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Review: LG GSA-4167B Reviewer: Jan70 Provided by: LG '“ Germany Firmware: DL11 & DL12 Manufactured: August 2005 |
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:- PowerDVD
- PowerProducer Gold
- Nero
Express - InCD
- Acrobat
Reader
- Super Multi
DVD Drive CD:- Owner's
Manual
- Owner's
- 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…………