khypermedia KHCRW522452. Who?

[TedKord]

I picked up one of these free-after-rebate at OM yesterday,
but can't determine who it's a rebadge of. It's model #
KCHRW522452, made in china. Don't see the firmware listed
anywhere.

I need to decide whether to put it in my sister-in-law's machine,
or give her my lite-on 40x12x48 (flashed to 48x12x48) and keep it
myself.

She doesn't need the best, she only occasionally burns music CDs.
Mine gets much more of a workout.

Any info is appreciated. (BTW, Khypermedia's website sucks. No info
at all, not even the drive's features - Mt. Ranier, etc...)

 

[Ionizer86]

It's generic. It's not the best, but it tends to work (at least it works much better than BenQ drives).

 

[TedKord]

Well, if it's not a rebadge, then where does Khypermedia hide their firmware upgrades?
Not linked form their website, that's for sure.

 

[neuralfx]

khypermedia is rebadged everything .. for any particular device it may be rebadged from various manufacturers that include TDK, CMC Magnetics, Artec, Lite-On, and even Benq .. I can't find who that particular model is .. but most of their CDRWs seem to be Benq ...
-neural

 

[TedKord]

Ah, thanks for the info. I did see that they do seem to rebadge quite a few brands.

The dig is, they brag on the box that it's firmware flashable, then don't seem
to have any firmware downloads whatsoever on their site. In fact, they have
almost nothing on their site.

Well, maybe I should stick with my Liteon 48X. What will the 52X gain me, a few
seconds over an entire disk?

 

[TedKord]

For anyone else's knowledge, I went ahead and installed this drive in my rig.
It's apparently a BenQ, with firmware Y.AS
I took a chance, and flashed it with the latest firmware. Y.ES - successfully.
Nero InfoTool states that it IS Mt. Ranier, 52X Read, 52X write.

Interestingly, though it's supposed to be a 52x24x52 model, Windows device
manager (Win98SE) IDs it as "Atapi 52X32 CDRW". It ID'd it as that BEFORE the
firmware flash. Wonder if this is actually a BenQ 52x32x52? I never use RWs, since
CDRs are so cheap. Never tried to rewrite before.

I burned an audio CD with it at 52X with the bundled Nero Express 5. The CD played
fine on my DVD player downstairs, but sounded like crap on my daughters CD/Clock radio.
Could be that the cheap clock radio has trouble reading CDRs, or the cheap Precision
brand CDR I used, or maybe even the CDRs are only rated at 40X or so. I don't know.
All I know is that it played with MUCH static, and very tinny sounding. By comparison,
a store bought CD sounded fine in it. (As good as it can through those tiny, cheap speakers).