LG GSA-4120B DL Recorder - Page 19

DVD-RAM Tests

The LG GSA-4120B is the first ever PC recorder that supports the 5X DVD-RAM media. Maxell announced on 26 May of 2004, the 5X DVD-RAM media: with the following press release"

"...Maxell's latest DVD-RAM media is based on its newly-developed Bismuth Coupling Material (BCM) recording layer, which improves signal to noise ratio for higher reliability during high-speed recording. The new media has a capacity of 4.7GB, which equates to up to six hours of video in extended play mode. It is also backward compatible, supporting recording at 2X and 3X in addition to its 5X speed. The single-sided disc is compatible with all DVD-RAM drives and recorders and RAM readable DVD-ROM devices and DVD players.

Maxell's advanced hard coating provides superior durability and the anti-static properties make the Maxell 5X DVD-RAM media resistant to dust and dirt. BCM recording layer technology, together with an error correction system, and unrivaled shelf life ensures high reliability for data storage and recovery. Maxell's latest DVD-RAM product is ideally suited for multimedia storage, software title production, large file storage, data transfer and library systems, as well as high-capacity archival storage.

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DVD-RAM is an advanced recording media format that offers a range of digital data applications. Its phase-change recording material allows discs to be re-recordable and erasable, and a superior defect management system ensures accurate recording and playback. DVD-RAM allows instant, random access to any location on the disc for fast and easy data reading and writing. Because DVD-RAM supports fast formatting and no finalizing, it is an extremely easy-to-use media. And with DVD-RAM, changes can be made directly on the disc without the need to transfer data to a hard drive first, speeding up the editing tasks..."

Let's see the media information, according to DVDInfoPro:

The media has MXL16 ID and the drive reports 5.0X ZCLV writing strategy, as the drive reports. Compared toMaxell 3X DVD-RAM media, we can see the differences in the media ID code.

The Maxell DVD-RAM media comes pre-formatted with UDF2.00, meaning WinXP/2k will recognize the disc directly, since DVD-RAM is supported by Microsoft. Of course you can format (erase) the disc and use it with a normal application like Nero. LG includes the well known InCD for packet writing.

For our tests, we used the latest InCD version 4.2.9.1:

After installing InCD, a new TAB was added to the drive's properties providing information about the file system:

After pressing "format", a new window opens where we can set the disc's label name as well as set some advanced options

InCD recommends UDF 2.00 as the main file system for the disc. The formatting is almost instantaneous (less than 10secs):

- Burning Tests

In the beginning, we were very excited hoping to see the 5X Z-CLV writing strategy, but instead, by using NeroCDSpeed, we got a rather dissapointing graph:

The drive started 1.37X and using the P-CAV writing strategy, reached 1.53X, giving an average writing speed of 1.37X. Its quite interesting that the official specs from LG USA/Canada report 5X Z-CLV, while the HLDS website reports 5X P-CAV! A rather confusing situation...

Comparing the 5X vs 3X DVD-RAM media, we can see that the drive starts writing at 1.03X and continues till the end at this speed, resulting in an average speed of 0.98X.

Let's proceed with real life burning tests with Nero:

• 5X DVD-RAM

• 3X DVD-RAM

Noticed anything weird? Nero reports that the 5X DVD-RAM media is written at 2.1X (actually, it's 1.3X->2.1X P-CAV), while the 3X DVD-RAM media is written at 1.03~1.4X (P-CAV). Either using Nero or InCD, we got exactly the same writing performance using both the 3X and 5X DVD-RAM media (12mins).

Most users will wonder, why 5X DVD-RAM is even slower than a 2.4X DVD+RW drive? The answer lies in the way DVD-RAM technology works. In short, the drive uses a different writing strategy (write/verify), compared with the traditional writing only method (always writing). This reduces by almost half the overall burning speed, explaining why we didn't witness any major performance boost.

LG commented that "...In the case of DVD-RAM, it has Write and Verify feature. This means drive reads after write to verify written data.  Default setting of GSA-4120B for this Write and Verify feature is enabled.  This is a reason why you see 1.4-2.1X writing speed, half of 5X speed.  In the case of video streaming data write, Write and Verify feature is disabled, therefore, in this case writing speed is 5X ZCLV..."

Hopefully, the recently announced 16X DVD-RAM technology will hit the market in the upcoming year, offering its users much lower recording/reading times.