Sony Optiarc America was kind enough to send us the Slim
Internal BC-5500S BD Combo drive. The Optiarc BC-5500S is a Slim Internal SATA
drive capable of writing DVD media at 8x, CD-R media at 16x, DVD-RAM at 5x and
DVD Dual Layer media at 4x. This BD Combo drive is also capable of Reading all
Blu-ray media as well as playing Blu-ray movies.

In this review we will show the performance
of the Optiarc BC-5500S by running the drive through many tests on a
considerable amount of various CD/DVD media.

Corporate Information:

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We took a quick look at the company information found at Sony Optiarc USA site:

Sony Optiarc Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Sony
group, and will seek to strengthen its interaction with Sony group’s product
and device businesses to further streamline decision-making processes, enhance
management responsiveness and further reinforce its next-generation optical
disc drive business.

If you are interested in reading more about Sony Optiarc USA, please visit: http://www.sony-optiarc.com/index.html.

Drive Specifications:

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Let us take a look at the detailed specifications of the Optiarc BC-5500S Blu-ray Combo drive:

What’s inside the box?

---

Let’s take a look at the drive:

As we can see, the retail package contains almost everything
you need to get started:

• Optiarc BC-5500S Bare drive

Now let’s take look at some screen shots of the drive
itself:

Front

Back

Bottom

Top

Drive Sticker

Here we can see the drive was Made in Malaysia, May of 2009.

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

Test machine

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For this review we will be using two computers with the
following configuration:

Review PC:

·
Laptop Model: Lenovo SL500

·
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T6570(2.1GHZ)

·
Memory: 2GB PC2-5300 667MHZ

·
Video: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500

·
Display: 15.4 WXGA

·
Sound: High definition audio (Onboard)

·
Hard Disks: 160GB HDDRIVE, 5400RPM

·
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Basic x86 SP1 is
installed on this machine.

Software:

We will be using the following software in this review:

• Nero 8.1.1.0 Ultra Edition Enhanced
• Nero CD/DVD Speed
• Nero InfoTool 5.1.0.0
• K-Probe v2.5.2
• Exact Audio Copy V0.95 beta 4

Installation and Supported Features:

---

The installation was flawless; we installed the drive into
our Laptop and the drive was instantly recognized upon booting Windows Vista and
was ready for use.

Here is the Nero InfoTool output for the drive and its
supported features:

Here is the  DVDINFoPRo Xtreme output for the drive and its
supported features:

DVDInfoPro Xtreme
readout

BD Advisor showing
Blu-Ray compatibility

CD-DVD Speed reports the burst rate of 47 MB/s:

Disc Writing Technology:

---

Now let's take a closer look at the writing technology of
the Optiarc BC-5500S:

16x CD-Recordable:

The Digistor Optiarc BC-5500S uses Z-CLV 3-Zone (Zone-Constant
Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 16X, this
gives an average speed of 14.42X.

For comparison we have made the following table:

As we can see from our chart the Optiarc BC-5500S posts a
good writing time for 16x on our test CD-R media.

10x CD-Rewritable:

The Optiarc BC-5500S uses Z-CLV (Zone Constant Linear
Velocity) to write CD-RW media at its maximum speed of 10X, this gives
an average speed of 9.84X.

For comparison we have made the following table:

As you can see from the graph, our Optiarc BC-5500S is one
of the slowest at CD-RW writing, with a time of 8m:58s.

8X DVD+R writing speed:

The Optiarc BC-5500S uses CAV, (Constant Angular
Velocity) to write DVD+R at the maximum supported speed of 8X. This
gives an average write speed of 5.88X and a writing time of 11 minutes 14
seconds.

8X DVD-R Writing speed:

The Optiarc BC-5500S uses CAV, (Constant Angular
Velocity) to write DVD-R at the maximum supported speed of 8X. This
gives an average write speed of 5.90X and a writing time of 11 minutes 23
seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table:

As you can see from the graph, our Optiarc BC-5500S is one
of the fastest at both DVD+R and DVD-R writing.

4X DVD+RW writing speed:

The Digistor Optiarc BC-5500S uses Z-CLV (Zone-Constant
Linear Velocity) to write DVD+RW at 4X. The average speed is 3.94X
and total writing time is 15:56 minutes.

For comparison we have made the following table:

As you can see from our graph the Optiarc BC-5500S is a few
minutes slower; considering the drive is only using 4x as the burning speed
this is fast burn .

4X DVD-RW writing speed:

The Optiarc BC-5500S uses Z-CLV (Zone-Constant
Linear Velocity) to write DVD-RW at 4X. The average speed is 3.89X
and total writing time is 16:43 minutes.

For comparison we have made the following table:

As you can see from our graph the Optiarc BC-5500S is again
slower because the drive is using only 4x burning speed.

4X DVD+R DL writing speed:

The Optiarc BC-5500S supports 4x writing speed on DVD+R DL
media.

The Optiarc
BC-5500S uses Z-CLV (Zone Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD+R DL media at 4X which gives an
average write speed of 3.94X and a total write time of 29 minutes and 58
seconds.

4X DVD-R DL writing speed:

The Optiarc BC-5500S supports 4X writing speed on DVD-R DL
media.

