X-bit labs

LG GSA-4163B DVD±RW Dual Layer Burner Review: New Member in a Successful Family (page 12)

Category: Storage

by Vasily Melnik

[ 04/05/2005 | 10:09 PM ]

Single-Write (Non-Rewritable) Media

Now we can check out how good the new drive is at burning DVD media. Single-write (non-rewritable) formats first.

Quality of DVD-R disc burning by LG GSA-4163B at 4x speed
 

As I said above, the drive could only work at this speed in Nero Burning ROM, so I can’t offer you a graph of the burn session. The subsequent reading of the burned disc was performed without problems, making us expect a high-quality disc.

The result doesn’t meet the expectations, though. The quality is obviously bad, with tall and lengthy surges of PI errors and failures all around the disc. Once again we meet an optical drive in which the developer pays little attention to optimization of the burn strategies for the lowest burn speeds. The developers must have decided that 4x media were already obsolete. On the other hand, this may be due to me using not a 4x blank, but an 8x medium which is optimized for a higher burn speed.

Beta/Jitter and TA Test (Inner, Middle, Outer)
for the disc burned by the LG GSA-4163B
 
 

The asymmetry is normal; its fluctuations fit within the acceptable range. But the jitter rate is high and is not uniform. That is, the jitter rate is increasing considerably in the second half of the disc. TA Test, however, says it’s all right with the jitter: its uniformity might be better of course, but the drive has no problems with maintaining the required pit/land lengths, save for 3T. The drive “underburns” 3T lengths due to some errors in its firmware. So, I’m inclined to think that there’s a minor defect in the burn strategy coupled with the use of a high-speed medium, because the drive’s optics work well. Now let’s increase the speed to 8x.