LG GSA-4167B Super Multi DVD-Writer Review

LG ‘“ Germany was kind enough to send us their latest DVD-writer the LG GSA-4167B Super multi DVD Writer. This drive supports 16x DVD+R/-R, 8x/6x DVD+RW/-RW, 5x DVD-RAM and 6x/4x DVD+R DL/-R DL writing, allowing Double/Dual Layer discs of 8.5Gb to be written.

Company information:

Let us take a look at some of the company information found at the LG website.

The Foundation of LG

LG was established in 1947 as Korea’s first chemical company, also becoming the nation’s first electronics company with its expansion into home appliances in 1958. The new Corporate Identity was launched including the change of the group name from Lucky-Goldstar to LG in 1995.

Business Fields

The wide array of activities that LG conducts are coordinated within three highly focused business sectors: Chemicals & Energy, Electronics and Telecommunications & Services. Each sector has undergone systematic changes, with improved financial compositions, restructured business portfolios and realigned equity investment structures.

The split of two holding companies LG Corp. and GS Holdings Corp.

On March 2003, LG introduced the holding company structure and recently, the demerger of two holding companies – LG Corp. and GS Holdings Corp. took place on July 1 to separate the manufacturing and technology related businesses from the service and retail operations. The separation is meant to maximize profits of LG shareholders by boosting business specialization of key LG companies.

Increasing R&D investment in 2004

With the anticipations and expectations for the new structure, LG has set an ambitious management goal for this year. In 2003, LG’s ordinary profit stood at KRW 3.1 trillion on sales of KRW 85 trillion. In 2004, LG plans to raise ordinary profit and sales by 42% and 12% year-on-year respectively. This year’s ordinary profit target is KRW 4.4 trillion and the sales target is KRW 95 trillion. LG plans to increase the R&D investments by 31% from last year to KRW 9.4 trillion in 2004.

If you are interested in reading more company information, please visit www.lg.co.kr/english

Drive specifications:

Now let us take a look at the specifications of the LG GSA-4167B, found at LG’s UK website:

What’s inside the box?

On this page we will take a look at what the drive came shipped with and take a look at the drive and its technology.

Front

Back

Top

Bottom

Left Side

Right Side

Below you will see the contents of the retail box:

• The internal drive itself
• Nero 6 OEM Suite
• LG DVD Writer Solution CD:
  1. PowerDVD
  2. PowerProducer Gold
  3. Nero Express
  4. InCD
  5. Acrobat Reader
• Super Multi DVD Drive CD:
  1. Owner’s Manual
• IDE cable
• Audio cable
• 4 mounting screws   
• Quick Guide
• Guarantee information

Now it’s time to take a look at the drive itself:

On the neutral looking bezel we found; an eject button, an emergency eject hole and a LED (green – for read and write – we prefer a different LED colour though for writing). The logos located on the loading tray include the Super Multi logo, a DVD Alliance DVD+R DL logo, the LG logo, a DVD Forum DVD-Multi Recorder logo, and a CD-RW Ultra Speed logo.

Top

On top of the drive we found one sticker, and we can read it was manufactured in China (bottom left), dated August 2005.

Underside

Side

On the back of the drive starting from the left, we can see a reserved connector; analogue audio connector; pins and jumper to set the drive to cable select, slave or master; IDE connector and finally the power connector.

We installed the drive without any problems and here is a screenshot from Nero InfoTool:

From the screenshot of Nero InfoTool above, we miss Mt.Rainier and CD+G support and a larger buffer size. Our drive came shipped with firmware DL10, which was later updated to DL11 and DL12.

And another shot from Nero Burning ROM:

But let us continue this review and see how it really performs.

On the next page we will take a look at the test machine, the software, the drive features…………