, and in a language that's understandable.

Gosh! Is this the best burner around? Have you seen the high number of media burnable at 12x and 16x with perfect results? And what about the fast write times?

Even -R shows excellent results.

Philips competitors will be hard pressed to beat this.

This drive has some sweet LEDs!
Definitely an innovative and functional display scheme implemented by Philips.
Great review jan70.

Hello!

Wow, what a review, what a writer

I´m surprised about this drive, because my old Philips CDburner was a bad drive.

Why buy a ugly Liteon or BTC and wait long time for a good FW, when you get a nice looking Philips-drive with that impressive results

Hope that Philips update in future FW not only the DVD+R/RW-table, because I use mostly DVD-R

Hi!

I'm impressed of this drive. Atm I have an original Liteon 832S and with this I'm very disappointed. I even tried CGB3 and official Firmwares. Every second burn has ugly KProbe Scans.

So I would like to buy this Philips 1640P. The problem is. I live in Austria and not here or in Germany this drive is listed at online shops. See here: http://www.geizhals.at/?cat=dvdram .

Is this drive not available yet? Is there a Benq equivalent?
And does this Drive support the "Nero CD/DVD Speed"-Quality Test ?

CU

Hi Chefkoch81,

I believe the drive will arrive soon in the online shops etc. We just need to give it some time.

The drive should be the same as the BenQ 1620. But without the fancy LED features and the Philips firmware. (Which tend to be good). BenQ support DVD-R 16x writing official.

Yes, the drive supports the “Nero CD/DVD Speed - Quality Test”. You can measure PI errors and Jitter. Take a look at the picture below.

Hi!

Thx for the answer. This means, Benq FW support is not that good, than Philips´ ?

The LED things dont matter for me, cause Ive got a Barebone which has Frontblends and the normal Frontpanel is not visible.

So, final question should I go for a Benq 1620 or wait for the Philips 1640?

Btw. Is it possible to remove the small panel in front of "Drive assembly carriage" (google translated)

CU

Hi again,

What I meant was that the current Philips firmware tend be to good, we need to wait for the BenQ 1620 review to see the results in praxis and then compare them.

Do you mean the complete front bezel or just the front of the loading tray? (You could write the word in German if you like).

Whatever you should buy lay in your own hands. You will might find a Philips 1620K in a German/Austrian online shop which is the Philips 1640 with a 30 day trail of the video plug-in.

Do you guys do something special when burning and scanning media for your burner reviews? Those kprobe scans tend to be much lower than any I've done or have seen on the forums, using the same burner, media, and scanning drive...

Nope.

K-Probe only shows the errors reported by the reader, and this may very from drive to drive. And it seems like the 832S used in this review is a very good sample and thus creates very low amounts of errors when scanning = low error counts shown.

Beside that the Philips/BenQ drives produce discs with very low amounts of errors. Especially the PIF error levels are low.

Here is a small update/add-on to the review, added two DVD+RW media.

Hi!

I meant just the front of the loading tray.

A Philips 1620K is same like 1640, really? I mean, I dont need the 30 day Trial of this plugin.

CU

According to this online-shop:

http://www.computeruniverse.net/prod....asp?agent=540

and the specifications listed in this PDF document:

http://www.computeruniverse.net/pdf/90122185.pdf

it should be the same drive.

By removing the front of the loading tray – the drive will loose it’s “dust-protection feature”. (The Philips DVDR1640P got a protection seal located behind the front loading try).

Um, the sampling count on those KP scans seem to be about 10x lower than they should be... should be around 130000, not 13000...

You are right! Didn't notice until now

My sampling count is about 10 times higher!

Do I smell another Nforce related problem?

Here is one example from me....

The same discs scanned with the Lite-On SOHW-1633S.

I have a philips oem drive, it's a PBDV1601. I'm dissapointed in it's RW writing quality.
RW media from Ritek and Infinity will end up with very high PI and PO errors.
Also Ritek or Ridata media R03 will end up as a toaster. Would it be possible to flash this drive wich can only burn +media with the firmware version p2.2....and where can I get this firmware?

I've searched all over the net and on the Philips site....but no firmware to find. Can I still hope for a new firmware for the PBDV1601 which will give me better burns than I have now.
I have also a NEC 2510 but the burn quality is better the Philips PBDV1601.

Sorry, I don't know where the empty reply came from??

The sampling increased 10 fold and the errors also increased 10 fold.

By looking at the full review, some KProbe scans have samplings on the 10,000s while others are on the 100,000s. The results are therefore not consistent. Maybe it would be better to publish results with the same sampling rate which normally is around 130,000.

A big thanks to code65536 - for discovering it!!

Something went wrong during the Kprobe scans, and the mistakes are now fixed.

Wow, I'm impressed by the +R results. The -R don't look as pretty, but then again, I haven't touched any -R discs in over half a year. But those +R results, coupled with the CAV/PCAV that BenQ uses... makes me almost wanna get one. And with official bitsetting support, I wonder why BenQ hasn't stirred up the kind of storm that the NEC has.

The cool LEDs remind me of the Robots on Battlestar Galatica..pretty neat.

What is the difference between this drive and the 16xx series from Benq? Is it using different hardware than the Benqs?

Also the Developer of CDspeed has found a way to increase the scan speed of the Benq/Phillips drives so you soon will be able to scan at 4x, 6x, and 8x.

I thought Philips has always just rebranded BenQ drives... I just guessed that it's still the case. Anyone know for sure?