LiteON vs LG
1. LG GDR8163B
LG
is one of the largest participants in the optical storage industry. LG has
the biggest market share in many countries and usually, its burners are well
tuned and with unique features. In November 2000, Hitachi and LG formed a
new joint venture to manufacture optical storage drives under the name "HL-DS".
"...Based on the cutting-edge development technology of Hitachi Ltd. and the advanced mass production technology and high-level marketing performance of LG Electronics Inc., we have been succeeding in creating technical synergy effect and is one of the leading company of the world in optical storage drive industry. "
is a joint company consisting of Hitachi, Ltd. and LG Electronics, Inc., which started business in January of 2001. We develop and sell optical data storage disc drives for PC OEM and keep top share in the world. Our main products are DVD writable drives, DVD-ROM drives, CD-RW drives, CD-ROM drives and its combination drives. Development sites are located in Tokyo (Japan) and in Pyungtaik (Korea)."
Company Profile
Company Name : Hitachi-LG Data Storage, Inc.
Established : November 22, 2000 (business started on January 1, 2001)
Head office Location : 4F MSC Center Building
22-23 Kaigan 3-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0022 Japan
Phone : +81-3-5427-8600
Representative Director, CEO : Kazuya Hori
Capital Stock : JPY 1,500M
"Since the establishment of the company, we' ve handled a wide range of optical storage drive products including DVD-RAM, DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combination, DVD-ROM, CD-RW and CD-ROM drives. Recently, we' ve developed the world's first Super Multi Drive which supports all DVD write formats. HLDS tries to be the first in supplying the consumer with the products that they desire..."
We received the latest DVD-ROM from LG, capable of 16X reading speed for the DVD-ROM and 52X for the CD-ROM formats. The full specifications for this drive are summarized below:
- Specifications
| Read Speed (DVD) | Max 16x |
| Read Speed (CD) | Max 52x |
| Data Transfer Rate (DVD) | Max 22,100KB/s |
| Data Transfer Rate (CD) | Max 7,800KB/s |
| Access Time (CD) | 98msec |
| Access Time (DVD) | 110msec |
| Buffer Size | 256KB |
| Loading Type | Motorized Tray |
| Interface Type | Internal E-IDE / ATAPI / ULTRA DMA 33 |
| Compatible Formats Write | CD-R/RW |
| Compatible Formats Read | DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-ROM, CD-R/RW, CD-ROM Mode 1,2, CD-DA, CD-I FMV, CD-ROM XA, Mixed CD, CD Extra, CD Plus, CD Text, Photo-CD, Video CD |
| Dimensions - (W×D×H) | 146mm x 184.6mm x 41.3mm |
| Weight | 780g |
| O/S | Window 95, 98, 2K,ME,NT4.0 or later,XP |
The drive also uses the RPC II region control, allowing a user to change the drive's region at most 5 times. This is however something which can be changed! In the following pages, you'll learn how ;-)
- The package
We received the drive out of the box so we cannot confirm what the package does and doesn't include.
On the front panel there are the DVD-ROM and the compact disc logos, while the LG brand name is in the center of the tray. The activity indicator light is located left of center and the emergency eject hole right of center. On the far right is the eject button.
On the rear panel you can see the analogue and digital outputs (SPDIF), the IDE connector and the power input.
Removing the screws and opening the drive's cover voids the drive's warranty. For reference reasons, we post the following pictures. You can click on the mainboard picture for a higher resolution image:
- Installation
The drive was installed as secondary master and WindowsXP recognized it as "HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM GDR8163B ". The drive arrived with firmware vOL23.
- Testing software
In order to perform our tests we used:
