LiteOn bursts forth with yet another release, the SHM-165P6S Multi DVD Burner. As a Multi drive, the 165P6S can read and write almost all of the known DVD formats, including DVD-RAM. No change in the burning speeds, whatsoever, with the drive being able to burn DL media at 8X and 4X for +R DL and -R DL respectively. As for the RW speeds, the drive supports up to 8X for +RW and 6X for -RW media. Last but not least, the drive supports the standard speed of 5X for reading and writing DVD-RAM media.

Other than the above, the drive offers no new features or increased speeds in comparison to the previous releases. Having said that, let us start off this review by seeing what changes have been made to the writing quality and error correction mechanism of the drive.

- Features

No change has been made regarding the available supported features of the drive.

• SMART-BURN avoiding Buffer UnderRun error, Automatically adjusting writing strategy & running OPC to provide the best burning quality.
• SMART-X function adjusts CD-DA / VCD / DVD data extraction to a fastest allowable speed according to both data request rate from host and disk quality.
• VAS® system reduce vibration and noise during recording and reading.

- Specifications

Below are the drive's main specs as given by NeroInfoTool and DVDInfoPro and VSO inspector:

- Retail package

Once more, the retail package remains the same as with previous releases. The package contains all the essential requirements for a fresh start, including mounting screws, audio cable, a quick installation guide to help you through the basics of installing a new device on your PC, of course the classic Nero OEM release suite for DVD authoring writing/editing to satisfy ones needs isn't missing, as well as DVD playback software (Cyberlink Power DVD 5). In addition, on top of the black front bezel, LiteOn has added one more color of choice for the end user, that of a silver bezel, covering most of the colour schemes of most users PC cases.

-The Drive

A lean design and simple in looks front bezel, with the DVD +R DL logo on the left, Multi Recorder logo at centre and Compact Disc ReWritable logo at right. There's also an activity led which changes color depending on the function of the drive.

The rear panel has the usual analogue and digital outputs (SPDIF), IDE connector and power input.

We removed the drive's cover to reveal its internals. Don't do this yourself as it voids the warranty. We can now have a closer look at the drive itself, inspect the PCB to see which chipset the SHM-165P6S uses. Clicking on the image below, will open a larger, more detailed view.

- Installation

The drive was installed under WindowsXP and was recognized as "LITE-ON DVDRW SHM-165P6S ". The drive came with the default firmware (MSOA) installed and was flashed with the latest available (MS0F) as soon as it was available as described below. All reading and burning tests were made with the latest firmware.

We used LightOn's automatic firmware update, as shown in the screenshots below, and with three clicks we managed to successfully update the drive's firmware.

For comparison in this review, we will be posting the results of the 165P6S along with the results of the BenQ 1655 and Plextor 755A drives. Now let's move on to the next page where we investigate the reading capabilities of the drive with CD and DVD media, as well as Video ripping capabilities.