detail information

Positive:

• Retail package
• Supports 8x DVD+R and 4x DVD+RW write speeds
•  Fast CD-Writing and CD-ReWriting speeds of respectively 40x and 24x.
• Good CD-R writing quality with most disc types.
• Good DVDR writing quality with most types of quality DVDR media.
• Reads CDs at 40x and DVDs at 12x.
• Very good DVD packet writing performance.
• Supports DAO-RAW writing.
• Supports reading and writing of full SubChannel Data.
• Supports 'Correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns" making it able to backup all the tested safedisc protected discs.
• Supports reading and writing special sized CD-R discs.
• Reads all protected audio discs tested.
• Fast and perfect audio extracting.
• Supports writing some 4x DVD+R discs at 8x.
• No speed lock for reading video DVD discs.
• Supports reading and writing 99 minutes discs.
• Supports Bit-setting/book type setting on DVD+R/RW media.
• Price.

Negative:

• Compatibility and writing quality with some DVDR/RW media could be improved.
• Horrible writing quality with Taiyo Yuden CD-R media, also some problems with Princo and plasmon CD-R media.
• Does not support Mt. Rainier. 
• Reading of DVDR/RW discs are locked to 6x CAV.
• Reads CD-RW discs at only 32x. 
• Documentation could be better.
• Slightly slower at writing DVD-R discs at 4x compared to the competition

Conclusion:

Lite-On has again been able to put together a good performer. The drive performed pretty good at 8x DVD+R writing speed and most discs written at 8x had an acceptable amount of errors. But the drive have other strengths as well; it supports writing CD-R discs at 40x and most discs are written with perfect quality as well, but we were quite shocked to get bad results with Taiyo Yuden CD-R media. This were quite surprising as the LDW-411S did perfect with the same discs, hopefully Lite-On will be able to sort out what they did wrong with the LDW-811S firmware and fix this. Another advantage it has is the ability to change the book type for DVD+R/RW media to DVD-ROM, this is useful if your players do not read DVD+R/RW media. As far as we know it's the first dual format drive to officially support bitsetting/booktype setting.

The drive is also a very good reader for Audio discs as it reads them fast and with perfect quality. And while we are at it we may mention that the drive did not have any problems with extracting the audio from protected music discs either. And one of the main strengths of Lite-On drives have been their ability to backup many protected game discs, and the LDW-811 is no exception. It supports 'Correct EFM encoding of regular bit-patterns" and we were able to backup all the safedisc protected game titles that we had. And the DVD-reading speed is good for most disc types and unlike some other drives it have no speed lock for reading DVD-Video discs. But we would like to see a bit better speed for reading DVDR/RW media as 6x is a bit slow compared to most competitors.

We would like to see Lite-On putting some more effort into improving the write quality on some media types as well as supporting more media at certified speed. There is also some complaints about some incompatibilities with computers based on older via chipsets, but we have not yet verified if this is a program/driver issue or a firmware issue. If they could improve this + fix the problems with writing Taiyo Yuden, plasmon and Princo CD-R media this drive would be among the best DVD-Writers available.

It's also worth mentioning that the drive has a pretty good retail package and at a price of only $ 124 USD (Price from Pricewatch per 9.02.2004 ) it stands quite strong to most other retail packaged drives.

To sum it all up this is the best we could say 'A good all-rounder that needs some polishing". Even if the drive has some weaknesses compared to some other drives, it makes up for this with being stronger in other areas like game backup abilities and music ripping capabilities. It's also rather unique as it's the first dual format drive to officially support Bitsetting/book type changing, because of all the things that makes this drive special we hands out a 'Best value award" to it.

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