DVD computer players seem to be maxed out at 16x.

[Bob W]

I wonder why that is?

[NightWing]

I think is physics. Saw somthing a while back that the top is 16X where it looks like CD are limited to around 58x.

[JamesB69]

I once saw a 72x CD-ROM, but i was skeptical. dont ask me where i dont remember but i did see it.

[NightWing]

That was one of those multibeam jobs I think. Problem city!

Other hyper speed units are realy drives with hyper cach to store info to speed thigns up.

[Jester700]

Yeah, the 72x was a three beam Kenwood.

Single beam CDRoms at 52x are spinning faster (10k RPM) than a IDE hard drive, using 20 cent media; they've topped out because of physical limitations.

DVD Roms at 16x are running into the limits of the media they're copying to. With transfer rates up to 22,000 KB/s, they already match some hard drives, especially on the HD's inner tracks. So what's the benefit of spending money to engineer a faster DVD Rom?

[NightWing]

Plus it takes a lot of laser power to zap a track as you go faster.

Also I am not sure but think Kenwood got into class action lawsuits over that drive since it was flakey. Also not sure if it would only do it 72x on stamped not burnd media also.