Update the Firmware!!!
Written: Feb 11 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The price of the DVD burner was $110 at the time.
Cons: Only burns to DVD R or DVD RW disks
Little online help from verbatim.
The Bottom Line: It is an entry level DVD burner. If you do your homework you can find a similar or better drive for the same price with the same or more features.
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| lmpere's Full Review: Verbatim (VBTDVRW1A) DVD+RW Burner |
I bought this DVD burner as a low cost, entry level, DVD burner. Initially the drive worked well on my WinXP with SP1, Compaq Presario 5000 (900 MHz with 768 MB RAM and 120 GByte HD).
However, unlike the previous reviewer, I did end up with a stack of coasters (for those that don't know what that means, it is an unsuccessful burn on a disk, rendering the disk useless... unless you need a coaster for your coffee mug). Of the DVD's that I burned, 5 of the 25 disks I bought were successful.
I checked Verbatim's website for any updates and found very little help. The problems I kept having were:
1) Burning would fail when I would write to a DVD+R but not a DVD+RW and
2) Burning to DVD+R was successful, but when I tried to use it on my DVD player they didn't work. Odd, since the DVD+RW of the same image worked on the same DVD Player.
So, using some deductive reasoning and looking for help online, I tried changing the media. That made things even worse. I bought a 25 pack of HP DVD+R and went through almost the whole pack with nothing but coasters. And No, these are not the 4x disks.
At this point, it became personal. I searched the internet for anything I could find on the make and model of the DVD burner, or on anybody having a similar problem. I found nothing, and I can usually find what I am looking for on the net. Finally I gave up. I went out and bought a Pioneer DVD dual format burner. I quickly noticed that the burner had no problems to any of the DVD+R or –R media that I bought. Thus, eliminating the possibility that I was making a software level mistake.
After some time, I came upon a website that described updating the firmware of a ‘non-Ricoh’ DVD drive to a Ricoh firmware version 1.64 (http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=174580). Though this is not what the manufacturer recommends doing, I figured “What can I lose?”. I updated the firmware from the original 1.27 to the 1.64 and voilà!! It worked!!! Now the drive burns to the same media that I couldn’t burn to before. I even burned to the 5 left over HP DVD+R disks. Needless to say, 2 months later, Verbatim released the updated firmware (with little explanation as to what the update does or how to do it).
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 110.00
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
lmpere
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Member: Lucas Perea
Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
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