I am venturing into the world of DVD burning for the first time. After much research I have decided on the Phillips DVDR 1660k. I looked at the Samsung SH-S 182M which also had some good things said about it in this forum but the Phillips seemed to better suit my needs.

I have read much here in cdfreaks about sucesses and troubles. I have also seen a language used that I do not always understand so I thought I would come here to the Hardware forum for some help before I purchase and install and perhaps get into trouble. Please take the language barrier (burner techo-speak) into consideration.

I will be installing this drive into an external enclosure and connecting it to my laptop via a USB port. I assume I will need to install the drivers on the Nero disk that comes with the drive however, I have purchased in advance, DVDFab Gold to use for my DVD copying/burning. Should I then not install the other burning software that comes with the Phillips drive? Would there be a confict with the 2 softwares?

What media is has the best performance record on this Phillips drive? I have access here in Germany to Verbatim, Sony, and TDK. I have not seen some of the others of which were spoken such as BenQ or Richo.

Are there any other considerations or problems I should be thinking about as I venture into this project?

These are some of the question this Newbie has. I wish to try to do the right things right at the start and hope the knowledgable people here can help.

Dear BarbieGee:
If there is anything you need please feel free to post or contact me. The Philipps 1660 is a very good drive. I believe it has the same chipset as the BenQ 1650, so I really think you made a great choice. I think the best thing to do is research what encloser is best for this drive. I am sure someone with more experience in enclosers will chime in here.

Before to install anything, I suggest to simply plug the USB and see if windows recognize automatically the drive, as should be. Usually it's not necessary to install any driver to make external boxes work.

Regarding the burning software, you can use the one included in the burner package or anything you like. Imgburn is a very good (and free) example.

Verbatim discs are among the best available (except for verbatim "pearl white" series).

I have the enclosure. It is an ADS harddrive kit but, the Phillips burner being an IDE device, should work in it fine. Most CD or DVD drives are considered by the computer as 'harddrives'.

Thanks, geno888. Good to know that I do not have to install any additional software to have my drive work. (I thought that might be the case). More software than I need always bothers me.

I found my Phillips at Media Mart here in Heidelberg at a price of 39 Euro. Good price?

39 euro is a good price

Can I suggest to search for a liteon drive? In this way you can also test your burned discs to check quality

This is not true. Optical drives are seen as optical drives (aka burners or readers), not as HDD. Only HDD and flash memories are seen as HDD.

You do have USB 2.0 (not the older USB 1.1) on your laptop, I hope, or you're going to be in for a lot of trouble.

You can install Nero (general burning app) in addition to DVDFab (movie DVD copying app), they shouldn't conflict. The best blanks to buy will be Verbatim DVD+R 16X. When you install the drive in the enclosure, you'll see a small Printed Circuit Board in there. Look at the main chip on that PCB and note down its inscriptions before closing it up again.

I will do that but can I ask why?

I see. This may be the case now but in the 90's, when I was installing any CD drive, it was listed as a slave to the HDD.. those in the days when you actually had to go into the CMOS to list the parameters. Plug and play really IS 'plug it in'!

Yep. My Toshiba Satellite A15-S29 does indeed have USB 2.0 and I also have a highspeed hub with 4 additional ports.
My only concern is that my 40gig HDD is half full. I will offload some of my picture files to clear up additional room for the swap file (I do need a swap file to copy DVDs, don't I?

One other question, geno888. Why would I need an additional drive to check my disks? Wouldn't my internal DVD drive do the same thing? And can't this Phillips drive play DVDs as well as burn?
By the way, if this Phillips drive does INDEED play DVDs, is it a multi-region drive?

Hi,There are some chipsets, that don't work well with DVD burners. Anyway, you won't be able to burn faster than 12x with that drive in external enclosures.
No, you don't need a swap file. But as DVD copying programs create a temporary image file on the HDD, you should really have enough free space on your HDD.

As this is cdfreaks.com here Many people do that here. There are only few drives, that support Quality Scanning with Nero CD/DVD Speed. And don't worry about reading DVD, any DVD writer can read DVD discs. Playback of DVD video is only a matter of software. If you don't have any, then get either VLC or Media Player Classic, both are great pieces of free software.
Of course the drive is not multi-region. It will allow to change the region code 5 times, as usual. There is no RPC1 firmware for this drive, yet. Only option would be crossflashing to Benq DW 1650 (same hardware), this will not only allow using RPC1 firmware but you would also gain Disc Scanning capabilities. But note, doing so will void your warranty.

