detail information

What's inside the box?

On this page we will take a look at what the drive came shipped with and take a look at the drive and its techniques.

Here is the box that contains the drive:

At least there is no doubt about the manufacturer of this drive when you look at the box. The main specifications are also clearly visible.

But a nice box is not enough, there have to be something inside it, so we opened the box and took out the content of it:

As we could see the package is pretty complete, to be sure that nothing is left out we list the content of the box below:

Box content:

⋅         The drive itself
⋅         Quick install guide
⋅         Small safety notice paper.
⋅         A 'Thanks for buying this drive" paper.
⋅         Audio Cable
⋅         4 screws
⋅         Sonic Software CD with: MyDVD, RecordNow DX and DLA (packet writing).
⋅         PowerDVD DVD Video player installation CD.
⋅         One empty 4X DVD+RW disc (made by ricoh).

This is really an impressive bundle with empty media as well as all programs you could possibly need. The only things missing are IDE cable and a printed manual, we also noticed that unlike the LDW-411S package there is no DVDR disc included.

Now it's time to take a look at the drive itself:

The front is physically identical to the front of the Lite-On LTC-48161H Combo drive we reviewed a while ago. A pretty plain and clean looking front, there is not more to say really.

As we could see out from the sticker on the drive, our drive was manufactured in November 2003 at a factory in China.

On the back of the drive there is the usual connections, from the left there is: six pins used transfer individual calibration data to the drive at the factory, digital audio connector, analogue audio connector, pins and jumper to set the drive to cable select, slave or master, IDE connector and power connector.

The newer manufactured Lite-On drives are the shortest drives we have ever seen. The old Lite-On drive to the left is short compared to many other drives so the new Lite-On drive to the right is very short compared to all other drives we have seen. Nice for small cases, probably saves some cost during manufacturing as well.

We quickly installed the drive without any problems and fired up Nero Info Tool to get an idea of which features this drive supports:

Our drive came shipped with firmware HS0E. Firmware HS0K will be used in this review, there is also a newer firmware version HS0P but we had some problems with that version and decided to go with version HS0K. As most other manufacturers Lite-On choose to equip their drive with 2Mb buffer that we feel is a bit small. This drive supports everything except Mt. Rainier and DVD-RAM reading/writing.

And another shot from Nero Burning ROM:

We do not really find anything alarming here either, but a larger buffer and Mount Rainier support would have been nice.

Now it's time to take a closer look at the write technology used by the Lite-On LDW-811S:

CD-Recordable:

As we could see the Lite-On LDW-811S uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write at its rated speed of 40x, it actually reaches 41.84x at the end. This gives an average speed of 31.71x and a total write time of 3 minutes and 1 second. Let us compare this result to two other writers:

The NEC ND-2500A uses Z-CLV(Zone-Constant Linear Velocity) to write at its maximum speed of 32X. The drive wrote the last zone at 32X and this gives an average speed of 27.16x.

As we could see the Plextor PX-708A uses P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular Velocity) writing strategy to reach it rated speed of 40X. This gives an average speed of 33.38x.

3 drives and 3 different types of writing strategies, in practical use this means that the Lite-On LDW-811S is about 6 seconds slower than the Plextor PX-708A and 33 seconds faster than the NEC ND-2500A.

CD-ReWritable:

The Lite-On LDW-811S uses P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular Velocity) write strategy to write at 24X for Ultra Speed CD-RW discs, again let us see how this compares to two other drives:

As we could see the NEC ND-2500A uses CLV(Constant Linear Velocity) write method to write at its rated speed of 16X for Ultra speed CD-RW.

The Plextor PX-708A with its P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular Velocity) write speed of 24X for Ultra Speed CD-RW discs is for sure faster than the NEC ND-2500A, and due to slightly higher start speed it's also faster than the Lite-On LDW-811S.

In practical use this means that the Lite-On LDW-811S is about 17 seconds slower at writing a full 80min Ultra speed CD-RW disc compared to the Plextor PX-708A, but is 1min and 30 seconds faster than the NEC ND-2500A.

8X DVD-Writing speed:

The Lite-On LDW-811S uses Z-CLV(Zone-Constant Linear Velocity). The first zone from 0-0,1Gb is done at 4x speed, the next zone from 0,1Gb to 1,2Gb is done at 6x speed and the last zone from 1,2Gb to 4,4Gb is done at 8x. This gives an average speed of 7.43x. But lest us compare this result to two other writers as well:

The NEC ND-2500A uses Z-CLV(Zone-Constant Linear Velocity). The first zone from 0-0,8Gb is done at 4x speed, the next zone from 0,8Gb to 2,2Gb is done at 6x speed and the last zone from 2,2Gb to 4,4Gb is done at 8x. This gives an average speed of 6.80x. The speed is the same for both DVD-R and DVD+R discs.

