detail information

Test machine:

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

Hardware:

• Processor - AMD Athlon XP 2400+
• RAM - 512 MB DDR 400; Infineon
• Motherboard - ASRock K7S8X
• Graphics Card - Gainward GeForce 440MX; 128mb RAM
• Sound - RealTek AC97 Integrated Digital Audio
• Hard Disk - Samsung SV0802N 80GB; 30GB Western Digital ST 330621A & Western Digital WD 30 00JB 300GB
• Optical Drives - Lite-On SHM-165P6S; NEC 3540A

System set-up:

The Lite-On SHM-165P6S was connected as Secondary Master and identified itself as LITE-ON DVDRW SHM-165P6S. DMA (Direct Memory Access) and autorun was enabled for all devices.

Firmware update:

We checked Lite-On's website and found a later firmware version. MS0M so we proceeded to update the firmware.

Below we can see the firmware update process from MS0K to MS0M in action. Later we updated to version MV7U, a test version with improved OS/HT functionality. This version has been used for all tests in this review.

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 Burning ROM v.6.6.1.4
• Nero CD/DVD Speed V4.50 and V4.51.1
• Nero Info Tool v3.07
• Slysoft CloneCD v5.2.8.1
• Exact Audio Copy v0.95 beta 4
• K-Probe v2.5.2

Features and techniques:

Now, let's have a closer look onto the features of this drive. All these information can be found on the Lite-On website.

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.ategy 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 :
  1. Buffer Under Run Error Free 
  2. Running Optimum Power Calibration
  3. Automatic Writing Strategy & Burning Parameters
  4. 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 need 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 toleranced 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 version of this tool we can also find two very interesting and important new functions for Lite-On's 5 and 6S series drives. 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. So if you have a 8x certified disc, then you will probably be able to burn the disc at 12x speed when OS is enabled.

HyperTuning (HT):

HyperTuning is a so called 'auto strategy" 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.

Because the OPC didn't know how to write a disc at higher speed, it is also required when you want to write a disc using OverSpeed.

8X DVD+R DL writing speed:

The Lite-On SHM-165P6S uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD+R9 DL at 8x. Three zones are used to write DVD+R Double Layer discs at 8x. The average speed is 6.88x and total writing time is 17:26 minutes.

4X DVD-R DL writing speed:

The Lite-On SHM-165P6S uses CLV, (Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD-R DL at 4x. The average speed is 4.04x and total writing time is 27:49 minutes.

BookType (Bitsetting):

The Lite-On SHM-165P6S supports Bitsetting, and will as default write DVD+R DL media with DVD-ROM BookType.

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 DL with BookType DVD-ROM.

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 SHM-165P6S can be used to measure/scan burned discs for their quality via Nero CD-DVD Speed. This can be handy to check and get an impression of which state/condition the burned discs are in.

Now it's time to take a closer look at the write technology used by the Lite-On SHM-165P6S:

CD-Recordable:

The Lite-On SHM-165P6S uses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 48X. This gives an average speed of 37.02x and a total writing time of 2 minutes and 37 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

As we can see from the table, the Lite-On SHM-165P6S performed excellent when it comes to writing CD-R's.

CD-Rewritable:

The Lite-On SHM-165P6S uses Z-CLV (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity) writing technology to write at 24X for CD-RW discs, the average speed is 22.50x and the total time 4 minutes and 9 seconds.

For a better overview we present the following comparison table:

As we can see from the table, the Lite-On SHM-165P6S is very slow when it comes to writing CD-RWs.

16X DVD+R/-R Writing speed:

The Lite-On SHM-165P6S uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write DVD+R at its maximum speed of 16x. This gives an average write speed of 11.94x and a writing time of 6 minutes and 0 seconds.

The Lite-On SHM-165P6S uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write
DVD-R at its maximum speed of 16x. This gives an average write speed of 11.93x and a writing time of 5 minutes and 54 seconds.

Below are some write graphs from some other drives for comparison:

The NEC 3540A uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write DVD+R at 16x. This gives an average writing speed of 11.81x and a writing time of 5 minutes and 58 seconds.

The Philips DVDR16LS uses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity) to write DVD+R at 16x. The average speed is 11.33x and total writing time is 6 minutes and 8 seconds. The average speed is lower and the writing time is higher than it could have been due to the Walking OPC generation 2 using some time to constantly adjust the writing quality, we could see this as constant dips in the speed curve.

The LG GSA-5160D uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD+R at 16x. The average speed is 11.60x and total writing time is 6 minutes and 12 seconds. Below, we made a comparison table:

*1 - Actual writing speed was max 14x due to USB-Bridge limitations.
*2 - Actual writing speed was max 13x due to USB-Bridge limitations.

8X DVD+R DL writing speed:

The Lite-On SHM-165P6S supports 8x writing speed on DVD+R DL media.

The Lite-On SHM-165P6S uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD+R9 DL at 8x. Three zones are used to write DVD+R Double Layer discs at 8x. The average speed is 6.88x and total writing time is 17:26 minutes.

4X DVD-R DL writing speed:

The Lite-On SHM-165P6S supports 4x writing speed on DVD-R DL media.

The Lite-On SHM-165P6S uses CLV, (Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD-R DL at 4x. The average speed is 4.04x and total writing time is 27:49 minutes.

8X DVD+RW writing speed:

The Lite-On SHM-165P6S uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD+RW at 8x. The average speed is 7.26x and total writing time is 8minutes and 22 seconds.

6X DVD-RW writing speed:

The Lite-On SHM-165P6S uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD-RW at 6x. The average speed is 5.84x and total writing time is
10 minutes and 43 seconds.

Included software:

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

The disc menu

Nero Express v6.6 OEM:

Very good software package - suitable for beginners as well as for experienced users.

CyberLink PowerDVD 5:

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…