LG GSA-4163B
by Andrey Kuznetcov
06/30/2005 | 09:14 AM
Tests of DVD media are still a hot topic of the day. There are just too many brands on the market, and it’s just impossible to check them all at home to find the best ones due to time as well as money considerations.
We, at X-bit labs, are trying to do our best to assist you with your choice and are offering you our next review of DVD media. The immediate reason for our writing this review is the arrival of the new generation of DVD-R discs that permit burn speeds up to 16x. That is, DVD-R now stands even with DVD+R in this respect. Of course, we’ve added media of other types, too. Particularly, we have retested some discs we wrote about in our article called Ultimate Testing of Recordable DVD Media Discs.
We have tried to respond to your feedback to these earlier articles by using the capacity of the media more fully and employing more optical drives in our tests. So, this time we don’t only evaluate the quality of DVD media, but will also get some knowledge as to the burn quality of these optical drives.
Let's take a look at our testbed and the burners we used for our tests.
So, we now use four optical drives in our tests. These are all considered good burners among the users:
The basic characteristics of the drives and the versions of their firmware are present on the screenshot:
LG GSA-4163B
NEC ND-3520A
Pioneer DVR-109
Plextor PX-712A
Unfortunately, we didn’t have the Pioneer drive that supports 16x burn speed .This limited the scope of our test session somewhat.
Since we check out the quality of the media in the first place (with the same utilities we have used before) and only then the burn quality of the optical drives, we have to employ a reference drive which is the same Lite-On SOHW-1653S with firmware CS09. It is going to act as a kind of referee. In case you don’t know or have forgotten, the scanning of the surface of a disc can be done without problems in drives on MediaTek chipsets. Success is not guaranteed in other cases.
We use two test utilities for getting the most objective results and meet the demands of our readers. During the tests we recorded MPEG4 movies on the media and added a few extra files to fill the capacity of the disc as fully as possible.
The configuration of our computer was like follows:
We attached the optical drives to the second IDE channel as “Master”.
The following software was used in the tests:
The DVD-RW/+RW discs were recorded at the maximum speed they are rated for by their manufacturers. If this information was unavailable, we determined it practically, finding the maximum possible speed. The DVD+R/-R media were also recorded at a speed twice lower than the maximum they supported. The subsequent scanning of the written discs was performed at a constant speed of 4x.
Before getting to the tests proper, we want to remind you about the criteria we guide ourselves by when evaluating the recorded discs and the drives. We scan the surface of a disc with two programs – CD-DVD Speed and KProbe – that assess the quality of the disc by counting up the number of PI errors and PI failures.
The ECMA standards for DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW media say that the total number of PI errors in 8 subsequent ECC blocks should not exceed 280. This is the first limiting value we will base our judgments upon. A PI error is a row in an ECC block which contains at least one erroneous byte. A row in its turn consists of 182 bytes in which the last ten bytes contain Parity Inner information. Each ECC block contains 208 rows where 16 last rows contain Parity Outer information. So, an ECC block should not contain more than four irrecoverable PI errors (an irrecoverable PI error is referred to as PI failure by KProbe and CD-DVD Speed).
Thus, we consider those DVD discs as quality media that have no more than 280 PI errors and 4 PI failures per one ECC block. The errors of the second type, the irrecoverable ones, are the worst, of course.
This approach to analyzing the test results isn’t perfect, though. In some cases there are just single spikes of errors in a few spots of the disc that exceed the allowable maximum, while the rest of the disc surface is quite perfect. Thus, such a disc might be wrongly considered inferior to a medium where there are much more errors in total but without high spikes above the allowable maximum. So, in order to make your choice correctly, you should examine the screenshots with the surface-scan graphs and look at the total number of the errors or at their average rate. This way you’ll have the fullest picture of the quality of a particular disc.
As we mentioned at the beginning, this review is about the media rather than about the optical drives. So, the results are grouped by disc, and we start out with the DVD+R format.
Click to see all details
| |
| |
| |
| |
The first summary table and the accompanying screenshots show you the results of the Digitex DVD+R 8x disc. Some comments about the table: for easier reading, the measured maximums of errors that conform to the ECMA requirements to quality discs are given in blue. Green marks discs that comply with these requirements according to both test programs. Yellow marks discs that successfully pass the quality test in one of the test programs. Orange signifies that none of the test programs consider this disc as a quality medium.
