Test machine:

For this review we will be using a computer with the following configuration:

Hardware:

• Motherboard: MSI MS-7173
• Processor: Pentium D 3.40 GHz
• RAM: 1GB DDR2
• GFX: Integrated ATI Radeon Xpress 200
• Sound: Onboard Realtek HDAudio
• Hard disk: 250GB GB Hitachi Deskstar HDT722525DLA380 SATA-II

System set-up:

The Lite-On LH-20A1H was connected as Secondary Master, although InfoTool misreported it as Primary Master. The drive identified itself as LITE-ON DVDRW LH-20A1H. DMA (Direct Memory Access) and autorun was enabled for all devices, with the LH-20A1H running in UDMA 4 mode.

And another screenshot from Nero InfoTool below:

From the screenshot from Nero InfoTool above, we can see the Lite-On LH-20A1H does not support CD+G and Mount Rainier. The drive came shipped with firmware version LL06, and was updated to LL07, then LL0A when they became available.

Installed Software:

Windows XP Professional is installed on the computer along with Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. We will be using the following software in this review:

• Nero CD/DVD Speed
• Nero InfoTool
• KProbe v2.5.2
• EAC
• SureThing CD/DVD Labeller

Features and techniques:

The Internals:

The internals

The drive uses the MediaTek MT1898LE chipset.

SMART-BURN:
(Smart Monitoring & Adapting Recording Technology for BURNing)

·         SMART-BURN is the abbreviation of “Smart Monitoring & Adapting Recording Technology for BURNing", innovated CD-RW technology by LITE-ON IT, will be introduced to other products in the future.

·         Users always want to successfully burn a disc with a higher speed in CD-RW drive. You may know, there are so many brands of CD-R / CD-RW media in the market with irregular quality & still being cost down in the price war.

·         If your CD-R / CD-RW media quality is really poor enough or working environment is too hot to induce the Laser Power over margin, the CD-RW drive detected, the burning speed will be forced to decrease to get more reliable Laser working power to secure the life of CD-RW drive & burning quality strategy parameters plus the outstanding running Optimum Power Calibration (OPC) function to provide you the best burning quality.

·         The buffer under run error is also no longer happened to your drive anymore, SMART-BURN also can allow drive to be suspended during writing, than continue to burn from last point when enough data get in the buffer.

·         SMART-BURN features :

o        Buffer Under Run Error Free

o        Running Optimum Power Calibration

o        Automatic Writing Strategy & Burning Parameters

o        Automatically decrease burning speed when Laser power over margin due to poor media quality or high temperature

SMART-X:
(Smart Monitoring & Adjusting Read-speed Technology for eXtraction)

·         SMART-X is the abbreviation of Smart Monitoring & Adjusting Read-speed Technology for eXtraction, which is LITE-ON innovated technology after being verified & improved for a long period before get into mass production.

·         People ask "What’s the DAE speed?", "What’s VCD play speed of the drive?"…etc. People want to know this to choose party drive. As you know, removable optical media is so open & unable to control the media quality. Drive need to burn a disc with higher speed & quality as possible. So the drive needs to be very smart!

·         It’s more difficult for drive to rip the Audio & VCD disc than a data disc due to there are only 2 levels error correction for Audio & VCD disc but data disc got 3. For limited un-recoverable error data can be fixed by estimation & calculation due to it’s only for music & movie application. These tolerance ripped data are acceptable & can not be detected by human eyes & ears during playback because there is no pop-noise, interrupt or mosaic on the screen. Of course zero error is preferable for zero tolerance.

·         SMART-X technology is the drive will rip the music / VCD data as fast as possible with less error, even on a poor quality media ( like dirty, scratched ) , the drive will estimate if the ripped data will result audio noise, interrupt or mosaic on screen, the rip speed can be reduced to get more correctable data. SMART-X provide you as fast rip speed as possible, on the other, if you just want to listen music or watch movie directly, it’s not necessary for the drive to keep high speed to read data. It will work under lower speed automatically to get better playability & lower acoustic, so smart!

