Testing  

We performed all tests under the following conditions on the following system...

Test Bed:

• AMD Althon 64 3500 + (200x11 @ 2200)

• A8V Deluxe

• 1 GB ram(2x512/2-2-2-5)OCZ Platinum R2

• WD740 Raptor Hard drive

• Playo 8x DVD+R

• Memorex 16x DVD+R

Software:

• Nero CD/DVD Speed 3.60

• Nero InfoTool

• Nero Burning Rom

The standard run of tests was thrown at the LITEON 18x Burner immediately. Ten discs were burned, speed tested, and quality tested to get a good idea of what the overall quality of the burner was. The reproducibility of the results was impressive. None of the tests resulted in a variance beyond +/- 2%. After the ten grueling burn tests, the Memorex discs still managed to have an average PI failure rate of 2.79 and an average PI Error rate of 38.08. With the Playo 8x discs, the PI failure rate was 3.41 and the PI Error rate was 106.61. The good people over at CDfreaks (www.cdfreaks.com) have come up with sufficient methodology to bring sense to these numbers.

"Use this as a guideline for good discs:

* PI (Parity Inner): No larger areas on the disc should exceed 280 PI-8 errors. Do not worry too much about high single spikes that exceed 280.
* PIF (Parity Inner Failures): No larger areas on the disc should exceed 4 PIF-1 errors. Do not worry too much about high single spikes that exceed 4."

It becomes increasingly apparent that the quality of the media in use has a bearing on the quality of the burn. The images show a negligible, but definite, difference in disc quality between brands of writable media. When looking at the writing and reading speeds of the drive, you get acceptable results that do not blow the doors down. On the other hand, neither do most other burners. Out of the gate, the drive pushed at 6.75x. The drive topped out on this 16x media at 16.17x, thus averaging out to a humble 12.10x. The CAV graphs show a similar progression when looking at transfer rates. The drive starts the transfer at 2.95x and rises to 16.33x, which still averages out to 12.00x. The seek times for this drive are standard. There is nothing to complain about, other than the audio infringement. For its price range, these figures are more than acceptable, especially with the quality levels produced. 

Following the standard tests, the drive pumped out several DVD movies. The other players in facility worked well with both types of media. Of the twenty discs burned, none had any problems in other burners and players. Compatibility issues seem to be handled well with LiteOn's writing technologies.

Time to wrap things up...