Philips DVDRW208 DVD Writer


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Philips DVDRW208


OEM:
Ricoh
Chipset:Ricoh
12xCDR CLV
10xCDRW CLV
DVD-R
DVD-RW
DVD-RDL
DVD+R
2.4xDVD+RW CLV
DVD+RDL
DVD-RAM
BD-R
BD-RE
BD-R DL
BD-RE DL
HDDVD-R
HDDVD-RW
HDDVD-RDL
HDDVD-RWDL
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32xCD
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BDROM
HDDVD
EIDE, 2MB
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More info
$200 0.0/10
45 votes
Read 58
comments

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DVD Media comments for this DVD Writer (click on the link to read the comments):
1 Arita 2.4xDVD+RW (RICOHJPNW01) comments, 1 good, 0 mixed, 0 poor.
1 Hyundai 8xDVD-R (TYG02.......) comments, 1 good, 0 mixed, 0 poor.
Post your DVD Media comments here
Comments
58 comments, Showing 1 to 25 comments
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I've had the 208 about a year now and can't complain.
I knew when i bought it that it was +rw only which is ok for me as my DVD reads them. I can understand some peoples problems but I read the small print on the box and it does what it says.
For me it burns about 10 or 15 movies a week and has never failed on cd-r/rw either. Yes ,it's not the best and the advertising was crap. I just wish the discs were cheaper,but hey they can be used 1000 times which is handy as I don't have space to store discs at the rate I burn them. Some have had problems with the burn speed..is their PC up to it,more burn speed needs a better PC.
I'M HAPPY with the 208,sure its not perfect but it suits me.


Comments posted by Terry from Other, October 20, 2003. Rated this writer 9 of 10.





Hello.
People seem to give this peace of sh.. a 9 out of 10 just because it actually manages to burn DVD+RW. What else is it supposed to do? I rate it at 1 of 10, and that goes for the Philips web and support as well. As some other people I also want to use DVD+R format as an alternative to RW. Who wouldn’t? And I heard that RW208 supports both +RW and +R. But as you all know it doesn’t.

I guess it is true that Philips had a huge overstock of this RW208 model and dumped this drive onto European market (including Norway). I got it in this bundled package that I bought. Now I am stuck with the drive because I like the rest of the package and refuse to return the whole lot (the only available alternative from the salesmen). I therefore need to replace this DVD drive myself. And I will! Any recommendations?

But to give Philips some credit I have to mention that if they stay out of the Computer / PC DVD Recorder Drive market or take some wisdom from their development of Standalone DVD Players, then they can become interesting again. I have a Philips DVD 733 player and it is a 9’er. (Not because it actually plays DVD’s, but because it support most formats and a variety for DVD and CD discs).


Comments posted by Einan from Other, May 15, 2003. Rated this writer 1 of 10.





I have this device, and it works fine for me, except that it doesn't write DVD+R. But it's perfect for backing up data. Gave it an eight because it doesn't support DVD+R


Comments posted by Bram from Other, April 08, 2003. Rated this writer 8 of 10.





I bought this drive from PC World for £135, because it was a 'returned item' and also all the application software had been nicked from the box. No problem for me, as I already had Nero and other relevant (and better) software I could use instead, so I thought it was a bargain.
I should say that although it was mixed up on the shelves with a bunch of 228's, the box was quite clearly labelled as "RW" and NOT "RW/R". In fact the girl at the checkout was kind enough to point out the difference to me (a rare moment of corporate honesty). Fine by me, especially at that price.

I installed it and used it several times and it's pretty good, with no probs. Ok, yes, in an ideal world I'd like it to burn DVD+R's as well, but what the heck, I'm fairly happy for the moment....


Comments posted by Blank Frank from Other, April 02, 2003. Rated this writer 8 of 10.





This dvd writer works fine with me. It burns dvd+rw perfectly and they play on nearly every stand alone dvd player.
The access time for reading cd's is very high and it's too bad it can't burn dvd+r but for the rest it's fine with me.
I learned creating a dvd is a bit of complex thing. Maybe this is why many people have problems with burning dvd's


Comments posted by Frank from Other, March 17, 2003. Rated this writer 8 of 10.





The new firmware 1.61 doesn't allow you to burn on +R but Philips will let you trade your 208 in for a 228 if it is under a year old. I been having problems with Verbatim DVD+RW's my standalone won't read all of tem. Great software called DVD X Copy lets you copy DVD's with all the menus and extra features you can check it out at either www.321studios.com or www.dvdxcopy.com


Comments posted by Guy from Other, March 16, 2003. Rated this writer No rating.





I believe this is the drive that came on my new Dell 8200 2.26 GHz PC (new Philips DVD+RW-D01 - June 2002).

