If you are an owner of a Philips DVDRW885, then Drive Reviewer Jan S., has some great news for you. We were contacted earlier today by a representative of Philips and we would like to share the information with our readers. In addition, besides a nice firmware upgrade, Philips has indicated that the reason behind their call is a desire to address our Philips Forum community, so this is very good to hear as well.
Last year (29. June 2004) we were given the opportunity to review the Philips DVDRW885 Dual layer DVD-Writer, and the drive description was a 'mono" format drive i.e. (DVD+R/RW/R9 DL).
Several months later, Philips launched an update allowing the drive to support the DVD-R/RW format too. Together with a 'Switch tool" this would allow users to switch between Double Layer and Dual (DVD+R/W-R/W) mode. Meaning that the user had to use the 'Switch tool" if they decided to burn a DVD-R/RW after making an DVD+R9 DL burn and visa versa.
From what we can gather, this switching issue seems to be coming to a close. Philips will launch a firmware update shortly, allowing the DVDRW885 drive to become a TRUE dual format drive. Like many users hoped from the start.
We will probably receive this new firmware next week, and we will keep you informed as soon as we know anything further. In the meantime, you can read the Philips DVDRW885 review thread in our Philips/BenQ forum. Here is a link to the original review if you are interested in looking at that again. Many thanks to the folks at Philips for not forgetting their customers, and especially for taking the time to contact us with this exciting update, we appreciate it!
Source: Philips