There are no results in the table for the sample of the disc recorded at 8x speed by the Pioneer DVR-109 drive because the drive wouldn’t burn the blank at this speed, although Nero listed it as possible in its dialog window.
So, what do we have here? The results of the surface scan tell about a high quality of the blanks. Even though besides the above-mentioned incompatibility the maximums of errors are formally higher than the norm in four graphs more, we only have real problems with the disc recorded at 8x by the Plextor PX-712A.
In the other two cases, the discs recorded at 4x by the Plextor PX-712A and the LG GSA-4163B do exceed the allowable maximum of PI failures, but they are not that bad in practice. In the first case, the corresponding KProbe graph has small red bars on the horizontal axis which mean the quality of the medium is high, while the spike of 68 failures is not visible at all. The CD-DVD Speed diagram for the other drive shows a single spike of 88 failures at the very beginning of the disc. Thus, these problems must be due to some accidental factors as the graph from another test program where the errors are all within the acceptable ranges, suggests.
The NEC ND-3520A 8x achieved the best burn quality on the Digitex DVD+R 8x, while the Plextor PX-712A was the least confident of the participating optical drives in this test.
Click to see all details
|
|
|
Our method of testing DVD media faltered on the RIDATA DVD+R 16x. The LG GSA-4163B wouldn’t work with this disc, while the other drives had to use highest possible speeds instead of the planned 16x and 8x as the disc’s characteristics should have permitted. As you can see from the table, the Plextor PX-712A wrote the disc at 8x, and the other two drives at 4x. Of course, these are not ideal conditions for a correct comparison. These problems will probably be solved in next firmware updates for the drives.
So what can we say as to the quality of the RIDATA DVD+R 16x disc in such conditions? It’s of course hard to be objective here. Note only that the sample produced by the Pioneer DVR-109 at 4x has the best quality. The maximums of PI errors and failures are within the ECMA norms on this disc. The sample recorded at 4x by the NEC ND-3520A didn’t fit into the requirements of the standard. The disc recorded by the Plextor PX-712A has the worst quality, but it was written at 8x, so we cannot compare this result to the discs recorded at 4x.
Click to see all details
| |
| |
| |
The only dual-layer DVD+R disc in this review is a product selling under the RIDATA brand. Once again we had some problems: the Plextor PX-712A just wouldn’t recognize a loaded blank. The other three drives couldn’t achieve maximum quality in either test program. But although there are no formally good discs here, we can see that the LG GSA-4163B is the best of the optical drives. It is not a regular winner only because KProbe found a spike of 102 PI failures at the beginning of the recorded disc. Nero CD-DVD Speed, however, found only 3 failures, which is quite acceptable. So, the difference is colossal, what’s wrong? You can get an answer to this question by examining the graph of the scanning performed by KProbe. We just can’t see that 102-PI-failures-high spike there: the diagram says the entire disc has no more than 3 PI failures at most, like Nero CD-DVD Speed reports. So, the spike is probably a single and accidental thing. Thus, we consider the results of the LG GSA-4163B as highly satisfactory. This is another confirmation of our point that you should read carefully the surface-scan diagrams rather than just the resulting tables with numbers. The worst-quality disc came from the NEC ND-3520A.
Considering these results, we should say that our optical drives didn’t find the RIDATA DVD+R DL 2.4x disc a very digestible thing.
Click to see all details
| |
| |
| |
| |
Next goes the TDK DVD+R 16x. There would spring up an error message as we tried to burn one in the LG GSA-4163B at 8x speed in Nero Burning ROM, so the corresponding number is missing in the table. The table’s entry for 16x speed with the Plextor PX-712A is empty, too, because this optical drive does not support this burn speed (we won’t remind about this fact in other such cases, so keep it in mind). Summing up the rest of the results we should say that the TDK DVD+R 16x is a worthy product. The total number of errors of both types is very small, especially that of PI errors. There’s only one drive, the NEC ND-3520A, that didn’t fit into the requirements of the ECMA standards: both blanks recorded by this drive had too many PI failures. Yet, these were rather single spikes, while the average error rate was quite normal. So, once again we should acknowledge the high quality of the TDK DVD+R 16x disc.
Click to see all details
| |
| |
| |
| |
This is another high-speed recordable disc participating in our tests. A couple of numbers is missing in the summary table: the disc recorded by the NEC ND-3520A at 8x speed could not be read by our reference drive.
