Test Procedure: Discs And DVDs Used

The selection of blank discs that we received for this test would have been plenty for a tower of DVDs.

We used four original DVDs for our tests: Pink Panther as DVD-5, 5th Element as a defective DVD-5, as it is heavily scratched, and Cast Away for the DVD-9. All test drives had to read these three DVDs completely. We used "Der Eisbär" for the benchmarks, and the soundtrack from Star Trek Insurrection for audio extraction.

The change in German copyright law might just have ruined the complete test, because the DVD movies used, except "Der Eisbär", were copy-protected, making forcible evasion by means of software intended for this purpose illegal since mid-September. We completed these tests during the first week of September, which was fortunate, since it would no longer have been possible to repeat these tests and we had already returned several of the burners.

We would like to note at this point that prior to copying copyrighted material, you are obligated to find out for yourself whether you would thereby be circumventing copy protection. You are subject to the copyright law of the country in which you reside.