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I can tell you have more knowledge than I do about this stuff. I have AnyDVD and let me say I have used it twice and both times I have had A/V sync problems about half way thru the movie. I am still trying to get A/V back into sync. You say you can backup a movie in less than 1 hour. How can that be ? The movies I backup are one and half to two hours long, and it takes that long just to cpoy to my hard drive aas an AVI file. Then 10 to 12 hours with TMPGEnc to encode. That's 14 hours right there. How do you do it in less than 1 hour ?

We are talking about making DVD back ups. Not ripping a DVD to make a Dvix or SVCD.
You can back up a whole DVD with all the extra's in 30 to 40 min. Including burn time.

You need a video capture card and you still have to capture to your hard drive first. Unless you buy one of dose stand alone DVD burners by panasonic. Then just hook it up to your VHS deck and copy away. Just like coping VHS to VHS.

Nice review, it shows again LiteOn is getting further behind with their DVD Writers. Their price/performance which used to be good is getting worse and worse.

I'm puzzled calling the "Prodye" DVD+R's with Plasmon MID "Low Quality". These discs are top quality, when the drive supports it fully. These discs are actually produced by [url=http://www.3a.net]3A Media[/url] which are great quality media (when properly supported by the firmware!!) . I got results comparable to the well known brands like MCC and Ricoh!

The DYE do not look good - it's uneven near the edge and many writers have problems with them. And NEC writers have problems reading them at 16x without slowdowns when written by most writers - even if PIE/PIF is low.

In my book they are low quality comparable the chap ass Hong Kong media and VDSPMSAB media.
[edited by OC-Freak on 25.01.2005 09:31]

The problem with many of the media with the VDSPMSAB 01 media is that this MID is generic. It's the Interaxia AG staper used by Sky Media Swiss (poor quality), 3A Media Austria (good quality). Like every manufacturer 3A Media has probably got A and B-grade media. Their current problem is compatibility by the drive manufacturers, due to the fact that they are a rather small manufacturer (500.000 to 1.000.000 discs a month), which is peanuts compared to the Asian production numbers. Therefore drive manufacturers don't work very hard to support discs of small manufacturers (most Europe based producers suffer seriously from this problem). Some drive manufacturers are more willing to cooperate (BTC, BenQ, Philips, Plextor), but others (NEC, LiteOn, Pioneer, LG) are very slow in implementing the MIDs and a correct writing strategy.

But with my custom patches, great results have been achieved already on LiteOn and NEC drives so far (proven by CATS, BenQ Pi/Po/Jitter and LiteOn Kprobe). So it's more LiteOn that doesn't support these media properly then the media itself being crappy.

I've been working with 3A Media for the past 2 years almost and must say they have come a long way, getting a fully working production line with great quality discs from scratch, most of it by trial and error, since Asian companies are not willing at all to share any kind of knowledge.

Some comments and remarks from my hand

Cd-r's
Verbatim
Mitsubishi China should be made with MCC technology for verbatim by CMC CHINA.

SAMSUNG cd-r.
Is not made by plasmon.
Good should be manufactured with plasmon stamper or
manufactured probally by Intersonic with plasmon stamper.

Funny that the Daxon Maxell disc's are correctly done. So 2 thumbs for that one.

DVD+R
Conclusion of Ritek media suggests additional tests.
But still it's good you at least mention it.

PHILIPS/CMC. -> you could have copied the coorect info from philips licensing.
(that's something like designed by Philips produced by CMC magnetics.)

Prodye -> 3A made media with Plasmon code as Herrie allready suggests. 3a media is most times quite decent but is very poor supported by most drive manufacturers because it's a european manufacturer !
Then again prodye has been known to also put B graded stuff on the market. So this incombination with the bad compatability might explain the result you are seeing.

The commodore interaxia disc.
Well I could track down the manufacturer for that one.But it's not worth the work. Since most disc's made with interaxia dye technology are not that great.
Also in this case stateing something like made with interaxtia manufactureing technology is better and is probally enough.

Sometimes I have the feeling that the transfer rate test isn't completely taken into account but that could be me who is just a bit more critical as the average user.


Missing media ?
Not really,
Only real media I would like have seen some results off might be RICOH's inversed stack dual layer media.
But ohhwell I know how hard it is to get them and then the fact that the drive isn't on
Ricoh's list so it's ok. that it isn't included.

Another good thing the fact that the name of the manufacturer of the 99 minutes disc was given and the fact that a real disc was burned.

So the end conclusion.
I see that a lot of stuff has improved compared to earlier reviews but still there are some small points on occasions that could be done a little bit better, still this review is allready at a level that only a few other sources can achieve.

Well - this really makes me think twice of ever buying another writer - and crossflashing my 1633s may really be making it worse :P .... well - it seems like the rumors are all true - Liteon is going down!

Verbatim China: they do not look like CMC, they have a black serial number like the original MCC discs. I have CMC/Verbatim (CMC code) from china and they look very different

Samsung - dunno manufacturer as there is various manufacturers using plasmon stamper/ATIP.

Are 3A the only manufacturer of media with plasmon ADIP?

Transfer rates: as long as speed do not drop too much I consider the result good - as mentioned in the introduction of media quality tests.

Plasmon has various ID's, some are unique to 3A Media, others are generic (which can be used by other manufacturers).

Its hard to belive Liteon cant crack this, what a fall from the heady hights of there CD witers.

Seems like the old CDFreaks-tacticals (review with Plextor, LG & some others with one of the first firmwares or whwn they fresh on the market, review with Liteon after long time and perhaps many new firmwares) don´t work any longer. The 1653 is 'old" in the market, the 1673s is coming soon (maybe avaible in some countries) and Liteon didn´t make a good drives after all, the former good FW-support is almost dead

It mostly depends on when the companies send their drives out. I got this drive late december.

Let's hope they are faster to send out the 1673S.

The 1673 is avaible on 4.2.05 here in Germany. It´s important to get the drive fast for a review because almost all Liteons are not avaible for a long time. Nobody read reviews for a drive that´s in a few weeks out of the market.
which drives you have for your next reviews?

I only have one drive for review now - and that is LG GSA-5163D, the external version of the already tested GSA-4163.

I don´t know if you need to review that. I think it´s the same technical, the performance depends more on the USB-interface of the external enclosure and the mainboard

Vel - as long as LG provided it I have to test it

To tell the truth, there is no problems with 16x P-CAV on USB2 and FW due to good profilic firmware from mid december in the case.

Tried the firmware on other profilic cases, but it has copmpatibility issues with some drives (benQ for example), but works great with some

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=76549
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=124830

For some KProbe tests of 3A Media
[edited by Herrie on 30.01.2005 11:26]

I would REALLY like to see a 16x reading curve without slowdowns made with an ND-3520A and 3A media written at 8x with whatever writer.

Thats what LiteON get for using the clapped out MediaTek Chipset it just isnt up to cutting the mustard with DVD writing. It was meant more for CDwriting.