More and more people are discovering the importance of using quality media. The past has taught us that many discs (both CD and DVDs) are not lasting forever and using a good disc can increase the lifespan of your valuable data. Unfortunately most CD and DVD brands switch from manufacturer once in a while. There are already tools to determine the manufacturer of a disc and lately there is another tool that is able to determine the quality of a burned DVD recordable. Now we no longer have to trust user information and we can objectively determine if a disc works well with a certain DVD recorder objectively. The only tool till now was Kprobe for Lite-On owners and Plextools Professional for owners of certain Plextor models.
The reference for the tests are the PI and PO errors. How these are calculated is a rather technical process of which you can find an explanation here. In general it means that the software measures the amount of errors on a DVD and by using reference values we are able to determine the quality of a burned DVD. If there are a lot of errors it's better to use different media with your DVD recorder. As said, until now Kprobe and Plextools Professional were the only tools to measure this but now Nero CD/DVD speed will join their ranks.
Currently the
software, developed by Erik Deppe and released with Nero is able to test the PI/PO error rates from Lite-On, NU-Tech, MSI and BTC. Expectations are that BenQ and Philips drives will soon also be supported and of course the author is lobbying for more manufacturers to support this function. If you want to have PI/PO error test reporting for your drive in Nero CD/DVD speed we suggest you can contact your manufacturer (such as Pioneer and NEC) to inform them about your request.
Besides PI/PO testing the software will also be able report jitter which also says something about how the DVD recordable interacts with your drive and it's a value that can be used to determine the quality of a written disc.
At the moment Nero CD/DVD Speed 3.0 is not publicly available yet, however the software is being tested. To learn more about testing the quality of your DVD media you should certainly pay a visit to our Media Forum! Also check this thread for more screenshots and
information.
Source: CD Freaks
