PI errors from Nero CD-DVD Speed

[TWLreal]

I remember reading somewhere, most probably from AnandTech or possibly CDFreaks, that an acceptable number of PI errors on a disc quality scan should be "a few hundreds." Something under 200 or so is considered near perfect.

I've decided to scan some of my backups to see what results I've got and the results confused me a bit.



Was that "few hundreds" number of PI errors the MAXIMUM or TOTAL? Because goddamn if it is TOTAL, there are over a million of them! The disc still plays fine and the surface test shows everything is green.

Now, even if it were MAXIMUM, I'd still have 355 PI errors, which compared to these images from the sticky thread, is shameful:





MAXIMUM of 17 and 9, and TOTAL of 26,329 and 2711 respectively. Jesus, The numbers are so low.

I've also read updating your firmware would fix the problem, but B7T9 has been good to me and my BENQ 1620.

Should I be worried about these numbers if my disc still plays fine since I don't really feel the need to update my drive right now.

[dipstick]

The graph you should be most concerned with is PI Failures (lower graph) as this gives the most problems for playback. Your original scan looks fine and you have nothing to worry about. Don't get all worked up because it's not as good as that near-perfect scan. Everything needs to be just right to get a scan that good. The media needs to be perfect, but only about 2% of the disks you find will be that good.

[dipstick]

Looking more closely at those other "near perfect" scans reveals something interesting. They are scaned @ 1.28x. Now who the heck scans @ 1.28x? And if it had 0 PI failures, it should allways score 100, yet one of them scored 99.

It smells like an edit job to me. Don't believe those scans!

[BoilerUp]

I'm the one who posted those second two scans.

Looking more closely at those other "near perfect" scans reveals something interesting. They are scaned @ 1.28x. Now who the heck scans @ 1.28x?

I guess I do. I opened up Nero CD-DVD speed, selected disc quality scan, and hit start. As far as I can tell, there is no way to scan faster. If there is a way, I'd be more than happy to do it.

And if it had 0 PI failures, it should allways score 100, yet one of them scored 99.

I don't know what to tell you. Maybe it was because the Ritek one had a lot more PI errors.

It smells like an edit job to me. Don't believe those scans!

You got me. I edited the scan just to make everyone else jealous of my near-perfect scan. You really exposed me right here.

The purpose of that scan was not to show people what types of scans they should be getting. From what I can tell from the stickys, the process is highly subjective and can vary depending on which drive you use. The purpose was to get people to buy Taiyo Yuden instead of Ritek or CMC.

[dipstick]

I agree that good compatable media makes all the difference. I've gotten scans that good, but they are few and far between. I'm not calling you a liar, it's just that they look a little suspicious.

Anyway, the original poster's scans are fine and should not have any playback issues related to burn quality with those disks. Also note that the same disk scaned on multiple drives will produce different scan results.

[Gen-An]

CD-Speed doesn't work properly with the 810A firmware; it won't report any PIFs. If the drive is crossflashed to BenQ firmware however it will function correctly.

[BoilerUp]

CD-Speed doesn't work properly with the 810A firmware; it won't report any PIFs. If the drive is crossflashed to BenQ firmware however it will function correctly.

What do you mean by crossflash? Does that involve downloading firmware for the BenQ DW-1640 for my Sony DRU-810a? And are there any risks to doing that?