BenQ DW1620: An Elegant, Robust DVDR Surprise

Construction

The BenQ DW1620 bezel looks slightly sleeker on the DW1620 over the DW1600. Our model came in black, although it appears that there are some tan versions as well.

Click to enlarge.

Here, we see the Nexperia PNX7860E chipset, which is just starting to show up on a few other drives (QSI and NuTech come to mind). You may recall that the NuTech DDW-082 used a predecessor to this chipset, and we also talked slightly about the development version of this chipset at Computex Taipei. The Nexperia platform comes bundled with the TZA1047HL analog pre-processor as seen below. Feel free to read more information here.

Click to enlarge.

At Computex 2004, we were told of BenQs new "High-Speed Signal Algorithm", which manages the "Eight-to-Fourteen Modulation" (EFM) signal loss that occurs while writing discs [1]. This is kind of a silly statement on BenQ's behalf. EMF is just the process of converting a single byte (8-bits) into 14-bits, and all optical media uses 14-bits to express 8-bits as data. This is just an error correcting process. The "High Speed Signal Algorithm" supposedly makes this error correction work better; although, we are slightly skeptical as to how unique BenQ's algorithm really is.

The WOPC II (Walking Optimal Power Control II) algorithm described by BenQ may hold a little more truth to being an actual algorithm designed by BenQ, but we have seen identical features on previous drives with the Nexperia chipset. WOPC should evaluate the write quality of the disc while burning, and then adjust the speed accordingly to slow down, or speed up the burn as necessary. However, as we have seen with drives like the Plextor PX series, aggressively timing the calibration of a drive like this generally hurts write speeds.