The Optiarc
BC-5500S uses Z-CLV (Zone Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD-R DL media at 4X. The average speed
is 3.93x and the total writing time is 30 minutes and 49 seconds

For comparison we have made the following table:

As you can see from our chart above the Optiarc BC-5500S posts
very competitive times when we compare it at 4X writing on both DVD+DL
media.

DVD-RAM

The specifications for the Optiarc BC-5500S state that the
drive is capable of writing DVD-RAM at 5X.  Let’s take a look at the write
strategy for this media.

5X DVD-RAM Writing

The Optiarc BC-5500S uses Z-CLV (Zone-Constant
Linear Velocity), to write at is maximum speed of 5.01X.  This
gives an average speed of 4.03X and a total writing time of 14 minutes and 39
seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table:

As you can see from our chart above the Optiarc BC-5500S does
very well when writing DVD-RAM media at 5X.

Book type (bitsetting):

The Optiarc BC-5500S supports bitsetting, but only with DVD+R
DL media.

With Nero CD-DVD
Speed, we can see that the “Book Type" column in the Drive Settings area
that all disc types are currently Bitset to DVD+R, DVD+R and DVD+R DL. When a disc is inserted in the drive, the
Disc Settings area will show the Book Type. We can see that only DVD+R
DL can be Bitset.

We can also check if our discs are really written with
DVD-ROM Book Type by clicking on the Disc Info tab. This should look something
similar to the following screen shot:

On the next page let’s take a look at the Reading Performance…

Reading performance:

---

We will use Nero CD/DVD-Speed to read various CD and DVD
Discs; including audio discs and DVD-media.

Pressed discs:

For this test we used an original pressed CD-ROM disc
containing the World of Warcraft that is about 74 minutes in length.

The Optiarc BC-5500S makes it to 25.26x.

For comparison we have made the following table:

As you can see from our chart the Optiarc BC-5500S is the fastest
drive reading our pressed CD-ROM discs.

CD-Recordable Discs:

For this test we used the same Pressed Data CD-R as above
and made a copy using Nero Express “Copy Entire CD”. The disc we used was a
Microboards Technology 48x CD-R disc manufactured by Taiyo Yuden burned at 8X.

The Optiarc BC-5500S reached 25.02x when reading the copied
Pressed Data disc.

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S does an excellent job when reading back
CD-Recordable discs.

CD-Rewritable discs:

We made another Data CD with Nero Express “Copy Entire CD”, this
time we are using a Memorex (24X) CD-RW disc.

The Optiarc BC-5500S read the CD-RW discs back at the top
speed of 16.83x speed.

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S is the slowest drive when reading our CD-Rewritable
disc.

Audio – Digital Audio Extraction

---

To test the digital audio extraction performance of the Optiarc
BC-5500S we used Nero CD-DVD Speed to measure the transfer rate. The audio disc we used is 79 minutes in length (79:47.10).

The Optiarc BC-5500S reached 21.25X when reading a full
pressed audio disc

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S did ok when reading our Pressed Audio-CD
disc.

Advanced audio – DAE quality test:

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For our next test we will use the “Advanced DAE Quality
Test” feature in Nero CD-DVD Speed. The CD-R media we are using is 52X
certified Taiyo Yuden CD-R made by Taiyo Yuden. (Thanks to Rima.com for sending
us this media.)

The extracting quality is excellent but the drive cannot
read the lead-in and lead-out. The drive was too slow to do On-the-fly copying
at 10x, 12x and 16x.

DVD reading performance:

---

Again, we will use Nero CD-DVD Speed to measure the reading
performance, this time for various types of DVD discs.

DVD – DVD-Video:

For our DVD reading performance tests we are going to start
with Single and Double Layered DVD video discs. While only 1X speed is required
to watch DVD movies, it’s useful to be able to read the discs at higher speeds
if you’re going to extract (rip) the content of the disc to your hard drive.

DVD-Video Single Layer

DVD-Video Double Layer

The Optiarc BC-5500S reads a pressed DVD-Video at 4X for a
Single Layer disc and reads a Double Layer disc at around 4X.

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S performed well compared with the other
drives on both DVD-Video Single Layer and DVD-Video Double Layer reading tests.

DVD+R and DVD+RW:

For this next test we used a Verbatim 16x DVD+R and a Ritek
8X DVD+RW both with 4.38GB of data. (Thanks to Ritek USA and Verbatim USA for sending us this media.) Below are the results:

DVD+R

DVD+RW

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S posts respectable speeds when reading
our DVD+R disc at 8.10X speed but only reading our DVD+RW disc at 3.99X speed.

Now let’s see how it will perform
on DVD-R/RW discs.

DVD–R and DVD-RW:

For this test we used a Verbatim 16x DVD-R and a Verbatim 6X
DVD-RW with 4.38GB of data. (Thanks to Verbatim USA for sending us this media.)
Below are the results:

DVD-R

DVD-RW

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S performs very well reading the DVD-R
disc at 8.10X speed but the DVD-RW disc at only read at 4.00X speed.