The Plextor PX-708A also uses Z-CLV(Zone-Constant Linear Velocity), but only two zones compared to three zones for the other two drives. The first zone from 0-0,7Gb is done at 6x speed; the next zone from 0,7Gb to 4,4Gb is done at 8x speed. This gives an average speed of 7.69x; making the Plextor PX-708A the fastest drive of these three.

In practical use this means that the Lite-On LDW-811S will use 39 seconds more on a full discs compared to the Plextor PX-708A, but it will use 52 seconds less than the NEC ND-2500A.

Features and techniques:

Now it's time to take a look at the features and techniques of this drive:

SMART-BURN is Lite-on's coaster prevention system, it contains the buffer under run protection as well as a media database and measuring system to select the best write speed and strategy for every CD-R and DVDR disc.

SMART-X is a technology, which will make the drive read music and VCD discs at low speeds when only slow streams of data is required (for example when playing the disc) and faster speeds when required (for example when extracting the content of the disc).

Changing book type tool (bitsetting).

This drive also officially supports bitsetting, which basically means that you may change the Book type of DVD+R and DVD+RW discs to DVD-ROM. Some players do not allow DVD+R/RW media to be played and with this bitsetting trick you may change the Book type to DVD-ROM, now the discs are identified as DVD-ROM discs by the player and will play. You may download the bitsetting utility here. And here is a screenshot from the small program:

The utility is very easy to use:

1: Insert an empty DVD+R or DVD+RW disc in the drive.
2: Select the drive in the dropdown box at the top.
3: If needed click the Query button to see what disc that is in the drive and the current setting of the drive.
4: Click change and choose DVD-ROM from the dropdown menu that appears, ok and you should get a message telling that the book change were successful.
5: Now the drive is set to write DVD+R/RW discs with the bitsetting for DVD-ROM. You may now close this program.
6: Use your favourite writing program to write the disc.
7: You may verify if it works by using DVDinfopro or Nero CD speed.

Start DVDinfoPRO and click the Media button, and you should get something like this:

As we could see the disc Book type is now DVD-ROM

Another quick test is to start Nero CD-Speed and look at the disc information:

Which should also say DVD-ROM.

8: The drive will now write all DVD+R and DVD+RW media as DVD-ROM until you restart your computer. After restarting you have to run the bitsetting program again.
9: Firmware HS0K or newer is required for bitsetting to work properly.

Included software:

Now it's time to look at the included software, and comment it if needed. Notice that we may not use the included software in our performance testing part of the review.

PowerDVD:

The drive includes Cyberlink's PowerDVD Media player to play DVD and VCD movies. PowerDVD is a good and widely used software DVD-player, so Lite-On has done a wise choice when selecting to include PowerDVD with the drive.

The PowerDVD installation CD also contains various user manuals, including manual for LDW-401S (DVD+R/RW), but no manual for the LDW-811S (DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW). But the LDW-401S manual could be used, as there is very little media specific information in it. It's a pretty short and simple manual, only covering the most important things. A better manual would be preferred.

Sonic MyDVD 4.5:

This is the opening window of Sonic MyDVD.

And this is the creation window.

Sonic MyDVD is one of the easier programs we have used when it comes to creating VCD and DVD movies. Although we have not used the program very long it seems like Lite-On made a good choice on including Sonic MyDVD.

Sonic RecordNow DX 4.6:

This is the first welcome screen you get, from here you may select what disc you want to make and will automatically get a wizard to help you through the creation process.

And this is what it looks like when creating a data disc without using the wizard. Although the program do not look like earlier program we have used it's still pretty easy to get started with and seems to be among the better programs we have used.

Sonic DLA 3.60:

Sonic DLA (Drive Letter Access) installs, but is invisible until you right click on your writer, now you are able to see the format option.

Here you may select to do a full format or quick format. We did a quick format on a 4X DVD+R disc and it used 18 seconds to format it. And then we wrote 2Gb with data to it in 6 minutes and 52 seconds, this is right where it should be for 4X writing. Actually Sonic DLA is among the faster and better packet writing programs we have used. Notice that it may conflict with: Easy CD-Creator, DirectCD, Nero Burning ROM and InCD.

Note: sometimes you have to manually browse the CD and install Record Now DX and Sonic DLA as they are not always automatically installed.

All in all the software collection bundled with this drive is quite good and among the better bundles we have seen.

Now that we have finished examining the drive and its writing strategies it's time to head on to next page, which is reading performance test…