The Verbatim DVD+R 16x is a high-quality medium according to the surface scans. The maximums of PI errors and failures as measured by both test programs are far below the acceptable limits. None of the four optical drives had problems burning these discs. And the discs produced by the LG GSA-4163B seem to be the best of all.
Click to see all details
| |
| |
| |
| |
The next category of discs to be discussed is the DVD-R format. A cursory glance over the table says it’s all right with the Digitex DVD-R 8x. Almost all the samples recorded at two speeds have fewer errors of both types than the maximums set by ECMA. The only exception is the result of the blank recorded by the Pioneer DVR-109. Here, KProbe has counted a maximum of 80 PI failures, which is far above the acceptable limit of 4. Yet if you examine the graph carefully, you will see that there’s just a single spike of PI failures which by far exceeds the average PI failure rate. So, we can consider this as a special case resulting from the operational algorithm of KProbe and affecting but slightly our verdict about the disc.
It’s hard to say which drive is better with discs of that brand, but the Plextor PX-712A seems to be somewhat worse than the other three.
Click to see all details
| |
| |
| |
| |
Now we’ve come to one of the two discs that made us write this review. This is the TDK DVD-R 16x blank that you can see above. One of results is missing in the table because the sample recorded by the LG GSA-4163B at 8x speed could not be read by our reference drive. As for the other samples, they are of satisfactory quality, especially as concerns PI errors. The maximum of PI failures is higher than the norm on the disc written at 16x by the NEC ND-3520A. But again, if you take a look at the corresponding graph, you can see that the allowable maximum of 4 PI failures is exceeded in just a few separate spots. This is not a regular thing, so don’t bother. The same is true for the disc recorded by the Plextor PX-712A: the maximum of 5 PI failures spotted by KProbe is just a single spike on the graph, so this is just an accident. It’s exactly the same with the disc written at 16x by the Pioneer DVR-109 where there’s a single overshoot of PI failures above the acceptable limit.
By the way, when we were burning discs in the Pioneer DVR-109, Nero Burning ROM would hang up just as the progress bar hit the 100% mark. Although the discs were subsequently read in Windows Explorer, the quality check results may be incorrect. The reason for this problem must be hidden somewhere in the drive’s firmware.
There are no definite leaders at processing TDK DVD-R 16x blanks among the participating optical drives.
Click to see all details
| |
| |
| |
| |
The next disc from the same company is rated for 8x burn speed. It’s hard to find any fault with this blank, as the summary table suggests. Almost all the samples of this disc are of high quality. The only exception is the blank written by the LG GSA-4163B: the maximums of PI errors and failures as measured by the two test programs is a few times more than recommended in the ECMA specification for high-quality discs. We couldn’t even test the medium in Nero CD-DVD Speed – the program would hang up. But this must be the drive’s fault rather than the medium’s. So, the NEC ND-3520A and the Pioneer DVR-109 perform better than the other two drives with the TDK DVD-R 8x, while the LG GSA-4163B is the worst here.
Click to see all details
| |
| |
| |
| |
We’ve come at last to the second DVD-R 16x disc which had become one of the reasons for our writing this review. The Verbatim trademark must be maintained high, so let’s see what we have this time around. The blank recorded in the Plextor PX-712A is clearly bad, having an unacceptably high number of both types of errors. The limit of PI failures is also exceeded on the disc recorded by the NEC ND-3520A. This time, however, it’s not too bad, if you examine the scan graph: the PI failure rate is above 4 at the beginning of the diagram only and is no more than 2 afterwards. The rest of the recorded blanks are even better than that, having acceptable PI error and failure rates. So, the new Verbatim DVD-R 16x disc is going to serve well to users of DVD-recorders.
The LG GSA-4163B and the Pioneer DVR-109 produced discs of higher quality than the other two optical drives.
Click to see all details
| |
| |
| |
| |
The Verbatim DVD-R 8x is the previous-generation recordable medium from the same brand and it upholds the reputation of the brand quite well as the test results in the summary table suggest. There’s only one disc of poor quality – the one recorded by the Plextor PX-712A. The maximums of errors of both types are many times above the norm on this sample, but it must be the drive’s blame after all. At least, the other tested samples of this disc are beyond doubt of high quality.
The NEC ND-3520A is the best among the other three optical drives at burning Verbatim DVD-R 8x media.