DVD – DVD±R DL:

For this test we used a Verbatim 8x DVD+R DL and a Verbatim 8x
DVD-R DL disc both filled with 7.96GB of data. (Thanks to Verbatim USA for
sending us this media.) Our test results are found below:

DVD+R DL

DVD-R DL

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S performs slow while reading DVD+R DL
and DVD-R DL at around 4x speed.

DVD-RAM

For this part of our test we are using a Maxell 5x DVD-RAM
filled with 4.27GB of data. Our test results are found below:

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S performs very well while reading DVD-RAM
at 5x.

An Introduction to Blu-Ray Disc:

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Until recently, optical disc technologies such as DVD,
DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM relied on a red laser to read and write data. The
new technology Blu-Ray format uses a blue-violet laser, which explains the name
Blu-ray.

Blu-ray drives can also be made backwards compatible with
CDs and DVDs through the use of a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup unit.

A blue-violet laser (405nm) has a shorter wavelength than a
red laser (650nm); this makes it possible to focus the laser with even greater
accuracy. This will allow data to be packed more tightly, so it's possible to
squeeze more data on the disc even though it's the same size as a CD/DVD. This
together with the change of numerical aperture to 0.85 enables Blu-ray discs to
hold 25GB/50GB.

Blu-ray media is structurally
different from DVD media. The Blu-ray disc consists of a single 1.1 mm thick
polycarbonate substrate with a 0.1 mm thick cover layer on the bottom side of
the disc, while the DVD disc is made of two 0.6 mm thick substrates. In both
cases, two substrates are bonded together by a UV-cured resin adhesive:

DVD vs. Blu-ray disc structure

The larger 25 GB and 50 GB
storage capacity of the Blu-ray disc is due to the higher density of pits and
tracks on the disc. Unlike previous optical discs, Blu-ray uses a
shorter-wavelength, tighter-focused violet laser to read and write pits that
are about three times smaller than pits used in DVDs:

CD, DVD and Blu-ray laser beam color and size

CD, DVD and Blu-ray pits and tracks as seen by a scanning electron microscope

Blu-ray disc surface mapped by an atomic force microscope

Blu-Ray

Here we will look at how the Optiarc BC-5500S performs when
reading Blu-Ray discs.

BD-ROM SL

The Optiarc BC-5500S read our SL BD-ROM at a peak speed of 2.00X.

BD-ROM DL

The Optiarc BC-5500S read our DL BD-ROM at peak speed of 2.00X.

BD-R SL

The Optiarc BC-5500S reader had no problem reading our SL
BD-R at a top speed of 4.04X.

BD-RE SL

The Optiarc BC-5500S did a great job of reading our BD-RE
disc at a top speed of 4.04X.

BD-R DL

The Optiarc BC-5500S was able to read our TDK BD-R DL disc at
a top speed of 4.02X.

BD-RE DL

The Optiarc BC-5500S did a great job of reading our BD-RE
Dual Layer disc at a top speed of 4.04X.

---

Overall thoughts:

The Optiarc BC-5500S did a good job while reading CD media, Single
Layer DVD and Blu-ray media. The drive did lag a little behind the competition
in reading DVD Rewritable and Dual Layer DVD media.

Now it’s time to head on to the next section: CD-R/CD-RW
Writing Performance…

The specifications of the Optiarc BC-5500S state that the
drive is able to write CD-R discs at 16X CD-RW discs at 10X. Let’s find out how
the drive really performs in speed and quality.

Writing Quality with CD-R discs:

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For our data writing tests, we simply set up a new
compilation of about 702Mb using Nero Burning ROM software. Writing method used
is DAO (Disc At Once), and the disc is set up as a
non-multisession disc with “finalize disc” enabled. The screenshot below shows
how long it takes to write a disc at the highest speed (8X):

The Optiarc BC-5500S took 6 minutes and 59 seconds to write
the disc at 16X.

Write Quality:

---

First we test CD-R discs from different CD-R manufacturers.
To measure the write speed we will use the “Create Data CD” function from
within Nero CD-DVD Speed.  We wrote these discs at the maximum speed that the
drive supports.  For the quality test, we will be using Nero CD-DVD Speed.
CD-DVD Speed runs under Windows and supports several drives.  Also note that
different drives and different reading speeds may affect the results obtained
when scanning the discs. For our CD scanning we will be using a Optiarc AD-7240S
with Nero CD-DVD Speed scanning at Maximum speed.

Disc Quality Scanning - C1/C2 (and CU); here is an
explanation in more detail:

CDs use an error detection and correction system (CIRC)
which is for the most part not seen by the user when reading the disc.  We can
get a working idea of the quality of the media in question by performing Disc
Quality Scanning that will show us the amount of errors the drive is detecting
and correcting while reading the media.

There is more than one way to handle C1 and C2 error
detection/correction, but a simple and common way is to detect and correct up
to two errors per frame in each stage and detect three or more errors:

• E11: 1 error detected and corrected by C1 layer
• E21: 2 errors detected and corrected by C1 layer
• E31: 3 or more errors detected but not corrected by
  C1 layer

The sum of these (per second) is called the BLock Error
Rate: BLER=E11+E21+E31

• E32: 3 or more errors detected but not corrected by
  C2 layer

Any E31 is uncorrectable by the C1 layer and will result in
the bytes in that frame being redistributed into multiple frames which are
passed to the C2 layer.

Any E32 is uncorrectable by the C2 layer and will result in
interpolation being used for Audio CDs or will result in third layer error
correction being use for Data CDs.

Different drives have different ways of reporting these
errors in a Disc Quality scan.  Optiarc
CD-RW drives will report C1 and C2 errors this way:

• C1=BLER=E11+E21+E31
• C2=E32

Here is a little easier way to look at Disc Quality
Scanning:

A written CD-R disc will always have some C1 errors; C1
errors are easily corrected by the drive’s error correction capabilities. The
next level of errors is C2, while C2 errors could also be corrected by most
drive’s error correction capabilities; they are not wanted on a good quality
disc. A good disc should not contain any C2 errors, and preferably have an
average C1 error amount of below 2.0 for the best quality discs, or at least
below 10.0 C1 average for good quality discs. After C2 errors, there are only
un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

In short, our analysis will be based on this guideline to
determine the quality of the burned disc:

CD-R/RW quality scans
guideline

And below are the obtained results:

Transfer Rate Test

Taiyo Yuden media has low C1 errors and no C2 errors so it
goes in the “Best Quality” category.

---

Transfer Rate Test

Maxell media – manufactured by RiTEK Corporation averages
below "10" C1 no C2 errors so it goes in the “Good Quality” category.

---

Transfer Rate Test

The Moser Baer CD-R averages below "10" C1 no C2
errors so it goes in the “Good Quality” category.

---

Transfer Rate Test

Verbatim media – manufactured by Mitsubishi Chemicals
Corporation averages below "10" C1 no C2 errors so it goes in the
“Good Quality” category.

Editor’s note: This Verbatim CD-R media is Made in India.

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Transfer Rate Test

Fujifilm media – manufactured by Daxon has low C1 errors and
no C2 errors so it goes in the “Best Quality” category.

Writing Quality with CD-RW discs:

---

Due to requests from our readers, we will add a few write
quality tests with re-writable media. Settings and testing procedures is the
same as used earlier in this review, so you may want to go back and read them
if you are unsure. All discs used for these tests are new and have not been
written to before.

Transfer Rate Test

TDK media - manufactured by CMC Magnetics averages below
"2" C1 and has no C2 errors so it goes in the “Best Quality”
category.

Overall thoughts:

The Optiarc BC-5500S is a very good CD-R writer showing
excellent results with no C2 errors on all our CD-R media and handled our Verbatim
Ultra High Speed 32X media with good results.

On the next page let’s take a look at the DVD+R/RW
Writing Performance…

The specifications of this drive tell us that the Optiarc
BC-5500S should write DVD±R at 8X and DVD±RW at 4x. In this next section we
will measure the write time for various types of DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW discs.
We will also focus on write quality and media compatibility.

Now let us see how the writing quality is.

Write quality:

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Disc Quality Scanning - PI/PO:

DVDs use an error detection
and correction system (ECC) which is usually transparent to the end-user, but
we can get an idea of the "quality" of a disc by  performing Disc
Quality Scanning, which shows how many errors the drive is detecting and
correcting behind the scenes.

There are two layers or
stages of error detection and correction on all DVD media; these are called
Parity Inner (PI) and Parity Outer (PO). Data is arranged in ECC blocks
containing rows and columns of user data with additional columns of PI error
correction and rows of PO error correction.

An ECC block contains 32
kByte of user data with some added control data, scrambled and arranged in 192
rows and 172 columns with an additional 10 columns of PI error correction and
16 rows of PO error correction.

The Parity Inner stage is
performed first, and up to 5 bytes in a row can be corrected. Any row with one
or more errors is counted as a Parity Inner Error (PIE). Any row with more than
5 errors is considered uncorrectable and is counted as a Parity Inner Failure
(PIF).

The Parity Outer stage is
performed next and will detect and attempt to correct any errors that are still
left after the PI stage. Any column that has errors is counted as a Parity
Outer Error (POE), and any column that has uncorrectable errors is counted as a
Parity Outer Failure (POF). If a POF occurs the drive can sometimes re-read the
problematic spot and correct the problem; this happens only during normal
reading and not during scanning, however.

Disc Quality scanning is
influenced by the drive performing the test, and that's why different drives
report different results and even the same drive will report (slightly) different
results when scanning the same disc again. Please note that PI/PO and Jitter
scans only test some aspects of disc quality and that other important aspects
are not revealed.

But what is a good scan? That
is a discussion that we don’t think will end soon, as different drives report
different amount of errors, some players are more picky about media than
others, and so on.

The Lite-On DVD burners used
in this review report errors as follows.

• PIE per 8 ECC blocks (rows
  with 1 or more bytes in error)
• PIF per 1 ECC block (rows
  with 6 or more bytes in error)

We want to see as low error
numbers as possible.

PIE per 8 ECC blocks should
be no higher than 280.
PIF per 1 ECC block should be no higher than 4.

Both the pressed DVD-discs
above are well within the standards.

