16x/48x DVD Round-up - Page 5

DVD Tests

- Test Method :
We used Nero DVD Speed v0.52 to run DVD tests (DMA enabled on all drives). All tests were performed at least 3 times with the same DVD title (we took the worst results). The DVD Speed author suggests avoiding the use of dual layer DVDs since performance might be lower than the actual one. For that purpose we used a single-layered DVD title, taken from PC Magazine.

- Nero DVD Speed results:

The LiteOn continues to lead the race with DVD-ROM discs just like with ordinary CD-ROMs. The drive gave back around 15697Kb/s and the AOpen 1648 comes second with 15447Kb/s. The Matsushita comes last with only 14443 Kb/s.

In the Seek times test, the AOpen 1648 seems to perform slightly better than the Matsushita, and wins the first place. The LiteOn gets the last place, since its performance is very far from the ones of the other two drives.

- DVD Ripping Tests:
We measured the DVD Ripping speed using Matrix DVD and DVD Decoder v0.2. The LiteOn LTD163 performed very good and once again earns the first position:

- Movie Tests:
We tested the DVD-ROMS with many DVD titles and our overall impression was very good. All 3 drives didn't have any problems with any DVD title we tested, and the average CPU usage was around 45% using PowerDVD v3.0 Build 0421. An important thing to keep in mind here is the fact that the AOpen 1648 is the only 16x DVD drive with RPC1 status :-)