Test machine

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

Hardware:

• Motherboard: ASUSTeK P5W DH Deluxe (Intel Glendale DG I975x chipset)
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
• RAM: 4 GB OCZ Platinum dual channel kit DDR2 800
• GFX: BFG nVidia 8800GTS (640 Megabytes GDDR3)
• Sound: Onboard Realtek ALC882 HD audio controller
• Hard disk: 2X 250GB Seagate Barracuda (SATA 2)

System setup:

The Lite-On LH-20A1S was connected to a SATA channel on the main board of our review PC.

No problems with the setup

From the screenshot from Nero InfoTool above, we can see the Lite-On LH-20A1S supports DVD-RAM read and write but the drive does not support Mount Rainier.

Firmware update:

The Lite-On LH-20A1S shipped with firmware version 9L03. We proceeded to update the firmware to version 9L05 before commencing with our review.

Original firmware shipped with the drive

The update process

We had no problems updating the firmware from version 9L03 to 9L05

Installed software:

• Nero CD/DVD Speed
• Nero InfoTool
• KProbe

Our review PC has Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit installed.

Features and techniques

The Lite-On LH-20A1S is powered by an MediaTek MT1899E chipset.

In the above screenshot we can see the internal PCB of Lite-On LH-20A1S, interestingly the PCB appears to be manufactured by Sony.

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.

Software bundle:

Let’s take a look at the software bundle included with our retail drive. Please note, we may not install or use any of this software in this review.

Our retail package included Nero 7 essentials, which included the following software.

• Nero Express 7 Essentials
• Nero Showtime 3 Essentials
• Nero Vision 4 Essentials
• Nero Recode 2 Essentials
• InCD 5 Essentials
• Nero Photoshow Express 4
• Drivers and manuals

Main software install screen

Nero 7 Essentials install screen

The user manual selection screen

The software bundle is very good and should provide a very good starting point for anyone purchasing this drive.

Disc Quality Scanning with CD-Speed:

The Lite-On LH-20A1S can be used along with Nero CD-Speed for “Disc Quality Scanning”.

Disc Quality Scan at 4x scanning speed using CD-Speed.

Disc Quality Scan at 8x scanning speed using CD-Speed.

Disc Quality Scan at 16x scanning speed using CD-Speed.

Disc Quality Scanning with KProbe:

KProbe was designed by Lite-On engineers for use with their optical drives. The package is free, simple to use and very reliable.

PI/PIF scan at 4x scanning speed using KProbe

Lite-On has a long history of Disc Quality Scanning. The LH-20A1S proved to be able to perform this task with ease and the results obtained were as expected.

BookType (Bitsetting):

The Lite-On LH-20A1S supports bit-setting, and is capable of writing DVD+R/RW/DL media with DVD-ROM book type.

Here is how you could check if your discs are really written with DVD-ROM book type:

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

DVD+R with Booktype DVD-ROM

DVD+R DL with Booktype DVD-ROM

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

Writing technique

Now it’s time to take a closer look at the write technology used by the Lite-On LH-20A1S:

For these tests we used CD-Speed and wrote a full disc at the drives maximum speed.

CD Recordable:

According to the specifications of the Lite-On LH-20A1S, it should be able to write CD-R media at a maximum speed of 48x.

The Lite-On LH-20A1S uses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 48X. This gives an average speed of 37.28x and a total writing time of 2 minutes and 38 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

As we can see, the Lite-On LH-20A1S was the fastest compared to our other drives when writing CD-R media.

CD Re-writable:

According to the specifications of the Lite-On LH-20A1S, it should be able to write CD-RW media at a maximum speed of 32x.

The Lite-On LH-20A1S uses Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 32X. This gives an average speed of 24.95x and a total writing time of 3 minutes and 41 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

As we can see, the Lite-On LH-20A1S was around average when compared to our other drives when writing CD-RW media.

20x DVD+R/-R writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Lite-On LH-20A1S, it should be able to write DVD+R/-R media at a maximum speed of 20x.

DVD+R

The Lite-On LH-20A1Suses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 20X. This gives an average speed of 14.67x and a total writing time of 5 minutes and 14 seconds.

DVD-R

The Lite-On LH-20A1S uses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 20X. This gives an average speed of 14.70x and a total writing time of 5 minutes and 5 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

As we can see from our table, the Lite-On LH-20A1S was one of the fastest drives when writing DVD+R media and the fastest drive when writing DVD-R media.

8X DVD+RW writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Lite-On LH-20A1S, it should be able to write DVD+RW at a maximum speed of 8x.

The Lite-On LH-20A1S uses Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 8X. This gives an average speed of 7.22x and a total writing time of 8 minutes and 4 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

The Lite-On LH-20A1S was below average at writing our test DVD+RW media.

6x DVD-RW writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Lite-On LH-20A1S, it should be able to write DVD-RW at a maximum speed of 6x.

The Lite-On LH-20A1S uses Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 6X. This gives an average speed of 5.74x and a total writing time of 11 minutes and 7 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

The Lite-On LH-20A1S was the slowest drive when writing DVD-RW media.

8x DVD+R DL writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Lite-On LH-20A1S, it should be able to write DVD+R DL at a maximum speed of 8x.

The Lite-On LH-20A1S uses Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 8X. This gives an average speed of 6.77x and a total writing time of 17 minutes and 57 seconds.

8x DVD-R DL writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Lite-On LH-20A1S, it should be able to write DVD-R DL at a maximum speed of 8x.

The Lite-On LH-20A1S uses Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 8X. This gives an average speed of 8.50x and a total writing time of 18 minutes and 59 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

The Lite-On LH-20A1S was around average when writing DVD±R DL media.

12x DVD-RAM writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Lite-On LH-20A1S, it should be able to write DVD-RAM at a maximum speed of 12x.

The Lite-On LH-20A1S uses P-CAV, (Partial Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 12X. This gives an average speed of 9.95x and a total writing time of 6 minutes and 25 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

The Lite-On LH-20A1S was the slowest drive when writing DVD-RAM media.

Let’s head on to the next page where we will check reading performance….

Introduction

Reading Performance