If you want to look at the
standards for yourself, download the ECMA 267 Standard for DVD-ROM, the ECMA
337 Standard for DVD+R/RW and the ECMA 338 Standard for DVD-R/RW at http://www.ecma-international.org.

Notice that there are other
aspects such as disc reflectivity, tracking errors and so on that also will
affect the readability of a DVD disc – but for this we do not have measuring
equipment available.

Also, another note is that we
have scanned the discs at 4X speed, by lowering the speed to 2X (DVD-R/RW)/2.4X
(DVD+R/RW) or 1X the amount of reported errors may drop on some discs. We
scanned at 4X CLV due to lower speeds taking too much time.

To see if there is a
connection between the reported amount of errors and readability of the discs
we also include the reading curve from an Optiarc AD-7200S DVD-Writer
which by default is able to read DVD±R media at 16x speed. A small speed
reduction near the end is still accepted on good discs, but serious reading
problems or reading failures is a bad sign.

Here is an easier explanation on how to read
the test results

Maybe this got too technical,
and you are wondering what to look for in your Nero DiscSpeed Quality Scans?

Use this as a guideline for good discs:

·
PI (Parity Inner): No larger areas
on the disc should exceed 280 PI-8 errors, do not worry too much about high
single spikes that exceed 280.

·
PIF (Parity Inner Failures): No
larger areas on the disc should exceed 4 PIF-1 errors, do not worry too much
about high single spikes that exceed 4.

And as always: the lower is
better.

Jitter:

Jitter is a very complex
subject and even more difficult to explain when we start to use optical drives
designed for the home market to measure jitter values.

Let’s first look at the DVD
specification for pressed DVD discs (in the bold part courtesy of Pioneer
Electronics).

“The DVD design target
is that when the worst-case disc allowed by the specification, considering the
economics of production, is played using the worst-case pickup that can be
produced in volume economically, the byte error rate after error correction
will still be 1 x 10-^-20, which is good enough to be acceptable for
computer applications.

Since the above target is for "after error correction," the error
correction capability must be calculated. Considering the trade-off between
error correction capability and the overhead of the added redundancy, the DVD
format was set to one ECC block per 32 kB. This requires a byte error rate
before correction of 1 x 10^-2.
In order to achieve good economy on both the part of the discs and the playback
mechanisms. The current disc tilt specification was determined as a result of
the efforts on both sides.

As will be explained hereafter, it is difficult to make the error rate a
specification of the disc itself. Therefore, a jitter standard is set by the
DVD specifications. A simple calculation based on a normal distribution
requires that the jitter rate be under 15.4%, and experimental results indicate
that jitter must be fewer than 16%, to achieve the required error rate. Since
the disc tilt varies within a revolution, it was decided to adopt the design
concept that jitter must remain within 16% at the instantaneous peak value of
tilt. Since it is actually very difficult to measure the peak value, the
concept became to measure the average jitter at fewer than 15%, and the byte
error rate at under 5 x 10-3.”

What is Jitter?

In basic terms, we could say
jitter is a product of “pit and land distortion” In other words, when the drive
reading the disc has to compensate by means of a “tilt servo” which constantly
tries to move and refocus the PUH lens for optimum tracking and tries to
compensate for the imperfections of pits and lands on the pressed or recordable
media. This is further compounded by the hardware used for recording and
playback. Not only is the record and
replay process limited by the resolution of the optical pickup, it is also
horribly non-linear. In addition, the playback of the pits is subject to
non-linear crosstalk from nearby pits in the same track, and also from pits in
nearby tracks.

The things that causes jitter
divide into three main types.

• Variation in pit length
  and width.
• Crosstalk from nearby
  pits in the same track.
• Crosstalk from pits in
  adjacent tracks.

Variation in pit length
and width.

The recorded pits themselves
are not perfectly accurate. Anything which causes variations in the sizes of
the pits will produce jitter. A prime culprit of this is sudden variations in
laser power (laser noise). If laser power varies, then the laser beam itself
changes and will vary in intensity and possibly focus. This will cause the pit
length and width to also vary and we now have jitter.

Crosstalk from nearby pits
in the same track.

If the pits are not totally
accurate, then the laser beam spot may overrun a pit and gather data from the
adjacent pit in the same track, or if the “land” is to short, then the laser
beam spot can be influenced by the adjacent pit and this is called inter-symbol
interference. Inter-symbol interference is worse at low recording velocities,
because the pits are shorter and closer together. And it is the cause of
"deviation" of the pit lengths.

Crosstalk from pits in
adjacent tracks.

Crosstalk between pits in
adjacent tracks is caused by the laser beam spot being larger than the width of
the track. It is a largely random contribution and is worse at lower recorded
velocities, because the highest frequency components of the readout signal in
the wanted track, with which the crosstalk is competing, are weaker.

Some other factors to
consider

There are many aspects to
consider when we add Recordable DVD media into the mix. We are now dealing with
an organic dye, which is inherently unstable. We must also consider the
equipment we are using to measure jitter is aimed at the home market. So we
must also take into account variations between drives that we are unable to
calibrate for such tests.

Now let’s look at some of the
hardware limitations of the drives we are using to measure jitter.

If there is no tilt, then the
jitter value includes components from light source noise, circuit noise, disc
noise, standard interference between symbols (inter -symbol interference), and
some small amount of crosstalk from the neighboring tracks.

Next we consider
manufacturing variation in the circuitry.
Variation due to the circuitry have noise-like characteristics, and increase
the minimum jitter level, but are thought to have a very small effect on tilt
margin. Factors such as offset in the servo circuit, however, both increase the
jitter level and decrease tilt margin.

How we will measure
jitter.

We will be using a Lite-On
DVD writer to conduct these tests along with Nero CD-Speed. In the screen shot
below we can see a PI/PIF scan including a jitter test (the purple graph in the
lower window) we carried out on a single layer DVD+R media.

Now, let's find a reasonable
average jitter level. Experimental results indicate that 8% average value or
less is a desirable figure, based on the DVD specification. That does not mean
that jitter average values above 8% are bad. In fact, many optical drives will
quite happily read recordable DVD media with jitter values of more than 14%
average without any problems. Other drives, including standalone DVD players may
begin to struggle reading discs with average jitter values above 10%. So there
is a fairly wide range of acceptable values. One must test our own playback
devices to see what they can cope with.

However, for the purpose of
having a basic guideline we can use in our reviews, we present a rating system
for average jitter values.

• Less than
  8% (average) = Very good
• 8% - 9%
  (average) = good
• 9% - 12%
  (average) = average
• Above 12%
  (average) = poor

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DVD+R media compatibility and write quality

In these tests we will be using a Lite-On
iHAS220 drive along with Nero CD-DVD Speed to measure the
disc quality. We will provide you with an image of the Quality Scan, Transfer
Rate Test (TRT), and a Table which gives the pertinent details for the burn and
quality scan to include the number of samples taken in the Quality Scan. We
will also be using the Optiarc AD-7200S along with Nero CD-DVD Speed for our
read-back tests.

Disc quality is Excellent and the Transfer Rate Test has a
smooth curve.

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The media burns with Good results and the Transfer Rate Test
has a smooth curve.

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The media burns with Excellent results and the Transfer Rate
Test has a smooth curve.

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The media burns with Excellent quality and the Transfer Rate
Test has a smooth curve.

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The Memorex media made by Ricoh burns with Good quality and
the Transfer Rate Test has a smooth curve.

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The media burns with Excellent results and the Transfer Rate
Test has a smooth curve.

DVD+ReWritable media:

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The Optiarc BC-5500S supports writing to DVD+RW discs at
maximum 4X speed.

The media burns with Good results and the Transfer Rate Test
has a smooth curve.

On the next page let’s take a look at the DVD-R/RW
Writing Performance...

DVD-R/RW Writing Performance:

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In these tests we will again be using a Lite-On iHAS220 drive along with Nero CD-DVD Speed to measure the disc quality.
We will also be using the Optiarc AD-7200S along with Nero CD-DVD Speed for our read-back tests.

The media burns with good results but we have one PI-1
failures (PIF) spike out of spec, the Transfer Rate test has a smooth curve.

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The media burns with good results but we have one PI-1
failures (PIF) spike out of spec, the Transfer Rate test has a smooth curve.

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The media burns with good results but we have a few PI-1
failures (PIF) spike out of spec, the Transfer Rate test has a smooth curve.

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The media burns with OK results but we have a few PI-1
failures (PIF) spike out of spec, the Transfer Rate test has a smooth curve.

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The media burns with Poor results but we have a few PI-1
failures (PIF) spike out of spec, the Transfer Rate test has a smooth curve.

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The media burns with good results but we have a few PI-1
failures (PIF) spike out of spec, the Transfer Rate test has a smooth curve.

DVD-ReWritable media:

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The media burns with good results and the Transfer Rate test
has a smooth curve.

Moving on to next page you can read about DVD+R DL and
DVD-R DL compatibility and Writing Performance...

DVD+R Double Layer writing speed and quality:

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The Optiarc BC-5500S supports the DVD+R DL standard for
writing Double Layer discs with a size around 8.5 GB at a writing speed of 4x.

Testing procedure:

We created an ISO Image from a pre-authored DVD-Video
compliant file set, with a total on-disc size of nearly 8.5GB. We then wrote
this image file using Nero Burning ROM 8. Below are the results:

The media burns with Very good results and the Transfer Rate
Test has a smooth curve.

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The media burns with Good results and the Transfer Rate Test
has a smooth curve.

DVD-R Dual Layer writing speed and quality:

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The Digistor DIG-78102 supports the DVD-R DL standard for
writing Dual Layer discs with a size around 8.5 GB at a writing maximum speed
of 2x.

We will be using the same testing procedure we outline for
the DVD+R DL media.

The media burns with Good
results and the Transfer Rate test has a smooth curve.

Moving on to next page you can read about DVD-RAM Writing
Performance...

DVD-RAM Performance:

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The Optiarc BC-5500S drive also supports writing and reading
the DVD-RAM format; reading and writing at 5X.

Lets us look at the recording side of the disc, and as you
can see it has differences from the other DVD+R/W/R9 DL and DVD-R/W discs.

We can see a very fascinating pattern of darker spots. These
tick marks are "address information" ("Pre-mastered Pit Header
Field") which is embedded onto the disc. This is header information in
front of data sector area, and is the same format as HDD and MO.

A DVD-RAM’s disc can be formatted in the following formats:

• FAT32
• UDF 1.02
• UDF 1.50
• UDF 2.00
• UDF 2.01
• UDF 2.50

By formatting a DVD-RAM disc with FAT32 it will act like a
removable hard drive and all writing will be done as “background processes”.
Meaning you do not have to wait for it to finish, you can start or work with
other applications while the DVD-RAM is working without noticing any “hangs” or
CPU slowdowns.

DVD-RAM has error correction, but also has error replacement
to spare sectors as a "defect management" function. This gives higher
reliability than other DVD format.

Another advantage with DVD-RAM is that the discs can be
formatted/erased/written at over 100,000 times before it will/can cause/report
any errors.

Lets us take a look how the drive performs:

Maxell branded 5x media manufactured by Maxell.
Thanks to Maxell USA for providing this media.

Writing Maxell 5x without verification

Writing Maxell 5x with verification

Transfer Rate test

As we can see, the Optiarc BC-5500S writes 5x DVD-RAM
without any problem in 12:20 minutes, reads back the disc at 5x speed.

For those of you who are not familiar with DVD-RAM, you may
probably think that something went wrong during the write process with the verification
turned on, since the 5x media was written at 1.3x and 2x, respectively.
But don’t worry, that is pretty normal for DVD-RAM discs. The reason for the
lower writing speed is, the drive constantly reads back the data after writing
it to verify that it’s written correctly. We can also call it a “bullet proof”
writing/verify technique, with no data loss/errors.

Overall thoughts:

The Optiarc BC-5500S is a very good writer showing Good to Excellent
results in burning DVD±R/RW media. In writing DVD±DL media the Optiarc BC-5500S
did a good job writing our media at 4x.

Now let's move to the Authors Page…

Authors Page:

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Introduction:

On this page, the author of the review has the freedom to
run tests that she/he thinks will enhance the review. These tests, unlike our
standard tests, which we try to keep consistent throughout the whole review
team, so that our reviews are as consistent as possible. This page gives the
reviewer the opportunity to show some advanced and real world tests that other
review team members may not be able to run.

Real World tests:

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DVD+R/RW writing performance:

Let us see how long it takes the Optiarc BC-5500S to create
an 8X disc. We used Nero Burning Rom to set up a new UDF/ISO compilation containing
4480MB (4.36GB) of data, and started the write process. We used the
Disc-At-Once write method.

DVD+R

DVD-R

Advanced audio – EAC test:

For our next test we used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to test the
drive’s audio extraction performance. As we can see from the screenshot below
the drive supports accurate stream and C2 error information but does not
support audio cache.

Here are the results produced by EAC:

Burst Mode

Secure Mode

The Optiarc BC-5500S performed well in the burst mode test
but the extraction was much slower in secure mode.

DVD±R Writing Performance:

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Let us see how long it takes the Optiarc BC-5500S to create
an 8X disc. We used Nero Burning Rom to set up a new UDF/ISO compilation containing
4480MB (4.36GB) of data, and started the write process. We used the
Disc-At-Once write method.

DVD+R

DVD-R

Standalone DVD player compatibility:

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We used the Optiarc BC-5500S to create DVD video discs on DVD+R
DL media (Book Type: DVD-ROM) and DVD-R DL media (Book Type: DVD-R) and tested
their playback on standalone DVD players: Philips DVP-642 and a Mintek
DVD-1600.

Compatibility results:

Both Verbatim Dual Layer DVD's played perfectly with no
skipping.

CSS Encrypted DVD-Video ripping tests:

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Most modern DVD burners don’t have Video riplock and in most cases will
read a pressed DVD-Video SL disc at 16x speed. However, some drives use a CSS
riplock when it comes to extracting data from the disc. If you attempt to rip a
pressed DVD-Video with CSS encryption to your hard drive, then the ripping
speed may be locked at a much lower speed than 16x.

To test this feature, we needed a reference from a drive that we know
does not employ CSS riplock. We choose the Optiarc AD-7200S as a reference
drive for this purpose and ripped a SL and DL pressed DVD-Video to our hard
drive using DVDFab Platinum (full disc option), thank you to Fengtao software
for providing us with this software.

We should point out, that ripping and compressing a DL DVD-Video disc
to DVD 5 format is quite CPU intensive. The more power your system has, the
less likely your system power will affect the results. The PC used in this
review is equipped with a fast Intel Dual Core processor and fast hard drives.
We checked to make sure our review PC was not having an impact on the results.

Below we can see our reference results.

SL CSS encrypted DVD
Video disc “Dances With Wolves Bonus Disc” (Optiarc AD-7200S reference result)

Time taken = 4m:53s

DL CSS encrypted DVD
Video disc “Titanic” (Optiarc AD-72000S reference result)

Time taken = 11m:35s

Now let’s test the Optiarc BC-5500S using the same testing
procedures.