Michael

It's always handy to know which chipset your enclosure uses, just in case you need to search for solutions to possible problems (see here). And also to check for firmware updates (not for the burner, but for the enclosure!) which can improve performance & compatibility.

WOW! that thread was an eye-opener. I had no idea there was so much to consider with an enclosure. Not sure the one I have will do that trick. (I have not plugged it all up yet. That will be a project for tomorrow )

I am now considering getting a new enclosure and have picked out a Bytecc ME-525U2. I have asked on the Big External Enclosures thread to see if this is compatable with my new Phillips 1660k.

I had no idea there was so much to this but I want to do it right so I am willing to get all the 'stuff' to do it.

Hey, I probably shouldn't have scared you like that . Why don't you try out that ADT enclosure you already have, it will probably work just fine - and if not, you can still try another. It's easily changed .

Hi,You should really do that. And tell us, what chipset is used in your enclosure.
For testing, I suggest getting a 16x rated DVD-R, as you are then able to do simulated writes, so you won't waste the disc.
Start Nero CD/DVD Speed (that will be installed together with Nero, that comes with the drive) and select the "Create Disc" tab. Check "Simulate" and choose the speed you want. Then click the "start" button and wait a few minutes. (see screenshot)
Why? You didn't test your existing one.
I can at least confirm, that this drive works with enclosures based on Cypress AT2 chipset. But as I already mentioned, you won't be able to go faster than 12x DVD speed - with any external enclosure. If that is not enough, then you should better have chosen a Liteon drive or its Sony clone.

Just another note: The Nero version that is bundled with the Philips drive does not allow the use of other CD/DVD writers.

Michael

I checked the chipset in the ADS enclosure I have and it was indeed a Cypress chipset but did not see the AT2 anywhere on the chip. However, I have burned my very first DVD and it worked quite well. Since the DVD I chose was a Region 2 and my internet player is set on Region 1 I had to copy the disk to my harddrive via the new Phillips drive then burn from the copied file in my computer to the Phillips burner. The entire process took about an hour with the writing taking 40 minutes. I was then able to play the disk on my internal player.

I am hoping it will go quicker with copying a Region 1 in my internal drive directly to the burner. It should, shouldn't it?
I did not use the Nero OEM Suite that came with the drive. I used DVDFab Gold which work superb.

I am sure as I work more with this drive I will have more questions.

Hi,This is normal, as AT2 is the sales name. You should read something like CY7C68300A on the chip.
The writing process shouldn't take much more than 6-10 minutes depending on the media and selected burn speed. You are sure, that you were using an USB 2.0 connection?

No. Copying on-the-fly is a bad idea.

Michael

That is exactly the numbers on the chip.

Well, the copying to the harddrive took a short time... maybe 6-10 minutes but then I 'wrote' to the burner from the harddrive file and that took 40 minutes.
Yes, I do indeed have a USB 2.0 connection. Maybe there is something else I have missed. I will do a bit more examining of the software I am using. Perhaps I am not setting it up correctly.

"on-the-fly"? You mean, to simply copy from one DVD drive to another?

I do have to look more into the software I am using. I really think I have not set it up correctly.

By the way, mciahel, thanks for your patient help. (Interesting way of spelling Michael!)

Did you burn a copy of the full DVD to a Double Layer disc, BarbiGee? If this is the case and it was a 2.4X rated speed disc, the burn time could be quite long.

If you compressed the full DVD (or even the main movie only) to a Single Layer disc, then the encoding process could have taken this long.

Hi,Okay. Same configuration is working here.
The plain process of writing should be in the order of magnitude of the reading time. If there is some processing involved, then it takes longer, but this is not the burn process.
It is very important to set a burning speed of 12x or maybe lower, depending on the media. "Maximum" as offered by most burning programs will cause things going very ugly. See screenshot below.
Yes. Avoid such.

Michael

The screenshot shows a simulated 16x burn on a USB-connected Philips DVDR-1660P1