

Remember, the region locking was at the request of the major film studios, the drive makers develop their own locking system, not the studios. While they may state an official limit to the unlocks, it isn’t likely that this limit really exists. Therefore, since the drive maker or OEM reseller does not want to create ill will with their customers, they can reset the locking counter. This is also likely the reason why the drive seems to support more than is officially recognized and why some vendors may support different optionsĪs for region locking, this is a scheme created by the motion picture industry, not the drive maker.
MATSHITA DVD RAM UJ8A2ES DUAL LAYER INSTALL
Since these are vendor specific, it doesn’t seem like a good idea to install the firmware from another computer maker. This explains why Toshiba’s firmware is at 200 vs the standard 100. Any updates come from the computer maker as needed. Therefore, they do not issue firmware updates for that drive. Īccording to Matshita’s website, the 845S is an OEM product. Nero InfoTool gives the following report on the capabilities of the drive: Drive:īasically, the drive supports almost every format you could possible want! Note the difference in what Panasonic believe is the drive speed, and what Nero reports. The official capabilities of the drive are: It is also suitable for appropriate SFF PCs, and could be used in conjunction with the right housing to provide a slim line external DVD burner. The drive is a standard 12.7mm notebook unit that should fit most notebooks. That’s good going even by desktop standards.įor the purposes of this review, an Acer Travelmate 800 was used as the test notebook, replacing its standard QSI CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive. However it is easily purchased from any number of websites, and for a surprisingly reasonable cost, especially considering that is dual-layer, slot-loading, and supports DVD-RAM. Marketed as an OEM drive, the UJ-845 is unlikely to be found in retail stores.

The latest notebooks will undoubtedly contain a DVD burner, but the great majority will be lacking this feature. Typically a notebook will have a CD burner, possibly with DVD reading capabilities. One of the few upgrades paths is the optical drive. The parts are difficult to obtain, are generally more expensive, and people are nervous about opening up an expensive piece of equipment.
MATSHITA DVD RAM UJ8A2ES DUAL LAYER UPGRADE
Notebooks are not usually big on upgrade potential.