Click to see all details
|
|
|
We’ve got to rewritable media at last. The Digitex DVD+RW 4x disc was the first tested. Like we said at the beginning of the article, all such media were recorded at one, maximum speed. One entry is missing in the table: Nero Burning ROM would issue an error message as we tried to burn a disc in the Plextor PX-712A. The three tested samples of the disc cannot be considered high-quality products since they’ve got too many PI failures. Meanwhile, the maximums of PI errors are within the norm.
The LG GSA-4163B has performed better than the other optical drives here.
Click to see all details
|
|
|
|
Three out of four samples of the Fujifilm DVD+RW 4x disc are almost equally good, especially as concerns the maximums of PI errors which are very low. Once again the quality of the disc produced by the Plextor PX-712A violates the quality regulations. The maximum of PI errors is higher on this disc if compared to those on the discs produced by the other three drives, but it is within the ECMA norms anyway. As for PI failures, there’s just a couple of overshoots above the norm. Otherwise, even the disc from the Plextor is quite satisfactory.
So, we can’t but acknowledge the high quality of the Fujifilm DVD+RW 4x disc. The poor results of the Plextor PX-712A in comparison with the other three drives are most probably the drive’s own fault, rather than the blank’s.
Click to see all details
|
|
|
|
The quality of three samples of the Imation DVD+RW 4x disc is satisfactory, while the disc recorded by the Pioneer DVR-109 is evidently worse, with the maximums of errors of both types exceeding the limits. Once again we suppose this is incompatibility of a particular disc with a particular drive. The Imation DVD+RW 4x medium is good overall.
As for the optical drives, the LG GSA-4163B and NEC ND-3520 perform well here.
Click to see all details
|
|
|
|
None of the drives had problems with the Philips DVD+RW 4x. The surface scan brings good news: the maximums of errors are only slightly higher than the norm on the disc from the LG GSA-4163B. The maximum of 33 PI failures reported for the Plextor PX-712A’s disc is just a single spike at the beginning of the surface and is only reported by one test program.
So, this medium is worth your money. And the NEC ND-3520A performed better than the other optical drives in this test.
Click to see all details
|
|
|
The summary table isn’t complete because the disc recorded by the NEC ND-3520A could not be read by Nero CD-DVD Speed, while the Plextor PX-712A couldn’t burn this medium at all. Then, the disc from the NEC ND-3520A is downright bad as reported by KProbe.
In the remaining two cases, the quality of the resulting discs is quite high. The maximum of PI failures is 5 instead of the acceptable 4 on the disc recorded by the LG GSA-4163B, but this is a single occurrence, as the graph shows.
So, the Sony DVD+RW 4x seems to be a good medium, while the problems the two drives had with it are probably their own fault. These problems may vanish with firmware updates.
Click to see all details
|
|
|
|
The quality of the recorded disc does not comply with the ECMA requirements. The problem is the allowable maximum of 4 PI failures is exceeded on every sample of the TDK DVD+RW 4x disc. The maximums of PI errors are within the norm, though. Thus, this disc cannot be called perfect, but it is not downright bad, either.
The optical drives match each other in this test. The Pioneer DVR-109 is maybe somewhat worse than its opponents.
Click to see all details
|
|
|
The Verbatim DVD+RW 4x could not be recorded by the Plextor PX-712A, so the appropriate cells of the table are empty. The results of the discs burned by the other three drives are nice, especially with respect to PI errors. Two samples of the disc had a slightly higher maximum of PI failures than necessary.
So, we should note the acceptable quality of the Verbatim DVD+RW 4x medium and single out the astounding burn quality the Pioneer DVR-109 has with this medium: the maximum of PI errors is almost a one-digit number!
Click to see all details
|
Next go discs of the DVD-RW format. Unfortunately, we just wasted much of our time since our reference drive couldn’t read most of them. We could only test one sample of the Digitex DVD-RW 4x disc – the one recorded in the Pioneer DVR-109. The maximum of PI errors is normal on this disc, but the maximum of PI failures is not.
Again, our tests were incomplete, so it’s up to you to decide if this medium is worth your attention.
Click to see all details
|
The drives recorded samples of the Fujifilm DVD-RW 2x without problems. But unfortunately, we had the same story during the tests: the reference drive could only read the disc recorded by the Pioneer DVR-109. The results in the table indicate that the quality of that disc is high with respect to both types of errors.