ABS - Auto Balancer Spindle:

·         Steel balls as balancer within spindle motor will be settled into right positions during spin up period ( that’s the reason why a little noise during drive spin up to read a disc ) to compensate imbalance of the disc when rotating at very high speed.

·         The ABS mechanism can fit from CD-ROM 32x design up to 56x or higher speed that the spindle motor can even works over 10000 rpm with very small vibration generate

Once again back to Smart-Burn. In the latest Official version of this tool we can also find two very interesting and important new functions. These new functions are called OverSpeed (OS) and HyperTuning (HT).

OverSpeed (OS):

OS can let you burn a disc one level above its rated speed.

Smart-Write™ - HyperTuning (HT):

HyperTuning is a so called “Smart-Write™” technology for DVD+/-R and DVD+/-R DL media. Its technology enables the drive to learn a write strategy for unsupported media or for media where you are not satisfied with the quality of the burn when the regular strategy was used. Further, it can give you better results when you use lower quality media with a stronger variation of the disc quality itself.

BookType (Bitsetting):

The Lite-On LH-20A1H supports Bitsetting, and will as default write DVD+R DL media with DVD-ROM BookType. The Bitsetting can be changed in i.e. Nero CD/DVD Speed:

Here is how you can check if your discs are really written with the DVD-ROM BookType:

Start Nero CD-DVD Speed and click the Disc info tab and you should get something like this:

DVD+R media with DVD-ROM BookType

DVD+RW media with DVD-ROM BookType

DVD+R DL media with DVD-ROM BookType

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

This should say DVD-ROM

Quality Scans:

The Lite-On LH-20A1H can be used to measure/scan burned discs for their quality via Nero CD-DVD Speed or KProbe. This can be handy to check and get an impression of which state/condition the burned discs are in.

Quality Scan at 4x

Writing Technology:

20x DVD±R writing speed:

The Lite-On LH-20A1H uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write DVD+R at 20x. The average speed is 14.69x and total writing time is 5:01 minutes.

The Lite-On LH-20A1H uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write DVD-R at 20x. The average speed is 14.72x and total writing time is 5:02 minutes.

For comparison we have made the following table:

As we can see from our table, the Lite-On LH-20A1H was the fastest drive when writing DVD±R media.

8x DVD+RW writing speed:

The Lite-On LH-20A1H uses Z-CLV (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD+RW at 8x. The average speed is 7.25x and the total writing time is 8:19 minutes.

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Lite-On LH-20A1H was the slowest drive at writing our DVD+RW media at 8x.

6x DVD-RW writing speed:

The Lite-On LH-20A1H uses Z-CLV (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD-RW at 6x. The average speed is 5.77x and the total writing time is 11:01 minutes.

For comparison we have made the following table:

Due its Z-CLV writing technology, the drive was slightly slower then other tested drives at writing DVD-RW media.

8x DVD+R DL writing speed:

The Lite-On LH-20A1H uses Z-CLV (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD+R DL at 8x. The average speed is 6.82x and the total writing time is 17:47 minutes.

8x DVD-R DL writing speed:

The Lite-On LH-20A1H uses Z-CLV (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD+R DL at 8x. The average speed is 6.82x and the total writing time is 18:20 minutes.

For comparison we have made the following table:

 The Lite-On LH-20A1H performed average when writing both DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL media.

48x CD-Recordable:

The Lite-On LH-20A1H uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write CD-R at 48x. The average speed is 37.46x and total writing time is 2:39 minutes.

For comparison we made the following table:

As we can see, the Lite-On LH-20A1H was the fastest drive when it comes to writing CD-R media.

32x CD-ReWritable:

Lite-On LH-20A1H uses Z-CLV (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity) to write CD-RW at 32x. The average speed is 25.02x and the total writing time is 3:59 minutes.

For comparison we have made the following table:

As we can see, the Lite-On LH-20A1H was a little slower compared to our other drives when writing CD-RW media.

Note: we did not test any DVD-RAM media in this review. 

On the next page: Reading performance…

Introduction:

Reading Performance: