Ricoh MP5120A

A battle is about to commence in the consumer DVD arena. Only a few months after Pioneer launched its DVR-A03 DVD-Writer (see Reviews, issue 83, p160) and DVD-RW format, a rival format has hit the shelves in the form of DVD+RW. The technology is owned by Philips, with the first desktop burner appearing in the form of Ricoh's MP5120A.

While only DVD-RAM, DVD-R and DVD-RW formats are endorsed by the DVD Forum, DVD+RW is backed by two of its founding members - Philips and Sony. Both companies have put their name to DVD+RW hardware, as have Ricoh and Hewlett-Packard, with further hardware expected from Mitsubishi and Yamaha. It should be added too that the DVD Forum isn't a standards-setting body, and there isn't yet an agreed rigid standard for recordable DVD formats.

DVD+RW discs can be single- or double-sided, with 4.7Gb of available capacity on each side. Data is written with a 650nm laser to spiral grooves with a high-frequency radial wobble, allowing writing to be suspended and resumed at an accurately defined position. The process gives rise to lossless linking - preserving the integrity of data during the writing process. This is claimed to improve performance with variable bit rate video, as well as increasing the disc's chances of playing on older hardware. Lossless linking also allows individual 32Kb blocks of data to be replaced without compromising the compatibility of the disc. DVD+RW also has defect management, helping to prevent data corruption during the burn process, and discs don't need to be finalised in order to play on other devices. Overall, the biggest claim for the format is its compatibility with existing DVD-ROM drives and set-top DVD players - a claim that will only be justified with time and real-world experience.

DVD+RW discs have the same authoring limitations as General Use DVD-R and DVD-RW discs, however, as areas of the disc that would normally contain copy protection information and regional codes can't be written to. This is a deliberate move to prevent piracy of retail DVDs, but also prevents the drives and discs from being used for mastering your own commercial projects for duplication.

The Ricoh MP5102A drive reviewed here will write to DVD+RW, CD-R and CD-RW. It won't burn to write-once DVD-R discs but it will, thankfully, read them. Launched at a competitive £426, the drive offers a lot of bangs for your buck, featuring 12-speed CD-RW recording, ten-speed CD-R recording, plus JustLink buffer-under run protection, as well as 2.4-speed DVD+RW burning. There's also a comprehensive and well thought-out suite of software applications, almost all of which are geared towards DVD-Video creation.

The MP5102A installs in the same way as a normal CD-ROM drive or CD burner. No special drivers are required, although it's important to ensure DMA is enabled. The software bundle is generous and includes the packet-writing program B's Clip and the CD/DVD-writing software B's Recorder Gold, both from BHA. In use, the MP5120A proved a capable performer. A 1.62Gb file copied to DVD+RW in only nine minutes at around 3Mbytes/sec, while 614Mb took six minutes to burn to CD-R, meeting the 12-speed claims.

Bundled is an impressive suite of video tools from InterVideo. WinDVD software DVD player does a good job, but movie playback obeys the rules of regional coding, allowing the user to change regional settings five times only. WinCoder is a software encoder for creating DVD-compliant MPEG-2 files and VCD-compliant MPEG-1. It creates MPEGs from video files stored on the hard drive and can also record from external sources directly to DVD-compliant MPEG. WinProducer is a basic video-editing program, sporting some good features, including insert editing and picture-in-picture overlay with keyframable movement. AVI or MPEG files can be edited with this program and, while it won't export projects directly to tape, it will encode from the timeline in DV or MPEG formats. Sadly, its DVD-compliant MPEG output is NTSC only, meaning that the video must be exported as DV and encoded with WinCoder for PAL projects.