LG GSA-4081B Multi DVD Recorder - Page 1

Most people know of LG as a consumer electronics manufacturer. It is among the top Electronics manufacturers in Korea, and one of the largest worldwide. Lately, LG has also managed to become a leader in the optical storage industry, offering fast and affordable CD/DVD recorders, and is among the few companies supporting the DVD Multi Recording standard.

The first "Super-Multi" drive, the GMA-4020B, was announced last year. The drive was born from the joint venture between LG and Hitachi. Although the company initially supported only the DVD-R/-RW and DVD-RAM formats, the next step towards the "plus" camp was not late in coming. The GSA-4040B added DVD+R/+R writing while also boasting of recording speeds of 4x DVD±R, 2.4x DVD+RW, 2x DVD-RW and 3x DVD-RAM.

LG upgraded the specifications of its processor drive (GSA-4040B) offering 8x DVD+R and 4x DVD+RW writing. Of course, the drive supports 3x DVD-RAM and 4x DVD-R writing.

- Specifications

The specifications for the LG GSA-4081B Multi DVD Recorder from LG Electronics are given in the following table.

The LG GSA-4081B Multi DVD Recorder supports DVD+R writing at 8x ZCLV and DVD-R at 4x CLV . For the DVD-RAM format, the supported writing speeds are 2x CLV (Ver. 1.0/2.0) and 3x CLV (Ver. 2.1). The DVD+RW discs can be burned at 4x CLV maximum, and2x is selected for DVD-RW. The maximum reading speed for DVD-ROM and DVD Video is 12x CAV for single layer and 8x CAV for dual layer discs.

For CD-R media, you can select among 4x, 8x, CLV and 16x, 24x ZCLV writing speeds, and 16x Z-CLV writing for CD-RW format. The CD-ROM-R reading speed is 32x CAV, while CD-RW media supports 24x reading.

The drive has 2MB of buffer store, and technology to protect from “buffer underrun errors” during the writing process.

The supported RPCII region control allows the user to change the region code a maximum of 4 times.

The drive offers the following writing modes: TAO, packet writing, SAO, multisession and according to Nero InfoTool, DAO RAW 96.

- The package

The retail package does not include any blank DVD or DVD-RAM media. What you can find is a multilangual quick start manual and two CD-ROMs containing application software and DVD-RAM drivers.

The application software comes from BHA. It includes “B's Recorder Gold 7 Ver7.10” software which offers increased recording and editing functionality for CD/DVD media. For easy DVD authoring there is the "neoDVD Ver5.1" software, while packet writing is offered through "B's Clip Ver5.38". “Power DVD v5” is also included, allowing playback of all DVD and CD formats.

Finally, in the retail package you will also find included an internal audio cable, IDE interface cable and mounting screws.

Looking at the front panel, on the disc loading tray are from left to right, the "super multi" and "DVD+RW" logos, the "LG" brand logo at centre, and finally the "DVD multi recorder" and "compact disc rewritable" logos. The emergency eject hole is located just below the tray door right of centre, while on the very right is the eject button, and lower still and left of centre is the power/activity LED. The LED lights up when a disc is loaded or the drive performs a read/write task. There is no headphone jack or volume control.

On the rear panel we have the analog audio output for connecting to you PC's sound card, the device configuration pins and jumper, ATAPI interface, and power input.

After removing the screws and opening the case, we photographed the internal components of the drive, the photos of which are presented below. It was immediately discernible that the main chips of the drive are manufactured by Hitachi and NEC.

The drive shares the same mainboard and chipsets with the LG GSA-4040B Multi recorder.

- Installation

The drive was identified as "HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4081B" under the WinXP opersting System. The drive was installed as the master device on the secondary IDE channel of our test PC using the Ultra DMA Mode 2 transfer mode. The model came with firmware version vA028 installed, which was throughout all the tests.