SL CSS encrypted DVD-Video (Dances With Wolves Bonus disc):

The Optiarc BC-5500S does not employ CSS riplock and the
drive performed well, completing the test in 19 minutes and 9 seconds.

DL CSS encrypted DVD-Video (Titanic):

The Optiarc BC-5500S does not employ CSS riplock and the
drive performed well, completing the test in 33 minutes and 33 seconds.

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Encrypted BD-Video ripping tests:

To test this feature, we needed a reference from a drive
that we know does not employ BD-Video encryption riplock. We choose the Lite-on
DH4O1S as a reference drive for this purpose and ripped a SL and DL pressed
(encrypted) BD-Video to our hard drive using DVDFab 6.0.1.0 (full disc option).

DVDFab 6.0.1.0
ripping an encrypted BD-Movie (DL)

Thanks to Fengtao software – For providing a full DVD
Fab license.

Below we can see our reference results.

Reference drive

SL encrypted BD-Video
"Underworld Evolution" (Lite-on DH4O1S reference result)

Time taken = 29m:38s

DL encrypted BD-Video
" Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End " (Lite-on DH4O1S
reference result)

Time taken = 52m:02s

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Now let’s test the Optiarc BC-5500S using the same testing
procedures.

SL encrypted BD-Video (Underworld Evolution)

The Optiarc BC-5500S is encryption riplocked and ripped our
test BD-Video SL disc in 44 minutes and 34 seconds.

DL encrypted BD-Video (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End)

The Optiarc BC-5500S is encryption riplocked and ripped our
test BD-Video DL disc in 1 hour, 24 minutes, and 29 seconds.

We present the table below for comparison

The Optiarc BC-5500S was slow when ripping our tested
BD-Video media.

CD-R Overburning test:

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To test the CD-R overburning capabilities of Optiarc
BC-5500S, we used the overburning test in Nero CD-DVD Speed. According to Nero
CD-DVD Speed the drive can overburn disc larger than 80 minutes. For this test
we used Taiyo Yuden 80min CD-R which is rated 48x speed.

The Optiarc BC-5500S reported a maximum overburn capacity of
82:46.63 minutes in simulation mode, so we attempted to create a test disc
using Nero CD-DVD Speed with a slightly less capacity. See below:

The scan shows a good result with C1 average of 1.76. We
conclude that the Optiarc BC-5500S supports overburning CD-R.

DVD+R Overburning test:

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To test the DVD+R overburning capabilities of the Optiarc
BC-5500S, we used the overburning test in Nero CD-DVD Speed with Verbatim DVD+R
16x certified media.

From Nero CD-DVD Speed Overburning Test screenshots above,
the drive does not support overburning. The test stopped at 4482MB which is the
standard size for DVD+R media. We will now attempt to verify this using Nero
CD-DVD Speed Create Data Disc:

As you can see that the drive failed to overburn the media.
We conclude that the Optiarc BC-5500S does not support overburning DVD+R.

This concludes our Optiarc BC-5500S review, lets head on
to the last page to read our Conclusion…

Positive:

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• Reads BD-ROM SL and DL media
• Reads BD-R and BD-RE media at 4x
• Writes both DVD+R and DVD-R media at 8x
• Excellent write quality on CD-R media at 16x
• Quiet drive operation

·
Supports 5x writing on DVD-RAM

• Very Good to Excellent DVD+R writing quality

·
Relatively inexpensive for a Internal Blu-ray reader

Negative:

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·
Some PI-1 failures (PIF) out of spec on our DVD-R media

·
Bitsetting is only supported on DVD+R DL media

Conclusion:

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

The Optiarc BC-5500S's ability to write CD, DVD and read Blu-Ray
media with good speed and quality give this drive an advantage over other
Internal Laptop drives.

Writing of DVD+R and DVD DL media with the Optiarc BC-5500S at
8x and 4x respectively with good to excellent writing quality gives this unit the
ability to be a single drive solution for DVD burning.

Writing of CD-R/RW media, 16x and 10x respectively with good
to excellent quality is more than an added bonus. The Optiarc BC-5500S is also
a very quiet drive in operation be it reading or Writing media.

The drive supports an internal SATA interface for quick and
easy installation. With Blu-ray reading as well as DVD and CD burning and authoring,
this really makes the Optiarc BC-5500S a multi format drive solution.

We have only found a few negatives with this drive,
Bitsetting is only supported on DVD+R DL media. The drive does write some media
a little slower than other Internal Slim drives but is very consistent and
quiet. Lastly the drive did produce a few PI-1 failures (PIF) that are out of
spec on our DVD-R media but the discs did play Video flawlessly with no
skipping or stuttering.

To sum it all up, this is what we would say: “The Optiarc
BC-5500S is a Blu-ray reader giving you the ability to watch
high-definition content on your Laptop, additionally its capable of
writing DVD and CD-R media with good to excellent quality.” We therefore award
the Optiarc BC-5500S with a 4 Star rating.

We found the Bulk version of the Optiarc BC-5500S listed at the
cheapest price of $202.94 at Amazon.com
(July 2009).

Thanks to:

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