Appearance, specifications, and analysis
Just looking at the drive from a purely visual perspective, it's highly reminiscent of Lite-On's range of drives. Their trademark specification numbering (48x24x48) appears here. If I didn't know better (and perhaps I don't), the TX Venus II appears to be a rebadged Lite-On. That's no bad thing in my book, however. The front also houses the volume control and headphone socket. The usual LED is there and in operation when burning is taking place. You may not be able to make it out, but we have a little 'Ultra Speed' insignia on the top right. This denotes its status as a 10x+ CD-RW burner.
It's usual for CD-ReWriter manufacturers (or distributors) to specify models on 3 characteristics. The 48x24x48 refers to the CD write, CD rewrite, and CD read speeds respectively. 48x write and 48x read speeds is just below the very top-end drives. A couple of manufacturers have recently announced, and are shipping, 52x models. The trouble that the layman may have when trying to understand speeds is the fact that the drive doesn't write at 48x all the way through, it speeds up as it reaches the faster portions of the disc (CAV). Where this particular drive is notable, though, is in support for faster rewriting speeds (CDRW), an aspect that is often overlooked in the search for pure writing (CD-R) speeds.
The back of the unit is largely standard fare with all the connections that have become commonplace on optical drives. The drive was supplied to us in OEM form with no retail packaging or associated media. We were provided with a burning program in the form of PrimoCD from Veritas. I chose to use my own version of Nero for burning tests. I'm assured that the drive will be presented in full retail form in the very near future.
Installation was the non-event that I had hoped it would be. The combination of Windows XP Pro and a spare IDE slot meant that no untoward incidents occurred at any time. Looking at Nero's useful Infotool, here's what we found:
Pretty much what one would expect. The drive itself is identified as a CDR-6S48 with a 2MB buffer. With buffer underrun protection enabled on almost all new CD-RWs, and the increases in hard drive / optical drive speeds in recent times, the need for a large buffer has been greatly reduced. Here's how Nero saw it. You can see that it uses the Smart-burn approach to burnproofing.
Conforming to the new Mount Rainier standard (it allows, amongst other things, for formatting of CD-RWs in the background, the ability to write directly to a CD-RW without using special software. Basically make it as friendly as a floppy drive), the drive is cutting-edge in most aspects. The only problem that I can forsee, and it happened to me, was the inability to source CD-RW media that can live up to the 24x CD-Rewrite speed. Current high-speed CD-RW media tops out at 8 - 10x, so 24x is quite a leap in technological terms. The newer Ultra-speed CD-RWs (24x) are supposed to be hitting the market soon. Unfortunately, sourcing them right now is a problem.
