Toshiba SD-M1912 Review

DVD-ROM READING TESTS

DVD Read Performance

For our read tests we tried various types of DVD recordable media, which included: DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD+R DL, DVD+R, DVD-RAM and a pressed DVD-ROM disk.

DVD-R READING

Firstly we checked its performance with a DVD-R disk using Nero CD Speed (DVD Speed incorporated):

The drive can only read DVD-Rs at 6x Max. In our test it averaged 4.76x and finished at 5.54x towards the end. Its seek times were very good.

DVD-RW READING

At reading DVD-RW disks it's only a 6 max CAV reader. Under our test it reached 6.35x towards the end and averaged 4.75x speed.

DVD-ROM SINGLE LAYER READING

The Toshiba SD-M1912 performs well averaging 12.21 speed but it dropped its speed again towards the end of the disk. It almost reaches it's maximum speed at 15.49 towards the end.

DVD+RW READING

For all recordable media it seems the Toshiba can only read them at 6 speed max. It averaged 4.75x speed and reached 6.36 towards the end of the DVD+RW disk. We had problems with CDSpeed displaying the length correctly on the Plextor 716A but its speed was:

Plextor 716A DVD+RW: Start 5.01 x, End: 8.11 x, Average: 8.60 x

As you can see the the Toshiba 1912 is only slightly faster then its 3 year old brother the 1612 and is much slower than the new Plextor 716A DVD Writer.

DVD+R READING

[ The Toshiba 1612 does not recognise disks with the "+R" booktype and setting it to "DVD-ROM" fixes it but then Nero CD/Speed wont allow a comparison - in any case it managed to read only at 2x CLV. ]

On the other hand the Toshiba SD-M1912 read +R media without any problems and averaged 4.74 speed, peaking at 6.34 on the outer surface. As you can see the Plextor 716A is much faster at reading +Rs.

DVD+R DUAL LAYER READING

We next tried a Verbatim Double-Layered disk recorded at 4 speed.

As you can see above it had no trouble reading it and it reads them at 6 speed max towards the outer surface of both layers. In our test it averaged 4.73 speed.

DVD-RAM Caddy-less Reading

The Toshiba 1912 can read DVD-RAM disks out of their caddy:

The drive reads DVD-RAM disks at 2 CLV max. Above you can see it averages 1.98X speed.

DVD CSS Video Ripping

The Toshiba SD-M1912 can read dual layered disks at 8 speed CAV. Below you can see it read with an average speed of 6.35x and maxed at 8.42 speed.

I 22:46:35 DVD Decrypter Version 3.5.1.0 started!
I 22:49:14 Source Device: [0:0:0] TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-M1912 TM00 (E:) (ATA)
I 22:49:14 Source Media Type: DVD-ROM
I 22:49:14 Source Media Region Code: 2
I 22:49:14 Source Copyright Protection System Type: CSS/CPPM
I 22:49:14 Destination Folder: L:\decryptiontest\
I 22:49:14 Detect Mastering Errors: No
I 22:49:14 File Splitting: By File
I 22:49:14 Multi Angle Processing: No
I 22:49:14 Remove Macrovision Protection: Yes
I 22:49:14 Stream Processing: No

...

I 23:05:24 Operation Successfully Completed! - Duration: 00:16:09
I 23:05:24 Average Read Rate: 8,124 KB/s (5.9x) - Maximum Read Rate: 11,659 KB/s (8.4x)

Plextor 716A Average Rip Speed: 7.9 x

Toshiba's Average Ripping Speed: 5.9 x

The Toshiba's ripping speed was 5.9x - while not the lowest its not fast either and is beaten by most newer DVD-ROMs.

ERROR CORRECTION - SCRATCHED DVD

Different drives handle scratched / unreadable DVDs differently - some can take hours to read in data, whilst others have inferior error correction abilities and can only read limited data from the disk. The older Toshiba DVD-ROMs from Japan were regarded as the best.

For this test we used a disk with 3 scratches, ink, finger prints, dust on a Ritek disk.

At first CDSpeed refused to benchmark and run the scan disk and would terminate without any warning but reverting to an older version fixed this problem. The Toshiba SD-M 1912 took 31min and 06 seconds, in comparison the older Toshiba SD-M1612 took 19mins and 20 seconds and reported only 6.38% unreadable.

Page 4 - Last Updated: 6 January 2005