Trusted Reviews examines the NEC ND2510A dual layer DVD

May 28, 2004

Well they couldn't do much dual-layer burn testing, as they only had one disc supplied by NEC. The DL optical platter came from Mitsubishi Chemical. For the rest of the specs we can see that this drive is much like a ND2500A which may not be such a big surprise. The new drive will write to DVD+/-R media at eight-speed, to DVD+/-RW media at four-speed, burn CD-R media at 32-speed and CD-RW discs at 16-speed.

The NEC ND2510A can burn to DVD+R DL discs at 2.4-speed, which is pretty slow by today's standards. That said, if you're going to write 8.5GB of data, you're probably going to make yourself a cup of coffee while you're waiting anyway. I burned 7.9GB of data to the dual layer disc, made up of a single MPEG2 file and a DVD ISO image. It took 41 minutes and eight seconds to burn the whole 7.9GB to DVD+R DL, which is obviously a lot longer than burning two 4.7GB discs, but dual layer is more about convenience than speed.

The files copied to the disc without incident and were accessible using the ND2510A. However, when I tried reading the disc on a number of other DVD drives, things weren't so rosy. Inserting the DL disc in a Samsung SD-616Q DVD-ROM, an Iomega DVD writer, a Sony DRU18A DVD writer and a Sony DDU-1612 DVD-ROM drive all resulted in failure. None of the drives could see the disc, let alone any files on it. However, when I loaded the disc into a second Sony DDU-1612 DVD-ROM drive it worked perfectly. With this in mind, I flashed the latest firmware into the other Sony DVD-ROM drive, and sure enough it read the dual layer disc without any problems.

Having said that, the reviewer over at the Trusted Reviews site really gave this puppy some very high marks. Check it out, then come on back and visit here or in the NEC Forum where we can see there is a thread started by the sharp eyed edstar.

In yet another thread, we see that forum member commissioner, has found said drive online, sold as a bulk bare unit, for less than 100 bucks plus shipping, in black or beige! If this is a legitimate price, it will present quite a temptation to advance to dual layer if you are sans a DVD recorder at the moment.

Source: Trusted Reviews