X-bit labs

LG GSA-4163B DVD±RW Dual Layer Burner Review: New Member in a Successful Family (page 17)

Category: Storage

by Vasily Melnik

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

The dual-layer medium was burned and then read without problems; both drives reached their maximum declared read speed. We can now examine the quality of the discs, but don’t forget that the previous model did the burning at 2.4x, while the GSA-4163 at 4x.

The rate of PI errors and failures is higher on the first layer of both discs, but the results of the GSA-4163 are considerably worse because of the higher burn speed employed. The disc burned by the new model has 10 times more PI errors than the disc produced by the GSA-4160. Thus, the total number of PI errors is 17 times better with the previous drive model. As for PI failures, the GSA-4160 has 18 times less of them. The PI error rate on the disc from the GSA-4163 is in fact close to the acceptable limit. The burn strategy evidently calls for improvement here.

Betta/Jitter

The asymmetry varies in a rather wide range on the first and second layer of the disc, but never goes out of the acceptable range. The increase of the laser power is clearly seen as the drive goes over to the second layer of the medium. The jitter rate goes down at that, again indicating that the second layer is manufactured better than the first one.

Despite the rather high error rate at reading, the results of TA Test suggest that the new model can keep the pit/land lengths just as they should be. Adjacent lengths do not overlap in the diagram, and the Peak Shift value is low. All in all, the disc is burned with a better quality than one might think looking at the total number of PI error and failure blocks.