What a piece of crap.

It's never worked correctly and has ruined about $100.00 worth of media already. The only thing it will right to are el cheapo CD-Rs and DVD+RWs (NOT el cheapo).

I'm trashing this drive and getting a good Sony, you should too if you ever want to author a DVD correctly.

This Philips drive is a piece of J - U - N - K.


Comments posted by surferXPro from Other, March 02, 2003. Rated this writer 5 of 10.





Well I bought this Drive about a year ago. I just found out that it will not burn DVD+R format. But my packaging clearly stated that it would. So I called philips consumers hot line at 1-888-541-5837 (9AM-11PM Mon-Fri and 11AM-10PM Sat-Sun Eastern time. They told me to return the drive for an upgrade to the DVD+RW228 which will burn the DVD+R format. All its costing me is shipping cost of the old drive. And a few days of down time. I was quite surprised at this after reading in this group that Philips tech support was bad. But it sounds like they know they made a mistake and are going to make good on there advertising. Just makesure you kept your box and the software that came with it. On the box it clearly stated it would burn 4.7GB to DVD+rw or DVD+r. Plus there is to be no sticker on the box that states otherwise. So it sounds like they found the error then covered it, just to deal with the ones who will raise a fit over it.


Comments posted by Chris Veeneman from Other, February 19, 2003. Rated this writer 8 of 10.





Wish I had not bought it. Ik got the OEM DVDRW208K version.
This +RW drive is *NOT* compatible with my standalone
LG DVD 4730 drive.

I tried three authoring tools under ms windows, and I tried
authoring under linux.

All four attempts failed with the same problem:
The DVD+RW medium (also by Philips) would only play video without
any sound on my LG DVD drive. The sound is present on the disk,
because the 208 does play it with sound.

Philips customer support is NON EXISTENT in the Netherlands,
Philips' home base for crying out loud.

Do yourself a favor, and stay away from this crappy drive,
and ditto customer support.

Bram


Comments posted by Bram from Other, February 08, 2003. Rated this writer 1 of 10.





oh....and 8 out of 10 for the Philips for my previous post, 8 as i've only had it half a day and anything could happen!


Comments posted by Russ from Other, December 08, 2002. Rated this writer 8 of 10.





I've just bought the Philips DVDRW228 today from PC World, after reading all these comments on the 208 model i'm glad that's not the one I got. Anyway it cost me 250 quid and I'm well pleased with it, i've already written 4 DVD+R's today that playback great on my Panasonic A160 and my Philips 701 (i also wrote to DVD+RW first and they worked the same)i've been writing onto Datawrite DVD+R's that cost me £1.50 each with the latest version of Nero that came bundled with it, i've ripped a couple of dvd's with Clad DVD into a VIDEO_TS folder on my hard drive and just dragged and dropped it in nero and hey presto! 25mins later a complete rip that plays back perfectly!


Comments posted by Russ from Other, December 08, 2002. Rated this writer No rating.





Have this writer for two weeks. It works fine. I don't know why
people are complaining about this dvdwriter not writing dvd+r.
I looked very carefully and read carefully about the technical
specs on the box, "compatibility for writing" and didn't mention
anything about dvd-r. No wonder PHILIPS do not answer.
Of course, I would have liked that this machine to write on dvd+r.
Next time I buy another dvdwriter I will be more carefull I guess...


Comments posted by Phil from Other, December 08, 2002. Rated this writer 9 of 10.





PC world nice false advertisement duped me into buying this piece of S**T for £250. Wasnt til i stumbled across this forum for hints on how to copy that i found out it didnt make DVD +R, which was the whole reason of me buying the drive. Even the supid idiot in the shop said yeah it does make dvd+R's, and the web page for it says so as well (it also advertises dvd -r's at the bottom of its page aswell)

THANX GUYS FOR LETTING ME SEE THIS B$ MY 10 DAYS WERE UP.
CHEERS

Yearlus


Comments posted by yearlus from Other, October 15, 2002. Rated this writer 1 of 10.





I've also seen the DVDRW208 in PC World supposedly at a discount. Knowing it was the old model I decided not to buy. I went back last weekend and saw some DVDRW228s mixed in with the 208s at the discounted price, and couldn't resist buying one. The price is at least £100 cheaper than anywhere else.


Comments posted by Anthony from Other, September 11, 2002. Rated this writer No rating.





Nice one Petzo! Thanks for setting the record straight.

Incidentally, for those of you in the UK, PC world is now selling this drive 'on sale' for £250 claiming it was £350 and now has a £100 discount! Don't believe the hype!!! It never was £350 since I remember that it was £250 in April and foolishly bought one (and returned it after 3 days) in July.

