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Old August 21st 04, 12:51 PM
Robert TV
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Default Who makes the best DVD writer?

Hi,

I'm building a new system and I have all the components chosen except a DVD
writer. The retailer who is building my system wants to install an LG
GSA-4120B. This is a Dual Layer DVD writer at 12x. I found a reviews of the
product he

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Revi...=9931&PageId=0
and
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=2086&p=1

CDRinfo gave the driver an "Editor Choice" award but I was concerned by
they're statements found in the article's conclusion:

###START CDRINFO REVIEW QUOTE###

"Users may have expected superb performance with the announced 5X Zone-CLV
speed, however in truth, the actual performance is slightly slower than a
2.4X DVD+RW recorder."

"The supported media list for the drive is rather strict, meaning most of
your media will be written either at 8X or even 4X. LG doesn't support the
so called "overspeed" (burning media at higher recording speeds than the
media's rated speed), which may annoy most of the users. However, we have to
note that with specific media, the PI/PIF error rates are simply
outstanding!"

"Going back to the drive's weaknesses, there is no official support for the
Booktype setting (a crucial feature for DVD+R DL to maintain compatibility
with DVD players), CD Error correction could be better, it cannot backup the
latest SD 2.9+ versions, writing performance needs improvement for specific
CD/DVD media and finally, it cannot be used to measure -scan- CD or DVD
media, a feature that the competition (LiteON/Plextor) includes."

###END CDRINFO REVIEW QUOTE###

###START ANANDTECH REVIEW QUOTE###

By checking multiple types of media, and not just high end media, we found
some fairly unsettling characteristics of the LG GSA-4120B. In particular,
the lower quality DVDRs produced particularly poor burns, some of which
where unreadable in other burners. We were also slightly troubled by the
unusually high CPU usages while reading discs. Even with a 2.4GHz Pentium 4,
our test bed struggled to keep up at 8X while reading DVDRs.

###END ANANDTECH REVIEW QUOTE###

Ok, that says a bunch of technical jargen that I don't understand. All I
want is a good and reliable DVD writer that when I burn my movies or other
media, it can be played in my brand new Sony console DVD player. I don't
want to have to worry about the media I buy for compatibility in both DVD
and CD writing.

Please if anyone has had good experiences with this drive or otherwise, I
would very much like to hear about them. Please suggest other quality drives
if this drive could become a lemon. I am forcasting many of you will suggest
me to buy a Plextor, but they are very expensive. I have exhausted much of
my finances buying high quality RAM and CPU for my new system. I would also
like to note that this Dual Layer isn't all that important to me. 99% of the
time I will be burning regular music and data CD's, and from time to time
will burn a standard DVD-R or DVD-RW disc.

Thank you for your time and opinions.

P.S. Can you also help me understand what DVD-RAM is? What is it used for?

Robert