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Review:  ASUS HR-0205T Reviewed by:  MegaDETH Provided by:  ASUS - USA Firmware:   AS00 Manufactured:  August 2007

ASUS USA was kind enough to send us their new HD DVD-ROM Drive, the HR-0205T; this is an internal PATA drive with an included SATA adaptor. The HR-0205T incorporates HD DVD-ROM reading at 2.4x while still supporting CD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW and DVD+R DL reading capabilities with near silent operation.   

We invite you to have a look at the “Press Release” on the ASUS HR-0205T
 

In this review we will show the performance of the HR-0205T when reading HD DVD-ROM media along with running the drive through tests on a variety of CD and DVD media.

Company Information

ASUS, a technology-oriented company blessed with one of the world’s top R&D teams, is well known for high-quality and innovative technology.  As a leading provider of 3C (computers, communications and consumer electronics) total solutions, ASUS offers a complete product portfolio to complete in the new millennium.

In 2006, the company shipped 55 million motherboards, which means one in three desktop PCs sold last year was powered by an ASUS motherboard.  Our 2006 revenues reached US$16.5 billion, and are expected to garner US$23 billion in 2007.

ASUS product’s top quality stems from product development.  It’s like learning Chinese Kung-Fu; one must begin with cultivating the “Chi” and inner strength.  Besides innovating cutting-edge features, ASUS engineers also pay special attention to EMI (electromagnetic interference), thermal, acoustics and details that usually go unnoticed to achieve complete customer satisfaction.  ASUS notebooks are the first TCO’99- certified notebooks worldwide. The requirements for this honor include radiation emission control, energy (batter consumption), ecology (environment friendly) and ergonomics.

To succeed in this ultra-competitive industry, great products need to be complimented by speed-to-market, cost and service.  That’s why all 100,000 over employees of ASUS strive for the “ASUS Way of Total Quality Management” to offer the best quality without compromising cost and time-to-market while providing maximum value to all customers through world-class services.

With unyielding commitment to innovation and quality, ASUS won 2,168 awards in 2006, meaning on average, the company received over 5 awards everyday last year.  BusinessWeek ranked ASUS amongst its “InfoTech 100” for the 9^th straight year.  The readers of Tom’s Hardware Guide, the world’s largest IT website, selected ASUS as the best maker of motherboards and graphics cards.  Furthermore, the company is ranked as No.1 in quality products and services by the Wall Street Journal.

Now, let us connect the drive and check out the features, program bundle and writing technology on the next page…

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Drive Specifications

Let us take a look at the detailed specifications of the ASUS HR-0205T HD DVD-ROM Drive:

What’s inside the box?

The drive we received was a retail package that comes with all you need for an easy and quick installation.  The retail package includes the following:

• ASUS HR-0205T HD DVD-Rom Drive

• CyberLink Power DVD HD Edition

• Quick installation guide

• PATA to SATA Adaptor

• Mounting screws

Retail Package Contents

Moving right along, let’s take a closer look at the Package Details.

Box Front

Box Rear

Box Left

Box Right

Now let’s take a closer look at the drive itself:

Drive Front

Drive Rear

Drive Left

Drive Right

Drive Bottom

Drive Top

Drive Sticker

Test machine

For this review we are testing the ASUS HR-0205T mounted inside of our Nvidia based system with the following components:

Review PC #1:

•          Motherboard: eVGA / Jetway 939GT4-SLI

•          Processor: AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 165 @ 2.7GHz

•          Memory: 2x 1Gb G.Skill Extreme Series 2GBZX @ 250MHz

•          Video: ATI X600

•          Display: Samsung SyncMaster 710N 17” LCD

•          Sound: Onboard AC97

•          Hard disks: 320GB Seagate SATA-II

•          Operating System: Windows Vista Ultimate x86 is installed on this machine.

For our video playback testing the ASUS HR-0205 we will be using this configuration:

Review PC #2:

•          Motherboard: Asus P5K Deluxe WI-FI/AP

•          Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe @3.70 GHz

•          Memory: 4x 2GB A-DATA PC2-6400 DDR2

•          Video: eVGA  8800GT Superclocked

•          Display: Hanns·G HG-216DPO 21.6" 5ms Widescreen HDMI LCD

•          Sound: SoundMAX Digital HD Audio (Onboard)

•          Hard Disks: 2x 320GB – 1x 750GB Seagate SATA-II

•          Operating System: Windows Vista Ultimate x64 is installed on this machine.

•          External Enclosure: Plumax PM-525U2-PCB V5 USB 2.0

 

System set-up:

The drive identifies itself as: ASUS HR-0205T and is installed as a SATA device (with the included SATA adapter), with firmware AS00 factory installed.

As you can see by the burst rate of 25 MB/s and the Nero Info Tool readout the drive is running in UDMA 2 mode.

Software

Windows Vista Ultimate x86 is installed on our test system; we will also be using the following software for this review:

• Nero CD-DVD Speed

• Nero InfoTool

• EAC (Exact Audio Copy)

Included Software with the Drive

The ASUS HR-0205T is shipped with CyberLink Power DVD 7.3 HD Edition. The disc also contains the online ASUS drive firmware updater; no newer firmware was available at the time of this review.

An Introduction to HD DVD:

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The HD DVD disc builds on the experience gained from the conventional DVD format and is derived from the same fundamental technology.

In the following illustrations, multiple laser beams are shown for convenience, both above and below the disc. In actual HD DVD drives there is a single laser beam, which illuminates the disc from below.

Although the data density is much greater in HD DVD discs, the structure is very similar to existing DVDs. Discs may be single or double-sided, giving a total storage potential of 60GB on a single disc.

Alternative architectures include the ‘Combination’ disc, in which one side may be a conventional DVD-9 and the other a dual layer HD DVD. This offers a single inventory product for retailers and a future-proof acquisition for consumers. There is also a technology proposal, approved by the DVD Forum as a format option in HD DVD-ROM version 1.2, for a ‘Twin format’ disc, in which the layer closest to the pick-up head is reflective to red and transparent to blue-violet light. With this structure, a conventional DVD video player ‘sees’ the disc as a normal DVD-5, while the blue laser penetrates the first layer to read the HD DVD data behind.

Family of HD DVD discs:

• HD DVD-ROM is a 12cm disc, 1.2mm thick, replicated as either single or dual layer, with a storage capacity of 15GB for a single layer and 30GB for a dual layer disc. Double sided versions increase capacity to 30GB and 60GB respectively.

• 3X DVD-ROM Brings the higher data rate of HD DVD to the conventional format, enabling 135 minutes of HD content to be placed on a DVD-ROM, using AVC or VC-1 codecs.

• 8 cm mini HD DVD offers 4.7GB in single layer form and 9.4GB as dual layer. A double-sided disc is part of the standard.

• HD DVD-R write once discs can hold 15 GB per side, 30GB total.

• HD DVD-RW re-writable discs store 20GB on each side, 40GB total.

Comparison of Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD and DVD formats:

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We include a table of both high-definition formats and including DVD format for comparison.

On the next page we will take a look at the drives Reading Performance...

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Reading performance  

We will use Nero CD/DVD-Speed to read various HD, CD and DVD Discs; including audio discs and DVD-media. We have run all of our reading tests with the drive in standard PATA mode and using the SATA adapter; the drive performs identical in all tests so for the reading performance section we be just showing you the results with the drive using the included SATA adaptor.

HD DVD-ROM reading performance

HD DVD-ROM

For this test we will read a SL and DL HD-ROM:

HD DVD-ROM SL

The ASUS HR-0205T read our SL HD DVD-ROM at just over 2x.

HD DVD-ROM DL

Reading of HD DVD-ROM DL is done at the drives rated speed of 2.4x.

Not let’s take a look at CD reading performance……..

CD reading performance   

Pressed CD-ROM discs

We used an original pressed World of Warcraft CD-ROM disc containing 74.22.42 minutes of data.

The ASUS HR-0205T reached 14.72X, so how does that compare with other Hi-Def drives, let’s take a look here:

The ASUS HR-0205T reads much slower than the other drives in speed but has fast seek times.

CD-Recordable Discs

For this test we used a Data CD-R that we created with Nero CD-DVD Speed in “create data disc” mode. We used a Taiyo Yuden 48X certified manufactured by Taiyo Yuden. (Thanks to Rima.com for sending us this media.)

The ASUS HR-0205T reached the speed of 14.99X when reading a full CD-R data disc. Let’s take a look on how that compares with other Hi-Def drives.

With our CD-Recordable Disc the ASUS HR-0205T reads much slower than the other drives in speed but has fast seek times.

CD-Rewritable discs

For the CD-Rewritable tests we created a Data CD using Nero CD-DVD Speeds’ “create data disc”.  We used a Verbatim 32X CD-RW. (Thanks to Verbatim USA for sending us this media)

The ASUS HR-0205T reaches a read speed of 15.00X; let’s compare this with our other tested Hi-Def drives:

With our CD-Rewritable Disc again the ASUS HR-0205T reads much slower than the other drives in speed but has fast seek times.

Audio – Digital Audio Extraction

To test digital audio extraction performance with the ASUS HR-0205T we used Nero CD-DVD Speed to measure the transfer rate; the audio disc we used is 79:47:10 minutes in length.

The ASUS HR-0205T reached the speed of 15.06X when reading our Audio-CD; let’s take a look on how that compares with our other tested drives below:

The ASUS HR-0205T performed the slowest with Digital Audio Extraction times but has fast seek times.

Audio Extraction:

For this test we used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to test the drives Audio extraction performance. As we can see from the screenshot below, the drive supports accurate stream and C2 error info and doesn’t support caching.

Below is the results produced by EAC:

Burst mode

Secure mode

The ASUS HR-0205T performed slow in both burst mode and in secure mode.

DVD reading performance

DVD-ROM “Pressed Disc”

We utilized Nero CD-DVD Speed to measure the reading performance.  We will test the reading performance on various types of DVD discs.  To start off with we will test the ASUS HR-0205T at reading “Pressed” DVD-Video discs both Single Layer and Double Layer.

DVD-Video Single Layer

DVD-Video Double Layer

The ASUS HR-0205T reads the SL DVD-Video disc at 4.93X and the DL DVD-Video disc at 4.92X. Let’s take a look below to see how the drive compared with other we have tested:

The ASUS HR-0205T performed the slowest in reading both SL and DL DVD Video discs.

DVD+R/RW  

For testing the read speed of DVD+R and DVD+RW discs we used Verbatim 16X DVD+R and a Ritek 8X DVD+RW. Both Discs were written with 4.38GB of data using Nero CD-DVD Speed.  (Thanks to Verbatim USA and Ritek USA for sending us this media.) See the results below:

DVD+R

DVD+RW

We have prepared this table to show you how the ASUS HR-0205T reads DVD+R/RW media as compared with other drives:

The ASUS HR-0205T is again the slowest at reading our DVD+R and DVD+RW test disc.

DVD-R/RW   

For testing the DVD-R and DVD-RW reading performance we used Verbatim discs we used Verbatim 16X DVD-R and a Ritek 6X DVD-RW.  (Thanks to Verbatim USA and Ritek USA for sending us this media.) Below you will find our test results.

DVD-R

DVD-RW

We have provided this table to show how the ASUS BC-1205PT compares with other drives for reading DVD-R and DVD-RW media:

Here again the ASUS HR-0205T is the slowest at reading our DVD-R and DVD-RW test disc.

DVD±R DL

For this test we used a Verbatim DVD±R DL discs filled with data. (thanks to Verbatim USA for providing us with this media)

DVD+R DL

DVD-R DL

We have provided this table to show how the ASUS HR-0205T compares with other drives for reading the DVD±R DL media:

Here the ASUS HR-0205T is the slowest at reading our DVD±R DL test disc.

Video Playback  

For this test we have installed our ASUS HR-0205T into an Plumax PM-525U2-PCB V5 USB 2.0 External Enclosure, as you will notice from our burst rate screen shot below the drive is showing 23 MB/s; very close to our Internal installation burst rate.

We will now test the playability of several movie formats. Our first disc an Pressed Single Layer DVD Video "The Mask", this DVD played with no skipping or stuttering. Our next DVD is an Pressed Dual Layer DVD Video "Titanic"; this disc is quite large at 7.50 GB. While playing this video we were able to skipped through the chapters with ease and speed, the playback was smooth with no stuttering or skipping. Finally we loaded a Pressed HD-ROM DL disc "King Kong"; the Video playback was smooth as silk with no pixilation and no skipping, the audio was smooth and clear as well.

This concludes our ASUS HR-0205T review, lets head on to the last page to read our Conclusion…

Positive

• Silent operation at 21.1 dB

• Excellent build quality.

• PATA and SATA connection (with included adaptor)

• Extremely fast disc loading time

• Accurate audio extraction quality

• Comes with PowerDVD HD edition

• Very low price to get you into HD DVD (Hi-Def) viewing.

• Smooth video playback from USB 2.0 enclosure

Negative

• Slow reading of CD-R, DVD± and DVD± DL media by today’s standards

• Doesn't read DVD-RAM

Let us summarize the most important positive and negative points below:

The main positive points: Following our tests we found that this drive is a "Silent" Reader; we were not able to hear the ASUS HR-0205T running at anytime other than during the seek testing. The drive also supports reading of CD-R/RW, DVD±DVD to include DL media. Reading of HD DVD media is the most important feature of the ASUS HR-0205T and that is accomplished using the included PowerDVD HD edition. Although the drive is PATA based the included PATA to SATA will give you the added option of using this drive in any system or even an external enclosure the performance is great.

The main negative points: There is one issues that we would like to mention with hopes of them being improved.  The drive has the slowest reading capabilities of any Hi-Def drive tested so far when CD-R/RW, and DVD media but then again the drive has "Silent" operation as the trade off.

So to sum it all up, this is what we would say: “If you are looking for a Silent and well built HD DVD-ROM reader for your Media PC be it PATA or SATA this is the one drive you are looking for.”

Here in the US we have found the drive listed at www.newegg.com for $99.99; March 2008.

You may discuss/comment this review below or in this thread.

Thanks to:

	Verbatim USA – For providing the media used in this review.
	Maxell USA – For providing the media used in this review.
	Memorex USA – For providing the media used in this review.
	Rima.com USA – For providing Taiyo Yuden media used in this review.
	Advanced Media/Ritek-USA – For providing the media used in this review.