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Toshiba : Why the 6th Gen. SD-M1402 is a Must Have item ...Nov 06 '00 Write an essay on this topic.This article addresses : EXACTLY why the 6th generation Toshiba SD-M1402 DVD-ROM is a PC Must Have, HOW MUCH you should expect to have to pay, and All the Tips and Details that will make or break your DVD viewing experience... Introduction The first time I was told about DVD, it was by my geek buddy at CSUP. "It's the size of a CD and it can hold 17 Gigs," he told me. Wow, I thought. Now all I have to do is get a DVD-ROM and put all my hot little mp3s on it ... =) Four years later, we have of course met with a great deal of DVD realities : we just barely figured out how to REALLY put a lot of data on DVD ( via the revolutionary new Mpeg4 format ), DIVC turned out to be a very sad flop, and there really is no such thing as a copy-proof format. The drives themselves have come an equally long way : today's Toshiba SD-M1402 reads DVD at 12x and CDROMS at 40x. No SCSI needed; it's still UDMA ( ultra diret memory access ). But how good is this puppy, when there are so many other DVD drives out there, many of which even boast DVD read speeds of up to 16x? Doing It Toshiba SD-M1402 Specs: 12X DVD-ROM playback 40X CD-ROM playback Random access: 90 ms DVD-ROM, 80 ms CD-ROM Compatible with CD-R and CD-RW media Ultra DMA 128KB Buffer MTBF 100,000 Power on Hours I paid 139$ at convention (Fairplex, CA). Installation was a snap, no different at all really from installing any of my Toshiba 40x CDROM drives. This was the OEM version, so no extra software. Instead of a DVD card, I used the very excellent Matrox G400 dual head 32MB SGRAM ( review here : ) http://bored.epinions.com/cmd-review-7BE3-105FBE48-3A0313E5-prod2 The test DVD was -The World Is Not Enough- , from Blockbuster Video (3.99$ rental) Software decoder was Matrox's own proprietary decoder that came with the G400. Play was excellent. The DVD loaded very quickly; about three seconds. Play was smooth, as expected; no snow, no respinning. The drive was also extremely quiet as I discovered that I could actually hear my subwoofer's air current over the drive noise. My subwoofer is behind a couch and the drive was next to my head, so that's pretty good. Most impressive of all was its refusal to skip tracks, even when I picked up the case and gave it a gentle little rocking. I have yet to fully test this drive with all the DVDs I need to rent now, but from intial testings (I played the same DVD four times), this looks really good! All in all, I would say that the is probably the best DVD-ROM / Video Card combination I've ever used ( I've also used another Toshiba DVD-ROM and an Acer 6th gen. DVD-ROM that was really lousy). Quality was great, and the price was very agreeable at 139$. However, I would recommend that if you do not have a great deal of experience with computers that you buy the retail version ( about 159$ ). That one comes with a great deal more documentation and support. The warranty is also much longer; mine has only a 30 day retailer and 1 year toshiba warranty. =( On the other hand, I've NEVER had a toshiba product give out on me, even refurbished ones. I welcome any comments. Best Regards Kevin C.  |
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