Learning
Many DVD-writers have a learning feature (branded with names like "smart-burn") that allows the drive to collect empirical data from its actual usage. The drive stores data from previous burns in its EEPROM, allowing it to adapt the default write strategies to account for individual drive variations, such as calibration, which may be affected by environment and age.
A newer feature contained in some DVD writers allows a drive to invent write strategies for unknown media types, ostensibly reducing its dependence on firmware to provide explicit compatibility. However, because the drive initially knows nothing of the media type, early burns are frequently of poor quality, and the media's optimal strategy may never be found. Thus, in practice, this form of learning is generally a last resort, and firmware support is preferable. An attempt to address this weakness is online learning, which allows the drives to share learned data. Branded technologies that incorporate this form of learning have been given names like "solid burn" and "hypertuning".
In either case, if the history data is reset, or if the data is skewed by a series of irregular burns, the speed and/or quality of a typical burn may not be optimal until the history is repopulated with proper result data again.
Read more about this topic: Write Strategy
Famous quotes containing the word learning:
“The child does not begin to fall until she becomes seriously interested in walking, until she actually begins learning. Falling is thus more an indication of learning than a sign of failure.”
—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)
“Justice turns the scale, bringing to some learning through suffering.”
—Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.)
“The value of a family is that it cushions and protects while the individual is learning ways of coping. And a supportive social system provides the same kind of cushioning for the family as a whole.”
—Michael W. Yogman, and T. Berry Brazelton (20th century)