My best DVD reader - LG (by a mile)

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers
#1

My LIte-on 16a7 has been burning only “test” discs lately. They have a huge number of errors. Some would call them coasters. So I bought an LG GSA H62N. It looks like a smart move.

I ran the transfer rate test (TRT) on one of my “test” discs with all my drives. The excellent LG was a bit of a surprise. The fact that my oldest Litey was the best Litey and my newest Litey was the worst was no surprise.


Drive              TRT time
LG  H62N           4:37  (perfect graph)
Litey 1693         8:05
Litey 165H6       11:48
Litey 16A7        40:25  (as bad as it gets without aborting)

The Quality Scan shows the same thing, except the LG can't scan.

Drive         total PIF count
Litey 1693      299,000         
Litey 165H6   4,700,000
Litey 16A7    7,900,000

I ran the scans twice with virtually identical results. Just to be clear, I ran all these tests on the same disc.

It always seemed to me that Lite-On was going down hill. I’ve always believed my 1693 was my best drive. I hope Lite-On has broken the trend with their new 20x drives.

#2

Here are the Disc Quality tests that correspond to the TRTs.

dq_LITE-ON_DVDRW_SOHW-1693S_KC4B_03-August-2007_19_56.png645×531 48.1 KB

dq_LITE-ON_DVDRW_SHM-165H6S_HS0E_30-July-2007_20_12.png645×531 50.1 KB


#3

I can attest to the LG being the best reader. But, as you note, the Liteys still finished the job. I wish that the LiteOn engineers had gone on the safe side, though, and made the new drive generation a little more sensitive so that it would slow down for the rest of the read when it detected errors, and didn’t have these newer drives try to go flat out with the max RPMs possible. But that’s why I have my 1693S :smiley:

My experiences:
LG: speed demon that overcomes severe digital errors (PIE,PIF, etc)
Lite-On: speed demon that overcomes physical issues [finishes burns where others cannot due to bad manufacturing; reads through the scratches]
BenQ [the 1655 and earlier]: flat-out speed demon on pristine discs; gets through burns that trip up the LiteOn

#4

I’ve been keeping my 1693 sitting on the shelf, in an external enclosure. I only use it for special occasions, cuz it was my best drive and they don’t make them any more. It looks like it ain’t my best drive any more, although I haven’t burned anything with the LG yet.

#5

I don’t use my H62L for reading but i do use it a lot for burning. I’ve been using one of my BenQ 1655’s for reading lately.

#6

I may have put the Liteys at a slight disadvantage by using a -R disc. They seem to prefer +R. An indication of that is the +R “test” disc I burned with the sick 16a7 had a mere 370,000 PIFs when scanned with the 16a7. I figured that was too few errors to challenge the LG.

#7

My 1693S was shelved until today, when i dusted off it and the BenQ 1640 for a burn of CMC mag just to see how it’d do compared to the LG 4166B, 20A1H, and Sammy 182M. Both the LiteOns trounced the other drives, and the LG made some bad scans. BenQ only wrote at 8x [others at 16x], and Samsung was decent, but not the best. But that’s a different story.

#8

Now I’m really confused :slight_smile: You are saying I want a Litey for burning, (and scanning) and I can keep the LG on the shelf for reading those “problem” discs. And all the while I thought the LiteOn was the best reader :doh:

#9

IMHO, the other 2 Liteys are good all around burners and readers. But in the context of the two SATA, the LG is good for those problem discs, and pretty much will do a lot better than your 16A7S. It all depends on what gives you the best burns, and right now, it’s defintely NOT the 16A7S. I would stick with the LG, most definitely.

[Only pull the Litey SATA out if you find that the LG won’t read a certain disc. After all, that’s about the only benefit you will get–and that might not ever happen.]

Sorry for the confusion :doh:

[off-topic]
How does a burn done on the LG look on the SATA Litey, as far as scans and TRTs go?
[/off-topic]

#10

[B]steve b:[/B]

So the 16a7 drive is the newest Lite-ON writer model? Support for the Prodisc media seems very poor. I would stop wasting that media with the drive as it clearly has major writing compatibility issues.

Reminds me of later Lite-ON CD-RW drives support for some early CD-R media, awful :rolleyes: :Z

#11

No, the 16a7 is the newest I own. The new Liteys are the 20x and 18x 1 series. I believe they have some Benq/Phillips technology in them and are hopefully better drives. The 16a7 is an orphan. Apparently rushed to market because it’s SATA.

The big problem isn’t the Prodisc media. The 16a7 has lost it’s ability to make a decent burn. I burned an MCC 003 with it and had 400,000 PIFs.
The Quality scan looks almost identical to the Prodisc scans. If there are any Sherlock Holmes types out there, maybe you have enough info to figure out what went wrong with the drive.

So the 16a7 now is my testing drive. It can produce “test” discs like there is no tomorrow, and it’s the best drive for running TRTs because it’s the poorest reader.

#12

That’s a nice choice–a testing drive :flower:

Maybe if you ever get bored, you can ask the firmware pros in the Litey subforum if they can help you crossflash your drive to a 16A1S [SATA version of the 16W1P, I guess? :confused: ].