This product is being dumped onto the market at a claimed discount - there is no discount!!!


Comments posted by Atilla from Other, September 11, 2002. Rated this writer 1 of 10.





To continue my story, I returned the DVDRW208! Get the money back and ordered myself a Pioneer A04 (DVD-R & DVD-RW) via internet. This one was even cheaper than the Philips. (read the reviews for this drive) Anyway, What I read about Philips is not very nice... Approximately beginning this year 2002 they released the RW208 drive for the US and there was some info included saying that it will be capable to write DVD+R's in the future after a new firmware upgrade. When DVD+R's came out (after the DVDRW208 release date by the way) Philips noticed they couldn't solve this issue and released a new model DVDRW228 drive. Probably because of judicial reasons they had to give a refund or exchange to the DVDRW228 model. They had a huge overstock of this RW208 model and dumped this drive onto European market in a new box without the DVD+R slogan and a little cheaper price-tag. Even I heard they removed several PDF files on the site as well. Like always Europe is the garbage of commercial failures.


Comments posted by Petzo from Other, August 19, 2002. Rated this writer No rating.





It has successfully written 3 DVDs and they played well on a Magnavox(Philips) MDV450 settop unit. I Erased one disk and recorded a new movie on it and that too played!
The only two limitations are the MyDVD software it is bundled with gets a 4, and the limitation of no DVD+R. (I'm told that DVD+R is more widely compatible and cheaper) I don't understand why it costs US$150 more to sell a burner with +R capability, but this +RW drive works for me; and I can erase my mistakes. The media cost me US$15 for 3 disks. The unit was on sale as a opened-box for US$270.


Comments posted by Mr.Halliday from Other, August 05, 2002. Rated this writer 9 of 10.





I read so many things about this drive... After I bought it, stupid me. I just bought it last week for a very low price of only 400Euro! This is a DVDRW208K model I have (K is probably a revision type or K for KRAP!) I read at some PC Magazine review it also writes to DVD+R disc, I TRIED!!! and hell no it does NOT! Like I hear before DVD+R today only can write singel speed 1X and this drive only can write min 2.4 speed! So maybe in the future... or maybe not! better play safe and return this piece of shit! I give 2/2 points for our best NERO!


Comments posted by Petzo from Other, July 20, 2002. Rated this writer 2 of 10.





The philips is a cross between daylight and darkness . it works well, authoring dvd's in good time bt it only reads philips dvd-rw disks and nothing else, so much for brilliance


Comments posted by Ola Awoyele from Other, July 15, 2002. Rated this writer No rating.





I picked one of these up on sale at BestBuy friday for $299. I've sucessfully authored two DVDs with the Sonic MyDVD software that came bundled with the drive. Both played well on my Samsung M301 player and my five year old Pioneer DVL-700 combo DVD-LaserDisc player.

Media was Verbatim DataLifePlus DVD+RW, 3 pack also on sale at BestBuy for about $25.

Rated a 9 instead of 10 because not upgradable to work with DVD+R discs.

Other comments:

Sonic MyDVD worked with direct capture from camcorder and also of DV codec avi files previously saved to my hard drive. However, I'm having problems getting it to import MPEG2 files encoded with TMPGEnc Plus.


Comments posted by Roger from Other, July 13, 2002. Rated this writer 9 of 10.





I give it a 2 for the neat looking lights. If you like to loose data, this is the drive for you. Philips lied when they wrote the .pdf specs on this drive. It doesn't support +R as philips said it would. I'm glad I didn't pay the full retail price for this clunker. This is a piece of beta hardware that should have never been released to the public. The software that came with it is buggy and the install cd didn't work under XP. Back to the drawing board philips. "I've got to admit its getting worse.. getting worse all the time.." Do yourself a favor and don't invest in DVD+RW until these big companies get it right. One more thing, I called philips support regarding the lack of +R support and they hung up on me.


Comments posted by Doug from Other, July 12, 2002. Rated this writer 2 of 10.





Hi i bought this DVD Writer in the uk and its appauling!, im taking it back, The man in the store said "This writes everything including DVD+R's"... ok it blatently doesnt! and also it sounds as if a chainsaw is killing the disks when erasing them! like i read before this is an utter lemon.


Comments posted by Gareth from Other, July 07, 2002. Rated this writer 1 of 10.





This is an utter lemon!
Things did not bode well when I installed it and the installation program crashed on the first attempt. Trying it the second time worked and I was soon to be impressed at it's data burning ability (boys with toys I suppose...). Now for the crunch test - video.
Things slowly got from bad to worse. Sonic MyDVD doesn't allow you to drag or add video files as it says it does in the manual which I printed out (all 95 pages - thanks for nothing!!!), so I tried the next best thing, a direct copy of an original DVD film.
I tried the resulting copy in my Wharfedale DVD-750S (whose customer services said it would support DVD+RW) only to get a 'no disc' message. Things are getting annoying now....
Tried it in my desktop LG GCC-4120B - nothing - didn't even see the data! Finally, I tried it back in the Philips itself - it saw the data, but couldn't play it (I got jerky sound and no picture).
So, my main reason for spending £250 (watching film and mpegs on stand alone players) was up in smoke.
I really tried to like this Philips, Lord knows I've bought enough brilliant TVs from them, but when confronted by this streaming pile you just have to walk away.
I'm tempted not to bother with the DVD route at all after the excellent results I got with VCD, but if I do I'll get the Pioneer DRV-A04as people seem to get the best results with that.
I'll keep you posted.


Comments posted by Robert Hegedus from Other, July 06, 2002. Rated this writer 1 of 10.





The drive just works perfect in writing dvd+rw. It is quick and reliable also with CD-R. I did not see any incompatibility except in my 2 years old dvd-rom.
+rw disks are expensive, but with a little searching they can be found for say $6 each and that is not too much more expensive than -rw.
I am also pretty happy with the sonic software.

If I have to give drawbacks, they would be the installation software (did not work at all, but XP recognises automatically, so do not bother) and the firmware upgrade which does not work on my machine.


Comments posted by eric zaal from Other, July 02, 2002. Rated this writer 8 of 10.





Just got the philips dvdrw208 installed it myself works really well been burning cd's and dvd's no problem got to say i think it is pretty shit that it will not support dvd-r but otherwise it's very good.
once a dvd is authored only took 18mins to burn a 1hr 20mins movie no problem and works fine on my stand alone player(watch it six times already in the past week).
some people have criticize the philips208 but why then has pc advisor
rated this the best dvd writer for the last three months(may.june and july)


Comments posted by macca from Other, July 01, 2002. Rated this writer 9 of 10.




58 comments, Showing 1 to 25 comments
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1 DVD Writer hits, Showing 1 to 1 DVD Writers
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Column Explanation:

Click on this for more technical information.

New comments= New comments since your last visit.
New Writer = New DVD Writer since your last vist.

OEM
Original Equipment Manufacturer.


Chipset

The manufacturer of the main chipset the DVD writer/recorder is based on.


Write support / Read support
DVD-R
= Works
DVD-R = Is not supported
DVD-R? = Not tested


Single Layer(4.7GB) write speeds
1x (CLV) = about 58 minutes
2x (CLV) = about 29 minutes
2.4x (CLV) = about 24 minutes
4x (CLV) = about 14.5 minutes
6x (CLV/ZCLV) = about 10-12 minutes
8x (PCAV/ZCLV) = about 8-10 minutes
12x (PCAV/ZCLV) = about 6.5-7.5 minutes
16x (CAV/ZCLV) = about 6-7 minutes

Dual/Double Layer(8.5GB) write speeds
1x CLV = about 105 minutes
2.4x CLV = about 44 minutes
4x CLV = about 27 minutes

Single Layer (4.7GB) read speeds
1x read speed is 1.321MB/s = ~56 minutes
6x CAV (avg. ~4x) read speed is max 7.93MB/s = ~14 minutes
8x CAV (avg. ~6x) read speed is max 10.57MB/s = ~10 minutes
12x CAV (avg. ~8x) read speed is max 15.85MB/s = ~7 minutes
16x CAV (avg. ~12x) read speed is max 21.13MB/s = ~5 minutes


DVD Write types
CAV = Constant Angular Velocity, the DVD is written at a constantly increasing speed.
CLV = Constant Linear Velocity, the DVD is written at a constant speed.
ZCLV = Zone Constant Linear Velocity, the DVD is divided into zones. After each zone the write speed is increased.
PCAV = Partial Constant Angular Velocity, the DVD is being written at an increasing speed until a certain speed. After this speed it will not increase anymore.


Connection
Desktop = Standalone desktop DVD Recorder
EIDE = Computer DVD Writer with EIDE/IDE connection
SCSI = Computer DVD Writer with SCSI connection
USB = Computer desktop DVD Writer with USB 2.0 or/and 1.1 connection
FireWire = Computer desktop DVD Writer with IEEE 1394/FireWire/i.Link connection (some standalone desktop dvd recorder supports this also but then it is usually to connect your DV camera to the recorder)


Rating
The first rating is based on a weighted rank (the true Bayesian), it requires at least 5 votes to get a weighted rating.
The second rating between the ( ) is a normal average rating.


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