X-bit labs

LG GSA-4163B DVD±RW Dual Layer Burner Review: New Member in a Successful Family (page 14)

Category: Storage

by Vasily Melnik

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

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

Again I can’t offer you the burn graph, since Nero CD Speed didn’t offer this burn speed and I had to write the blank in Nero Burning ROM. The burned disc was read without errors or slowdowns. As for the quality, we’ve got an excellent disc here, unlike in the DVD-R 4x test. The rate of PI errors and failures is very low, and the low total of PI errors (9276) also testifies to the high quality of the disc. Considering this excellent performance, I now suppose the bad result of the DVD-R 4x test was more due to the deficient burn strategy rather than to the use of a high-speed blank.

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

The asymmetry is excellent: the fluctuations are small, so the graph is almost a perfectly flat line. But you may notice that the beta value and the jitter rate are growing up towards the outermost tracks of the disc, probably due to the laser power correction. TA Test confirms the high quality of the disc: the jitter is low, without overlaps of adjacent pit/land lengths in the diagram. The overall result is somewhat spoiled by the rather high Peak Shift, i.e. the average pit/land lengths are a little shorter than they should be.

Quality of DVD+R disc burning by LG GSA-4163B at 8x speed

 

The previous model of the LG drive wouldn’t burn the test disc at 8x speed (agreeing on 6x at most), so I publish the results for the new model only. The burn graph you see shows my attempt to write the disc in Nero CD Speed at 8x speed: the device burns the disc at 12x anyway. I could only burn the disc at 8x in Nero Burning ROM, but I can’t offer you the burn graph. The written disc was read without errors, and its quality is beyond praise: the total of PI errors is very low (5526), and the average PI error rate is below 5. That’s almost perfect quality! So, the GSA-4163 works better with DVD+R than with DVD-R media at 8x speed.

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

The beta value is always in the acceptable range; the average level and uniformity of jitter is acceptable, too. The results of TA Test somewhat spoil this bright picture, though. The new model has problems maintaining the required pit/land lengths, especially in the middle of the disc and on the outermost tracks. But the overall quality of the disc is high, anyway. There are some flaws, but who is perfect in this world?