Click to see all details
|
It’s almost the same as in the previous case: the Plextor PX-712A couldn’t burn an Imation DVD-RW 2x, and two more samples could not be read in our Lite-On SOHW-1653S. As for the disc recorded by the Pioneer DVR-109, there are few PI errors, but the maximum of PI failures is above the norm.
Click to see all details
|
It’s the same with the Sony DVD+RW 2x, too. All the drives recorded this disc without problems, but our reference drive could only read the one from the Pioneer DVR-109. As you see, the quality of that disc is excellent. There’s little chance of getting anything better in practice.
Click to see all details
|
We have the same thing with the Verbatim DVD-RW 2x as with the previous disc: our reference drive could read only one out of the four recorded discs, the one recorded by the Pioneer DVR-109. The test results say the quality of the blank is high, so the drive has done a good job here. The maximums of errors of both types fit perfectly into the ECMA requirements.
As we said at the beginning of this article, we wanted to solve a twofold problem in our tests. First, we wanted to check out the quality of a pile of DVD discs and, second, to see which optical drive was preferable as concerns quality burning. Have we succeeded? Not quite, because we couldn’t do in practice everything we had planned. Particularly, our reference drive Lite-On SOHW-1653S couldn’t read some media written by some of the drives. Here, we met the compatibility problem which could not be avoided. But still, a negative result may be sometimes as useful as a positive one. At least, you get a better understanding of problematic situations and ways to solve them. Compatibility issues have also risen up with the Plextor PX-712A which just couldn’t burn a number of discs in Nero Burning ROM. It’s highly possible that many such problems can be easily corrected by adjusting the software/hardware system the optical drive and the burning software constitute. We mean firmware updates, of course.
The results we have got in our tests must not be regarded as absolute truth. The quality of the same discs written in other drives may differ from what we’ve seen in our tests. It is also possible that you may encounter the above-mentioned incompatibility and your drive with its current firmware just will not burn a certain blank.
After this kind of disclaimer, we can say a few words on the tested media. In the DVD+R category, the Digitex 8x, TDK 16x and Verbatim 16x have performed well. The RIDATA 16x can be put in here, too, but none of the four optical drives could burn it at 16x, and only one drive did the burning at 8x. This must be due to the drives’ firmware, so it would be too hasty to reject this medium altogether.
The discs of the DVD-R format have been in the focus of this review due to the arrival of blanks from TDK and Verbatim rated for 16x. Both these discs have performed well. We have no concerns as to their quality. We have no such concerns about the 8x blanks from Digitex, TDK and Verbatim, either.
In the DVD+RW category, high-quality media are Imation 4x, Fujifilm 4x, L-PRO 2.4x, Sony 4x, Philips 4x, Verbatim 4x. Indeed, the rest of the participating discs aren’t hopeless, either. As for the DVD-R format, all the discs we’ve tested are high-quality products, especially the ones rated for 8x max speed. If you rewrite discs of the DVD+RW format, you’ll have a smaller chance of getting any problems with such blanks as Fujifilm 4x, Imation 4x, L-PRO 2.4x and Philips 4x. The Sony 4x, TDK 4x and Verbatim 4x are most probably going to perform well, too. As for the last, DVD-RW category, it’s harder to make any conclusions since we couldn’t test them fully. Yet, the quality of the Sony 2x, Verbatim 2x and Fujifilm 2x is impeccable.
The other aspect of this review is the optical drives. We can’t tell which one has proved to be the best. You could see for yourself that this or that drive would yield a disc of a higher quality depending on the brand of that disc. Yet, taking into account such things as stability and compatibility of the recorded media with our reference drive, the Pioneer DVR-109 seems preferable. To our surprise, it was the Plextor PX-712A that experienced more problems with the media than the others in terms of both compatibility and quality of burning. But this is most probably the fault of the particular version of the drive’s firmware.
Concluding this conclusion, we want to make an announcement our next test of DVD media. We are going to write it as soon as there appear rewritable discs with support of burn speeds above 4x and when there are more high-speed recordable discs available. We won’t forget about dual-layer DVD-Rs, either.
We will probably give up one of our test program, choosing either Nero CD-DVD Speed or KProbe because it takes huge amounts of time to test the discs in both programs.
Yet, we are still not sure about which program to use. Sometimes they yield very different results that influence our opinion about the quality of a disc much. But maybe new versions of the programs will have been released by the time of our next test session, and our choice will be more obvious?
