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Unlike most standalone DVD Recorders available, this Lite-On Recorder offers the capability of writing content to CD-R's and CD-RW's as well as DVD media.  However, unlike a PC it is not as simple as loading up Nero CD Speed to create data discs with.  This makes it impossible to create a recording graph or determine which recording technology was used on each disc as with our PC drive reviews.  In order to create test discs on CD-R and CD-RW, we made one continuous recording on a 650MB CD-RW until it filled up, copied this recording to its internal hard drive and then used this recording to create test discs with. 

Unfortunately, as this Recorder only gives recording specifications for DVD recordable discs, it is not clear what recording performance should be expected when it comes to recording CD-R's or CD-RW's. 

However, when we started recording test discs using the Video CD recording we copied to its hard drive, we soon found out that the Recorder is restricted to about 2x for writing also, regardless of the brand of CD-R or CD-RW.  As a result, we only did tests using the Video CD recording.

We will test CD-R discs from a total of 4 different CD-R manufacturers and also CD-RW discs from a total of 4 different CD-RW manufacturers.  Unfortunately, as there is no way to graph or measure the write speed on the Recorder itself, we used a stop watch to time how long it takes to prepare a disc, write the content to disc and finally finalise the disc. 

To test the preparation time, we timed how long it took for the disc to load and be recognised plus the time it took from selecting the disc type (i.e. Video CD) to the time it no longer showed 'Preparing'.  For some discs, the Recorder either kept on showing the word 'Preparing' or did not show the word at all.  In these cases, we marked 'N/A' for the time.  Then we timed how long it took to copy the prepared recording from the HDD to the disc, i.e. from the moment we pressed 'Copy' on the highlighted recording to the time the 'copying progress' dialog had disappeared.  As the Recorder automatically finalised both CD-R's and CD-RW's during the copying process, the finalisation stage could not be timed.

For the quality test, we used K-Probe 2, which is a tool developed by a Lite-On employee.  It runs under Windows and works with drives made by Lite-On.  Also note that different drives and different reading speeds may affect the results obtained when scanning the discs.  We used a Lite-On SHOW-1693S with firmware version KS02 and scanned the discs at 48X speed.

A written CD-R disc will always contain some C1 errors.  C1 errors are easily corrected by the drive's error correction capabilities.  The next level of errors is C2, while C2 errors could easily be corrected by most drive's error correction capabilities; they are not wanted on a good quality disc.  A good quality disc should not contain any C2 errors and preferably have an average C1 error amount of below 2.0 for the best discs or at least below 10.0 on average for good quality discs.  After C2 errors are only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

The results are as follows:

Although C2 errors are unwanted on a CD-R or CD-RW, this Recorder produces two to three bursts of C2 errors on every CD-R or CD-RW it records in the Video or Super Video CD mode. It is not clear why this is, however the picture quality does not appear to be affected during the affected areas, despite several plays over the affected area on a few different brands of media.  In order to show the unusually high bursts along with the regular C1/C2 errors, the graphs have been set to a logarithmic view.

The green bars in the C2 graph actually indicate C3 errors, however these appear to occur at random while reading CD-R's and CD-RW's written in the Lite-On Recorder, as each scan may show one or two at totally different points of the disc.  Again, like the C2 error bursts, no picture issues were noticed while playing back the affected regions.

Apart from the C1/C2 error bursts, this disc turned out to be an excellent recording with the average C1 count below an average of 1 error per second.

Again, like the Tevion disc above, this is another very good recording apart from C1/C2 error bursts.

Slightly higher C1 error count than the above discs as well as two small C1 error bursts, however still a very good recording with an average C1 count of only 1.2.

Finally another very good result with a low C1 error count.  As the C2 error bursts occur at the same points of each disc, this clearly indicates that this is not a fault with the discs, but instead what the Recorder is doing at these points. 

CD-Recordable with Audio:

Just to see if the Recorder performs any different when it comes to recording an Audio CD we have used another FujiFilm disc, copied on an album consisting of 66 minutes 54 seconds of music using the Recorder and then started a direct recording to fill the rest of the disc.  Unfortunately, even though the Recorder stops when it comes to the end of a Video or Super Video CD, in this case it just keeps on recording and by the time it showed that it recorded about 34 minutes of audio, we stopped the Recorder as by this point it appears like it had written over 110 minutes of audio to this disc!  When we finalised the disc and played it back, we found out that the Recorder had actually stopped at 79:59, although it kept on showing 'Recording' earlier beyond this mark.

The result for this disc is as follows:

As we can see from this disc, the optical drive in the Recorder is capable of writing a C2 error free disc, so it seems rather unusual that all the Video CD recordings have a few C2 error bursts.  There are no unusually high C1 error bursts either, although it is interesting to see smaller C1 error bursts for the section of disc that was copied directly from an existing ~67 minute recording on the HDD.  When it came to direct-to-CD recording thereafter, there are no bursts at all.

When we went to play this disc back in CD players and hi-fi equipment, the following table shows the results:

While the Sanyo Hi-Fi had no problem playing tracks, it took quite a while to change tracks; sometimes up to 10 seconds.  This is not the case when playing back an original audio CD.

Again, as this is a standalone drive, it is not possible to determine the writing technology or produce speed graphs using this Recorder.  It is also not clear what speeds of CD-RW media this drive is capable of handling as these details are not provided in the specifications.

The results obtained for our CD-RW discs are as follows:

Besides the error bursts, this recording is excellent with the C1 error count averaging at only 1.24.  It is interesting to see the C2 error bursts are located at different locations for CD-RW. 

Like the results for the Sony CD-RW, these C2 error bursts are roughly at the same points.  However, besides these small bursts, the recording is excellent with an average C1 error count of only 1 error per second.

It is interesting to see no C2 error burst towards the end of the disc.  Again, like the Viking media above, the results are very good.

This is best result we have for CD-RW media used in this Recorder, with the two C2 error bursts much lower than above and a C1 error count low enough to show the graph as a linear graph.  Again, it is still not clear why this Recorder produces a few C2 error bursts on every CD-RW it records.

Summary:

While having CD-R and CD-RW recording support is a nice feature, it is a pity to see how severely limited the recording speed is when it comes to transferring content to or from a CD-R or CD-RW.  As the drive makes a rotational noise which can be clearly heard like a CD-ROM drive while recording CD-R, we can tell that the drive is more than capable of writing to CD-R/RW's at a much greater speed than 2x, thus showing that the Recorder's own software itself is limiting the recording speed.

Finally, it is not clear why there are two to three C2 error bursts on every single Video CD-R and CD-RW written in the Recorder.  While we have not noticed any playback issues during the affected areas, C2 errors are still seen by many experienced users as a poor quality recording, especially when it comes to (Super) Video CD recordings, since these do not offer a third level of error correction, unlike data CDs.  When we tried recording an Audio CD-R on the other hand, we did not get any C2 errors.

But, then again, as this Recorder is intended for DVD recording as its name suggests, we will cover DVD-writing performance on the next page.