I have been reading posts of people mentioning the Benq 1670 but i cant see no release date for it in the uk. Does anyone know when it will be availabe.

And will it be as good a ripper as the earlier benq's people say they are.

Thanks

Little is known about when the 1670 will be available anywhere. The 1650 isn't even available everywhere yet. The only way people have gotten the drive is as a Sony DRU-820A. There isn't any BenQ firmware to crossflash to or anything exciting of that sort.

I thought it had been established Sony DRU-820a is not a 16xx series as it uses a Matsushita chipset rather than Philips.

DRU-820A is the DW1670. DW1670 supports DVD-RAM and there simply isn't a Philips chipset that has DVD-RAM support. Mechanically, DRU-820A/DW1670 is identical to DW1640/50/55 drives and as such is not a TEAC but a BenQ's own DW16xx design.

Hi
But it's the Philips/BenQ combo that has SolidBurn etc. Which is half the fun. So not a late 16**(1640/1650/1655) series as we know it.

That's all correct, but this drive does use a DW16xx designation anyway.

Most of the wonderful performance of the DW16xx series (up to this DW1670 model) has been due to the combination of a great chipset and a great OPU. Firmware-based improvements like SolidBurn or WOPC do help with marginal media but they also make burns slower by a good 30-40 seconds and even introduce extra PIFs that wouldn't be there without them. On balance, they are useful, but I don't see them as essential.

Hi
My experience with 1640 & MCC 03RG20/MCC 004. @12x consistantly PIE max less than 12 / totals lower than 10000, PIF max less than 5 / toals lower than 100, Jitter less than 10% max. QS 97/98% for MCC 03RG20 & 99% for MCC 004. This using BSOB f/w. Example: Without SB/OS/WOPC my PIF along with almost every other figure is higher. The exception is QS which tends to be a tad lower. Times are typically 30 sec longer with SB/OS/WOPC enabled.

I'm sure Benq will provide good firmware support. The bigger question is, is the chipset and platform of the Benq 1670 good enough that it will be a competitor to the 1650 or not? Unfortunately, since it's a completely new set up, only time will tell as the firmware has time to mature.

is the new benq available anywhere yet? Cannot find it in Germany

cu,

Jackie

any word on when it will be out in europe????

so is 1670 better than 1655?
i am thinking about ditching 1655 because poor writing quality on dl & rw medias....i think i need more all round drive

i always get 95% QS burns with Verb DL's on my 1650. What media do you use? If you mean the fact that you have to speed patch the drive to write MKM 001 faster than 2.4x then yeah thats kinda poo. I would've thought the 1670 wouldnt have that problem, we;ll see. I wonder if a firmware for the 1650/55 after BCFC for the 1650 will be let out to fix that problem. Till the 1670 comes out and till I get a firmware to fix that, im just going to use my son drx-800ul with image burn to write my verb DL's at 4x in 25 mins