DVD Ricoh-da (Ricoh MP 5125A)

Member Name: LegendaryMrDude

Product:	Ricoh MP 5125A
Date:	25/01/03 (1962 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Capacity, Compatability, Price

Disadvantages: Do you REALLY need one???

Hands up anyone who has ever been burning a CD only to find they haven't got enough space on it for everything they want to burn.

OK, now hands up anyone who has done some video editing on their PC and wished that you could do better than Video-CD for distribution.

Well that's two of you at least, with a bit of luck a few more will stumble by at some point... as long as they sit down quietly at the back of the room, I'll carry on.

Recordable DVD first hit the streets about 18 months ago, at the staggering price of £1,200 for a Panasonic DVD recorder that would sit underneath the TV. Since then the prices have plummeted and the choice has gone through the roof. There are now set-top-box Recorders available for under £400 and PC DVD-recorders for under £200!!! But before you rush off and buy one, let me explain why the prices have come down so much.

The first thing to know about recordable DVD is that there are currently three (3) competing standards, none of which inter-operate particularly well with each other. In chronological order they are:

DVD-RAM - being pushed by Panasonic, it's the most flexible format for using to record live TV, allowing you to record and play-back at the same time. This effectively lets you "time-shift" the program you are watching. Unfortunately, DVD-RAM disks will NOT play in anything other than a DVD-RAM player. So anything you record on DVD-RAM will not be widely distributable.

DVD-R/RW - being pushed by Pioneer, DVD "minus" does a slightly better job of being compatible with older players than RAM. However there are a couple of quirks. In order to make a disk compatible with older players it has to be recorded in a special mode, but doing so means you lose access to a host of features like chapter and bookmark creation and the ability to delete data from anywhere on the disk.

DVD+R/RW - being pushed by Philips, Ricoh, Hitachi and a few
o
ther 'big players', DVD "plus" is the most compatible format of the three. It's the newest format, the delays being due to ebsuring that compatibility with older players was not sacrificed. There is no choice of recording mode, which means that all the features are available all of the time. Bookmarks can be added, scenes deleted, etc, etc. all while maintaining compatibility.

So thos are your choices of format. As this review os of a Ricoh DVD+R/RW drive, it's pretty obvious that I opted for the DVD "plus" format, but why? Well, as usual, I did my reading. I scoured the Internet for information, weighed up the pros and cons of each and made my decision. One of the deciding factors, however, was the price. At (barely) under £200, this Ricoh drive was the cheapest way of writing DVDs available. This is due, in no small part, to the fact that the "Plus" format is so young in comparison to it's rivals. Philips and Ricoh are pricing their kit extremely aggressively in an attempt to win market share and, so far, it's working. But market share aside, my research lead me to the conclusion that, for what I wanted, DVD+ was the best choice.

So what were my selection criteria? Firsly, I wanted to be able to record data DVDs, for back-ups and archives. Secondly I wanted to be able to author DVD videos, taking edited camcorder footage and writing it straight to a DVD, including chapters and scene-selection menus etc. Finally, I wanted to be able to send these DVD Videos to family & friends safe in the knowledge that the chances of them being able to watch it were high.

As the drive in question is for a PC, I wasn't really concerned about the time-shifting ability of DVD-RAM and the almost complete lack of compatibility with standard DVD players all but ruled it out. "Minus" was the other option, scoring slightly higher in terms of media cost (as it's been around longer, it&
#39;s easier (and cheaper) to get hold of DVD-R/RW discs). What concerned me was the 'mode-switching' that would need to be done in order to ensure that the finished product would play on other peoples machines. DVD+ didn't have any of these issues and also offered a far more flexible approach to managing data on re-writable disks. Decision made!

Installation of the drive is simple enough, pretty much like a standard CD-ROM drive if you have ever installed one. A matter of 5 minutes attacking the PC with a screw-driver and it was done. Windows XP recognized the drive as a DVD-writer and I was ready to go. The supplied software arrived on two CDs which contained Nero, NeoDVD, WinDVD and WinProducer. Between them, the supplied software packages cover everything from burning a Data DVD (nero) to editing and authoring DVD Videos (Win Producer and neoDVD). While not being amazimgly powerful, the editing/authoring software is easy enough to use. In fact it's so easy that I managed to write an old wedding video to dvd, complete with menu page and titles in under an hour (including the time to burn the disk!). I found Nero to be a little less friendly (and stable) than EasyCD and so un-installed it.

As well as burning DVD+R and +RW disks, the Ricoh will also perform as a standard CD-writer/re-writer although it's not as fast as a dedicated CDRW drive (only managing a write speed of x12). On the up-side, the drive has a feature known as "Just-Link" which effectively makes it impossible to suffer from the dreaded "buffer Under-run" which can render whole discs useless. In addition to preventing buffer under-run, the drive can also perform packet writing, meaning that a DVD+RW disk can effectively be used as a (very slow) hard disk. I've not actually tested this yet, but it should work in theory.

The drive is very quiet in use, no whirring/whining/groaning when it reads or writes. The controls on the front
panel are standard, an open/close button, volume wheel and headphone socket. The layout on the back is familar too, with a power connector, IDE and audio-out interfaces.

I know that at least one of you wants to know if it can copy films... the honest answer is "I don't know, I've never tried it". Apparently there is a software company in the US that is being sued by the major film studios for writing a program that CAN copy DVDs with a drive similar to this, but I haven't bought a copy. In any case, the legalities of copying DVDs are obviously dubious and it should not be done.

On the whole, the drive is a relative bargain. But only if you REALLY NEED to burn DVDs. If I wasn't such a sucker for a gadget I doubt I would have bought it... It's excellent as a CD Burner (if a bit slow) but given that you can buy CDRW dives that are 4 times faster and 4 times cheaper, it's not great value. As far as DVDs are concerned, it does what it says on the tin. Both write-once and re-write disks are supported and I've not had a problem burning one of either yet. I have had issues playing burned DVDs on my (now ancient) Samsung 709 DVD player though, so even the highly-compatible DVD+ format will fall fould of some of the really old DVD players. Newer players (like the Toshiba SD220) haven't been a problem.

Now that I think if it, I've only ever burned 4 DVDs in 4 months. Not one of them has turned out a "coaster", but I am starting to question the wisdom of this particular purchase...

Summary: