Review: LG GH22NS90 Firmware: HN00 Manufactured: September 2010

If you happen to
be searching for a new and cheap DVD RW you have to deal with a lot of options.
I was simply looking for the cheapest drive that I could find, and the GH22NS90
was the cheapest. The price was 15 € and at this point you will probably wonder
why not spend more money and widen your choices. I could have done that, but I
needed a drive that was cheap, mainly it will be used to read from DVDs and
also burn some DVDs, mostly to good quality media.

Before we take a
closer look at the drive, you can find out some more info about LG simply by
clicking here.

Drive Specifications

---

The LG GH22NS is a
22x drive, and although you might not be impressed with the write speed, the
drive has a new feature. This is the support for M-DISC. According to the
official site you can write data to the disc once and you can read it back
forever. Unfortunately I didn't have any media to test this feature, but for
those of you that wish to learn more you can visit the Millenniata website for more info.

The drive has
typical features for CD-R/RW and DVD±R/RW DL read and burn, you can see a more
detailed view below.

As we see the drive is able to read CD-R/RW with speeds that can reach 48x/40x
and DVD±R/RW DL up to 16x/12x/12x. We can clearly see that the drive can burn
the new M-DISCS at 4x and read them at 12x. The drive has only a 1.5MB buffer,
but this isn’t a problem, and finally it comes with a two year warranty in the
EU.

Packaging

---

Not much to say
about the drive, it came shipped in a plastic bag with only the quick
installation guide and the warranty card.

Bezel

The bezel of the LG
GH22NS90 is nicely styled. We can see M-DISC logo alongside the LG and the
super multi logos, an emergency eject hole, single green LED and an eject
button.

Drive top

Drive bottom

On the bottom of
the drive we found two labels and we can see the drive was manufactured in India
during September 2011.

On the rear of the
drive we can see the SATA power connector and data connector.

Here is a picture
of how the drive looks inside.

As we can see the
chipset that the drive uses is a Mediatek MT1839LN. At this point you need to
know that the drive can't take advantage of popular utilities such as, Flash Utility and EEPROM Utility but it can scan CD's and DVD's using Opti Drive Control but it will not report Jitter.

Now let’s head
on to the next page where we can take a look at the features of the drive….

 

Test machine

---

For this review we
will be using a computer with the following configuration:

Hardware:

• Motherboard:
  Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4 (Intel P55 chipset)
• Processor:
  Intel i7 750
• RAM: 8 GB Kingston
  dual channel kit DDR3 
• GFX: ATI HD 5670
  (512 Megabytes GDDR5 HDCP compliant)
• Hard disk OS: OCZ
  Vertex 2 64GB
• Hard disk storage: Samsing Spinpoint F1 1TB
• PSU: Chieftec
  500W
• Display: FujitsuSiemens
  22”
• Operating System: Windows 7 Premium (64 bit)

---

System setup:

A screenshot from
Nero Infotool 6.

The LG GH22NS90 was
connected to one of the SATA2 ports on the motherboard’s SATA controller and it
was identified as HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH22NS90.

And screenshot
from Opti Drive Control:

In the screenshot
from Opti Drive Control above, we can see the LG GH22NS90 supports the main
media groups but we can't see any info about the M-DISC feature and also the
SecurDisc feature is missing. The drive came shipped with firmware version GL24.

Installed software:

For conducting our
various tests, we will be using the following applications.

• Nero Burning Rom 11
• Opti Drive Control
• Nero CD/DVD Speed
• Nero InfoTool
• DVDFab 8
• Slysoft CloneCD
• Exact Audio Copy

Our review PC has
Windows 7 Premium 64 bit installed.

Features and techniques

---

PI/PIF Disc quality scanning

The Lite-On drives
have become famous for Disc Quality Scanning and the iHAS624 is no exception.
The drive can be used with either Opti Drive Control, CD-Speed/Nero DiskSpeed
or K-Probe for disc quality scanning. In our reviews we always use a CLV
scanning method at 4x scanning speed. Please note, 8x scanning speed has been
set as a standard on the MyCE forum.

BookType (Bitsetting):

The LG GH22NS90 sets
the booktype to DVD-ROM only for +R Dual Layer media. You can manually change
it on +R Single layer media but are not allowed to change the booktype on +RW
media. You can change this setting from your burning DVD burning software, Nero,
ImgBurn or Disc Speed.

Here is how you can
check if your discs are really written with DVD-ROM book type:

Start Opti Drive
Control, click the Disc info button and you should get something like this:

DVD+R with BookType DVD-ROM

DVD+RW with BookType DVD-RW

DVD+R DL with BookType DVD-ROM

Another quick test
is to start Nero CD-Speed and look at the disc information:

Writing technique

---

Now it’s time to
take a closer look at the writing technology used by the LG GH22NS90.

For these tests we
used Nero CD/DVD Speed and wrote a full disc at the drive’s maximum speed.

CD Recordable:

According to the
specifications of the LG GH22NS90, it should be able to write CD-R media at a
maximum speed of 48x.

The LG GH22NS90 uses
CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum
speed of 48X. This gives an average speed of 36.04x and a total writing time of
2 minutes and 39 seconds.

For comparison we
have made the following table: 

As we can see, the
LG GH22NS90 is clearly the second fastest drive that we have tested when
writing CD-R media.

CD Re-writable:

According to the
specifications of the LG GH22NS90, it should be able to write CD-RW media at a
maximum speed of 32x. Unfortunately we only had 24x media.

The LG GH22NS90 uses
Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write
at its maximum speed of 24X. This gives an average speed of 21.63x and a total writing
time of 4 minutes and 12 seconds.

For comparison we
have made the following table: 

As we can see, we
can directly compare the result with the other drives, but the drive is fast with
24x CD-RW media.

22x DVD+R/-R writing speed:

According to the
specifications of the LG GH22NS90, it should be able to write DVD+R/-R media at
a maximum speed of 22x.

DVD+R

The LG GH22NS90 uses
CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum
speed of 22X. This gives an average speed of 16.19x and a total writing time of
4 minutes and 24 seconds.

DVD-R

The LG GH22NS90 uses
CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum
speed of 22X. This gives an average speed of 16.18x and a total writing time of
4 minutes and 29 seconds.

For comparison we
have made the following table: 

As we can see from
our table, the LG GH22NS90 is a very fast drive when writing our test DVD±R
media at 22x.

8X DVD+RW writing speed:

According to the
specifications of the LG GH22NS90, it should be able to write DVD+RW at a
maximum speed of 8x.

The LG GH22NS90 uses
Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write
at its maximum speed of 8X. This gives an average speed of 7.48x and a total writing
time of 7 minutes and 45 seconds.

For comparison we
have made the following table: 

Again we can see
that the LG GH22NS90 was one of the fastest drives we tested, when writing our
test DVD+RW media.

6x DVD-RW writing speed:

According to the
specifications of the LG GH22NS90, it should be able to write DVD-RW at a
maximum speed of 6x.

The LG GH22NS90 uses
CLV, (Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum
speed of 6X. This gives an average speed of 6.01x and a total writing time of
10 minutes and 03 seconds.

For comparison we
have made the following table: 

The LG GH22NS90 was
again one of the fastest drives when writing DVD-RW media.

8x DVD+R DL writing speed:

According to the
specifications of the LG GH22NS90, it should be able to write DVD+R DL at a
maximum speed of 8x.

The LG GH22NS90 uses
Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write
at 8X. This gives an average speed of 7.08x and a total writing time of 17
minutes and 15 seconds.

8x DVD-R DL writing speed:

According to the
specifications of the LG GH22NS90, it should be able to write DVD-R DL at a
maximum speed of 8x, unfortunately I didn’t have any –R Dual layer media to
test this function.

For comparison we
have made the following table: 

The LG GH22NS90 was
one of the fastest we have tested with +R Dual Layer media.

Summary:

The LG GH22NS90 has
very fast writing performance with CD-R/RW & DVD R/RW +DL media.

Let’s head on
to the next page where we will check reading performance….

Reading performance

---

For these tests we
will use Opti Drive Control to read various CD’s and DVD’s, including audio
discs and DVD-media. As already mentioned in the introduction, this drive
supports:

• DVD-ROM 16x
• CD-ROM 48x

Pressed discs:

For this test we
used a pressed CD-ROM disc almost 75 minutes in length. Below you will see the
result:

The LG GH22NS90
had issues reaching its max speed of 48x, at this point I can say that there
wasn’t anything wrong with the test disc, both Optiarc and LiteON Drives had no
issues reading the disc. The drive was only able to reach a maximum speed of
just over 40x.

The LG GH22NS90 didn't
give a great Transfer Rate Test result, the only positive is the very good
access times.

CD Recordable discs:

For this test we
made a copy of the original CD. The disc we used was a JVC 48X certified CD-R
disc manufactured by Taiyo Yuden.

The LG GH22NS90 reached
47.83x read speed, now let’s compare it with some other drives below.

The LG GH22NS90 gave
good results in terms of both speed and access time with our CD-R test disc.

CD Re-writable discs:

Again, we made a
copy of the original CD; this time we used a Verbatim Ultra Speed (24X) CD-RW
disc made by Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation.

The LG GH22NS90 reached
40.30x read speed. Let’s compare it with some other drives below.

The LG GH22NS90
was amongst the fastest drives with excellent access times when reading CD-RW
media.

Audio – Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the
digital audio extraction performance of the LG GH22NS90, again we used Nero
CD-DVD Speed to measure the transfer rate. The audio disc we used was “10,000
Days” from TOOL, and it’s almost 80 minutes long. (75:50.73).

The LG GH22NS90 reached
39.97x when reading our test audio disc. Let’s compare it with some other drives
below.

The LG GH22NS70 is
amongst the fastest drives when reading our test Audio CD.

DVD reading performance:

---

Again, we will use
Opti Drive Control to measure the reading performance, this time for various
types of DVD discs. The drive should read pressed single layer DVD-discs at
16X.

Pressed DVD Video:

For our DVD
reading performance tests we are going to start with Single and Double Layered
DVD video discs. While only 1X speed is required to watch DVD movies, it’s
useful to be able to read the discs at higher speeds if you’re going to extract
(rip) the content of the disc to your hard drive.

DVD Video (single layer)

DVD Video (double layer OTP)

The LG GH22NS90 is
not riplocked and read our single layer disc at 16x and our double layer test
discs at 8x

The LG GH22NS90 is
amongst the fastest drives that we have tested when reading our test DVD-Video test
discs.

DVD – DVD+R/RW:

---

For this test we
used a Verbatim 16X DVD+R and a Verbatim 8X DVD+RW with about 4.4GB of data.
Below are the results:

DVD+R

DVD+RW

The LG GH22NS90 was
amongst the top drives we have tested when reading our test DVD+R/RW media.

DVD – DVD-R/RW:

---

For this test we
used a Verbatim 16X DVD-R disc and a Verbatim 6X DVD-RW disc filled with about
4.4GB of data. Our test results are found below:

DVD-R

DVD-RW

There are hardly
any differences in the speed, compared to reading the DVD+R/RW discs.

Once again the LG
GH22NS90 was close to the top when reading DVD-R media and about average when
reading our test DVD-RW media.

DVD±R DL discs:

---

DVD+R DL:

At the start of this
test I came across another disappointing result, the drive wasn’t able to read
the disc that it had recorded. So I used another Dual Layer Disc to test the
drive.

The LG GH22NS90 was able to reach 12.11x a very nice
results for this media.

Summary:

The LG GH22NS90 has
given some excellent results, but also some very disappointing ones. Over all I
can say that the drive does a good job reading but there is a lot of work to be
done elsewhere. An example of this is the failure to read its own burned Dual
Layer Disc.

Now let’s head
over to the next page where we will test CD-R/RW writing performance……

The specifications
of the LG GH22NS90 state that the drive is able to write CD-R discs at 48x and
CD-RW at 32x. Let us find out how the drive really performs with regard to speed
and quality.

Writing Data CD-R discs:

---

For our data
writing tests, we simply burnt a full disc using Opti Drive Control (create
data disc) function and burnt the discs at the maximum speed allowed.

Write quality:

---

We will test CD-R
discs from many different CD-R manufacturers. To really measure the write speed,
we used the “create test disc” function in Opti Drive Control. The discs were
written at the maximum speed that the drive supports. For the quality test, we
used Opti Drive Control Disc Quality Scan and combined
this with a Transfer Rate Test to test if the resulting
disc was readable. Also note that different drives and different reading speeds
may affect the results obtained when scanning the discs. We used a Optiarc AD7200A drive with firmware 1.09 and scanned
the discs at 48X speed.

There is more
than one way to handle C1 and C2 error detection/correction, but a simple and
common way is to detect and correct up to two errors per frame in each stage
and detect three or more errors:

• E11: 1 error detected and corrected by C1
  layer
• E21: 2 errors detected and corrected by
  C1 layer
• E31: 3 or more errors detected but not
  corrected by C1 layer

The sum of
these (per second) is called the Block Error Rate: BLER=E11+E21+E31

• E32: 3 or more errors detected but not
  corrected by C2 layer

Any E31 is
un-correctable by the C1 layer and will result in the bytes in that frame being
redistributed into multiple frames which are passed to the C2 layer.

Any E32 is
un-correctable by the C2 layer and will result in interpolation being used for
Audio CDs or will result in third layer error correction being used for Data
CDs.

Different drives
have different ways of reporting these errors in a Disc Quality scan.  Lite-On
CD-RW drives will report C1 and C2 errors this way:

• C1=BLER=E11+E21+E31
• C2=E32

Here is an
easier way to look at Disc Quality Scanning:

A written CD-R
disc will always have some C1 errors; C1 errors are easily corrected by the
drive’s error correction capabilities. The next level of errors is C2, while C2
errors could also be corrected by most drive’s error correction capabilities;
they are not wanted on a good quality disc. A good disc should not contain any
C2 errors, and preferably have an average C1 error amount of below 2.0 for the
best discs, or at least below 10.0 averages for good quality discs. After C2
errors, there are only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

In short, our
analysis will be based on this guideline to determine the quality of the burned
disc:

CD-R/RW quality scans guideline

Below are the
obtained results:

An excellent result
to start our CD-R tests.

The disc might
have a perfect TRT but the result is disappointing, the C2 errors at the end
indicate a poor burn with this media.

The result is again
disappointing, high C1 errors and once more there are also C2 errors.

The result is good,
but there is room for improvement.

 

Writing Quality with Re-Writable
discs:

---

The result is simply
okay for this CD-RW media, and there is room for improvement.

Summary:

CD-R writing quality
is generally poor and only one media type gave us a good result, so we feel
that there is room for improvement with CD-R and CD-RW media.

Now let’s head
on to the next page where we will test DVD recordable performance….

The specifications
of this drive tell us that it should write DVD±R at 22x and DVD+RW/-RW at
8x/6x. In this part, we will measure the writing times for various types of
DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW discs. We will also focus on write quality and media
compatibility.

Write quality:

---

Disc Quality Scanning - PI/PO:

DVDs use an error
detection and correction system (ECC) which is usually transparent to the
end-user, but we can get an idea of the "quality" of a disc by
performing Disc Quality Scanning, which shows how many errors the drive is
detecting and correcting behind the scenes.

There are two
layers or stages of error detection and correction on all DVD media; these are
called Parity Inner (PI) and Parity Outer (PO). Data is arranged in ECC blocks
containing rows and columns of user data with additional columns of PI error
correction and rows of PO error correction.

An ECC block
contains 32 KByte of user data with some added control data, scrambled and
arranged in 192 rows and 172 columns with an additional 10 columns of PI error
correction and 16 rows of PO error correction.

The Parity Inner
stage is performed first, and up to 5 bytes in a row can be corrected. Any row
with one or more errors is counted as a Parity Inner Error (PIE). Any row with
more than 5 errors is considered un-correctable and is counted as a Parity
Inner Failure (PIF).

The Parity Outer
stage is performed next and will detect and attempt to correct any errors that
are still left after the PI stage. Any column that has errors is counted as a
Parity Outer Error (POE), and any column that has un-correctable errors is
counted as a Parity Outer Failure (POF). If a POF occurs the drive can
sometimes re-read the problematic spot and correct the problem; this happens
only during normal reading and not during scanning, however.

Disc Quality
scanning is influenced by the drive performing the test, and that's why
different drives report different results and even the same drive will report
(slightly) different results when scanning the same disc again. Please note
that PI/PO and Jitter scans only test some aspects of disc quality and that
other important aspects are not revealed.

But what is a good
scan? That is a discussion that we don’t think will end soon, as different
drives report different amounts of errors, some players are more picky about
media than others, and so on. But as a comparison we present you with scans
from two pressed DVD discs:

The scan above
shows the results from a pressed, Single Layer DVD-Video disc (Goldeneye).

The above scan
shows the result from a pressed Double Layer DVD-Video disc (The Green Mile).

The Lite-On DVD
burners used in this review report errors as follows:

• PIE per 8 ECC
  blocks (rows with 1 or more bytes in error)
• PIF per 1 ECC
  block (rows with 6 or more bytes in error)

We want to see as
low error numbers as possible.
PIE per 8 ECC blocks should be no higher than 280.
PIF per 1 ECC block should be no higher than 4.

Both the pressed
DVD-discs above are well within the standards if we ignore the single PIF spike
in the DL scan.

If you want to
look at the standards for yourself, download the ECMA 267 Standard for DVD-ROM,
the ECMA 337 Standard for DVD+R/RW and the ECMA 338 Standard for DVD-R/RW at http://www.ecma-international.org.

Notice that there are
other aspects such as disc reflectivity, tracking errors and so on that also
will affect the readability of a DVD disc – but for this we do not have
measuring equipment available.

Also, another note
is that we have scanned the discs at 4X speed, by lowering the speed to 2X
(DVD-R/RW)/2.4X (DVD+R/RW) or 1X the amount of reported errors may drop on some
discs. We scanned at 4X CLV due to lower speeds taking too much time.

To see if there is
a connection between the reported amount of errors and readability of the discs
we also include the reading curve from an Optiarc AD-7240S DVD-Writer which by
default is able to read DVD±R media at 16x speed. A small speed reduction near
the end is still accepted on good discs, but serious reading problems or
reading failures is a bad sign.

Jitter:

Jitter
is a very complex subject and even more difficult to explain when we start to
use optical drives designed for the home market to measure jitter values.

Let’s
first look at the DVD specification for pressed DVD discs (in the bold part
courtesy of Pioneer Electronics).

“The
DVD design target is that when the worst-case disc allowed by the
specification, considering the economics of production, is played using the
worst-case pickup that can be produced in volume economically, the byte error
rate after error correction will still be 1 x 10-^-20, which is good
enough to be acceptable for computer applications.

Since
the above target is for "after error correction," the error
correction capability must be calculated. Considering the trade-off between
error correction capability and the overhead of the added redundancy, the DVD
format was set to one ECC block per 32 KB. This requires a byte error rate
before correction of 1 x 10^-2.
In order to achieve good economy on both the part of the discs and the playback
mechanisms. The current disc tilt specification was determined as a result of
the efforts on both sides.

As
will be explained hereafter, it is difficult to make the error rate a
specification of the disc itself. Therefore, a jitter standard is set by the
DVD specifications. A simple calculation based on a normal distribution
requires that the jitter rate be under 15.4%, and experimental results indicate
that jitter must be under 16%, to achieve the required error rate. Since the
disc tilt varies within a revolution, it was decided to adopt the design
concept that jitter must remain within 16% at the instantaneous peak value of
tilt. Since it is actually very difficult to measure the peak value, the
concept became to measure the average jitter at under 15%, and the byte error
rate at under 5 x 10-3.”

What
is Jitter?

In basic terms, we
could say jitter is a product of “pit and land distortion” In other words, when
the drive reading the disc has to compensate by means of a “tilt servo” which
constantly tries to move and refocus the PUH lens for optimum tracking and
tries to compensate for the imperfections of pits and lands on the pressed or
recordable media. This is further compounded by the hardware used for recording
and playback. Not only is the
record and replay process limited by the resolution of the optical pickup, it
is also horribly non-linear. In addition, the playback of the pits is subject
to non-linear crosstalk from nearby pits in the same track, and also from pits
in nearby tracks.

The things that causes jitter divide into three main
types.

• Variation in pit length and width.
• Crosstalk from nearby pits in the same track.
• Crosstalk from pits in adjacent tracks.

 

Variation in pit length and width.

The recorded pits themselves are not perfectly
accurate. Anything which causes variations in the sizes of the pits will
produce jitter. A prime culprit of this is sudden variations in laser power
(laser noise). If laser power varies, then the laser beam itself changes and
will vary in intensity and possibly focus. This will cause the pit length and
width to also vary and we now have jitter.

Crosstalk from nearby pits in the same track.

If the pits are not totally accurate, then the laser
beam spot may overrun a pit and gather data from the adjacent pit in the same
track, or if the “land” is to short, then the laser beam spot can be influenced
by the adjacent pit and this is called inter-symbol interference. Inter-symbol
interference is worse at low recording velocities, because the pits are shorter
and closer together. And it is the cause of "deviation" of the pit
lengths.

Crosstalk from pits in adjacent tracks.

Crosstalk between pits in adjacent tracks is caused by
the laser beam spot being larger than the width of the track. It is a largely random
contribution and is worse at lower recorded velocities, because the highest
frequency components of the readout signal in the wanted track, with which the
crosstalk is competing, are weaker.

Some
other factors to consider

There
are many aspects to consider when we add Recordable DVD media into the mix. We
are now dealing with an organic dye, which is inherently unstable. We must also
consider the equipment we are using to measure jitter is aimed at the home
market. So we must also take into account variations between drives that we are
unable to calibrate for such tests.

Now
let’s look at some of the hardware limitations of the drives we are using to
measure jitter.

If
there is no tilt, then the jitter value includes components from light source
noise, circuit noise, disc noise, standard interference between symbols (inter
-symbol interference), and some small amount of crosstalk from the neighbouring
tracks.

Next
we consider manufacturing variation in the circuitry.
Variation due to the circuitry have noise-like characteristics, and increase
the minimum jitter level, but are thought to have a very small effect on tilt
margin. Factors such as offset in the servo circuit, however, both increase the
jitter level and decrease tilt margin.

How
we will measure jitter.

We
will be using a Lite-On DVD writer to conduct these tests along with Opti Drive
Control at 4x scanning speed. In the screen shot below we can see a PI/PIF scan
including a jitter test (the purple graph in the lower window) we carried out on
a single layer DVD+R media.

Now,
let's find a reasonable average jitter level. Experimental results indicate
that 8% average value or less is a desirable figure, based on the DVD
specification. That does not mean that jitter average values above 8% are bad.
In fact, many optical drives will quite happily read recordable DVD media with
jitter values of more than 14% average without any problems. Other drives,
including standalone DVD players may begin to struggle reading discs with
average jitter values above 10%. So there is a fairly wide range of acceptable
values. One must test their own playback devices to see what they can cope
with.

However,
for the purpose of having a basic guideline we can use in our reviews, we
present a rating system for average jitter values.

·        
Less than 8% (average) = Very good

·        
8% - 9% (average) = good

·        
9% - 12% (average) = average

·        
Above 12% (average) = poor

Here is an easier explanation on
how to read the test results

Maybe this got too
technical, and you are wondering what to look for in your Nero
DiscSpeed/CD-Speed Quality Scans?

Use this as a guideline for good discs:

·        
PI (Parity Inner): No
larger areas on the disc should exceed 280 PI-8 errors, do not worry too much
about high single spikes that exceed 280.

·        
PIF (Parity Inner Failures):
No larger areas on the disc should exceed 4 PIF-1 errors, do not worry too much
about high single spikes that exceed 4.

·        
Jitter: An average
jitter value of 8% or less is considered very good. You should not worry too
much if the average value is slightly above this figure.

And as always;
lower is better

DVD+R media compatibility and
write quality:

---

In these tests we
will be using a Lite-On iHAS624 B with firmware GL27 along with Nero CD-DVD
Speed to measure the disc quality. We will also be using the Optiarc AD-7200A
with firmware 1.09 along with Opti Drive Control for our read-back tests.

An excellent
result, PIF and PI errors are low, jitter is a little higher than what we are
used to, but the TRT is perfect.

The result is excellent,
jitter, PIE and PI are very good for 22x and the TRT is perfect.

The results are excellent,
for this 8x media manufactured by Taiyo Yuden.

The result is poor,
high PI errors and also a slowdown on the TRT indicate a poor burn.

The result is excellent
and it also has a perfect TRT.

DVD+RW media compatibility and
write quality:

---

We used the same
test procedures as in our DVD+R tests.

Below are our
obtained results.

The result is again
very good, everything is within the acceptable limits and we also have a
perfect TRT to close our test with the +R/RW media.

Summary:

The LG GH22NS40
burns DVD+R/RW media with generally good quality.

Now let’s look
at DVD-R/RW performance and quality on the next page…..

DVD-R media compatibility and
write quality:

---

In these tests we
will be using a Lite-On iHAS624 B with firmware GL27 along with Nero CD-DVD
Speed to measure the disc quality. We will also be using the Optiarc AD-7200A
with firmware 1.09 along with Opti Drive Control for our read-back tests.

We start our test
with a very good result and a perfect TRT.

A horrible result,
a failed TRT, a very high Jitter, and also a huge rise in PI errors at the end
of the disc which is a recipe for a bad burn.

The result is very
good for this media.

The disc might
have a perfect TRT but it also has high PIE errors and an alarming level of
jitter, overall a poor result.

Another
good result, for this media, PIE, PI and Jitter are within limits and the TRT
of the disc is flawless.

DVD-RW media compatibility and
write quality:

---

For this test we
used the same testing procedures as in our DVD-R tests.

The result is very
good, the burn was one of the fastest we had on RW media, and finishes our test
with a perfect TRT.

Summary:

The LG GH22NS90
gave us a few very good burns on –R and –RW media, unfortunately again we got
one burn that was simply disappointing, especially as we can see that this bad
burn came when using a Verbatim disc, something that indicates that some extra
work is required on the firmware.

Let’s head on
to the next page where we will test DVD R DL writing performance and quality……

DVD+R/-R Double Layer writing
performance and quality:

---

The LG GH22NS90 supports
the DVD+R DL/-R DL standard for writing Double Layer/Dual Layer discs with a
size around 8.5 GB at a writing speed of 8x.

DVD+R DL:

For these tests we
wrote a full disc with Nero CD-DVD Speed. We then used the Lite-On along with Nero
CD-DVD Speed to test the disc’s quality; we then finally ran a read-back test
on our Optiarc AD-7200A using Nero CD-DVD Speed.

Again we were
disappointed with the result, the disc has very high error and jitter levels at
the end of both layers, and as a result the Optiarc fails to read the disc. The
disc was also unreadable on the GH22NS90 and on the LiteON  iHAS624.

Summary:

A lot of work is
required on the firmware to improve the burn quality. This is the first time
that I've had a result as bad as this with Verbatim media.

 

Let’s round off
this review with the Authors page, with some real world and advanced tests....

Author’s page:

---

Introduction:

On this page, the
author of the review has the freedom to run tests that she/he thinks will
enhance the review. These tests are unlike our standard tests, which we try to
keep consistent throughout the whole review team, so that our reviews are as comparable
as possible. This page gives the reviewer the opportunity to show some advanced
and real world tests that other review team members may not be able to run.

Real World tests:

---

Real world tests
are designed to simulate what normal users might use their drives for in
everyday use. For example, writing discs with a burning application.

Audio Extraction:

For this test we
used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to test the drive’s Audio extraction performance.
As we can see from the screenshot below, the drive supports accurate stream and
C2 error info.

Below are the
results produced by EAC:

Burst mode

Secure mode

The LG GH22NS90 performed
extremely well in burst mode and slightly slower than what we expected in
secure mode.

Nero Burning Rom:

In the following tests we will burn discs from the main
media groups with Nero Burning Rom 11.

CD-R:

For our data
writing tests, we simply set up a new compilation of 698MB using Nero Burning
ROM software. Writing method used is DAO (Disc At Once), and the disc is set up
as a non-multisession disc with “finalize disc” enabled. The screenshot below
shows how long it takes to write a disc at the highest speed. (48x)

The LG GH22NS90 burned
our test CD-R at 48x in 2 minutes and 41 seconds.

Let’s compare with
other drives in our table below.

The LG GH22NS90 is
the fastest drive that we have tested when writing our test CD-R.

DVD R:

In this test we
will measure the time for writing to DVD R discs. We used Nero Burning Rom to
burn an ISO compilation containing 4483MB of data. We used the Disc-At-Once
write method.

The LG GH22NS90 burned
our test DVD R at 16x in 5 minutes and 38 seconds. Unfortunately we only had
16x media.

CSS Encrypted DVD-Video ripping
tests:

Most modern DVD
burners don’t have Video riplock and in most cases will read a pressed DVD-Video
SL disc at 16x speed. However, some drives use a CSS riplock when it comes to
extracting data from the disc. If you attempt to rip a pressed DVD-Video with
CSS encryption to your hard drive, then the ripping speed may be locked at a
much lower speed than 16x.

We should point
out, that ripping and compressing a DL DVD-Video disc to DVD-5 format is quite
CPU intensive. The more powerful your system is, the less likely your system
power will affect the results. The PC used in this review is equipped with a
fast Intel Quad Core processor and fast hard drives, in our case an OCZ Vertex
2 SSD. We checked to make sure our review PC was not having an impact on the
results.

For this test we
will use Fengtao software DVDFab. Thanks to Fengtao
software – For providing a full DVDFab license.

Below we can see
our reference results.

Now let’s test the
LG GH22NS90 using the same testing procedures.

SL CSS encrypted DVD-Video (The
Phantom of the opera):

The LG GH22NS90 is
not CSS riplocked and it ripped our DVD-Video SL test disc in 4 minutes and 52
seconds.

DL CSS encrypted DVD-Video (Iron
Man):

The LG GH22NS90 is
not CSS riplocked and ripped our test DVD-Video DL disc in 10 minutes and 03
seconds.

Overburning CD-R:

We tested the LG
GH22NS90 to see if it could overburn CD-R media. The results are below.

700MB (80 minute) over-burn test:

The LG GH22NS90 reported
a maximum overburn capacity of 82:24.03. We then setup a test burn with
CD-Speed of slightly less than maximum and burned the disc, 82:22.00 to be
exact.

As we can see the
drive did burn the test disc without any issues.

Since the drive
wasn’t able to read the disc, we can clearly say that it isn’t doing a great
job when it comes to overburning.

BenQBenQ CD-R Scans

Closing this part of the review, I will be
also putting some BenQ scans on the CD-R media that the LG GH22NS90 burn.

Here is a simple explanation on how a BenQ
Drive scan’s CD’s.

Write quality:

We will test CD-R discs from many different
CD-R manufacturers. To really measure the write speed, we used the “create data
CD” function in Nero CD-DVD Speed. The discs were written at the maximum speed
that the drive supports. For the quality test, we used Nero CD-DVD Speed’s Advanced
Disc Quality Scan. Also note that different drives and
different reading speeds may affect the results obtained when scanning the
discs. We used a BenQ DVD DW1650 with firmware BCIC under Advance Quality Scan
at 48X speed.

There is more than one way to handle C1
and C2 error detection/correction, but a simple and common way is to detect and
correct up to two errors per frame in each stage and detect three or more
errors:

• E11: 1 error detected and corrected by C1 layer
• E21: 2 errors detected and corrected by C1 layer
• E31: 3 or more errors detected but not corrected by C1 layer

The sum of these (per second) is called
the Block Error Rate: BLER=E11+E21+E31

• E32: 3 or more errors detected but not corrected by C2 layer

Any E31 is un-correctable by the C1 layer
and will result in the bytes in that frame being redistributed into multiple
frames which are passed to the C2 layer.

Any E32 is un-correctable by the C2 layer
and will result in interpolation being used for Audio CDs or will result in
third layer error correction being use for Data CDs.

Different drives have different ways of
reporting these errors in a Disc Quality scan.  Lite-On CD-RW
drives will report C1 and C2 errors this way:

• C1=BLER=E11+E21+E31
• C2=E32

BenQ DW1650 Disc Quality

• C1=BLER=E11+E21+E31
• C2=E32

BenQ DW1650 Advanced Disc Quality

• All errors are
  reported separately as well as BLER=E11+E21+E31

Here is an easier way to look at Disc
Quality Scanning:

A written CD-R disc will always have some
C1 errors; C1 errors are easily corrected by the drive’s error correction
capabilities. The next level of errors is C2, while C2 errors could also be
corrected by most drive’s error correction capabilities; they are not wanted on
a good quality disc. A good disc should not contain any C2 errors, and
preferably have an average C1 error amount of below 2.0 for the best discs, or
at least below 10.0 averages for good quality discs. After C2 errors, there are
only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

So, in short, our analysis will be based on
these guidelines to determine the quality of the burned discs which will be Quality
Scanned on our BenQ DW1650:

JVC 48X CD-R

First we start by re-scanning the JVC 48c
CD-R, and here is the result.

As we can see there are no E32 errors, and
Jitter is low, so we can say that this burn is very good.

Memorex 48x CD-R

A disappointing result, a lot of errors at
the end of the disc and the most irritating things are the level of E32 errors
and rise in Jitter (close to 20) which make this a poor burn. The disc might
have a perfect TRT but I wouldn’t trust this CD with any kind of data.

Samsung 48x CD-R

Again with this Samsung media the result is
poor. High errors with high Jitter and also E32 , again you couldn't trust this
burn with your precious data.

Verbatim 48X CD-R

The Verbatim CD-R is showing a much better
results, but again it’s not as good as we would like it. Maybe with a slower
burn speed the result could have been better.

 

This concludes
our LG GH22NS90 review. To read the conclusion, click on the link below

Positive:

• Priced only 15€.
• Good performance
  with DVD±R/RW.
• Overall very
  good reading performance, except with our preset CD-ROM disc.
• Supports
  BitSetting (BookType DVD-ROM) on DVD+R/DL.
• Supports the
  M-DISK format.

Negative:

·        
Poor write performance
on CD-R media.

·        
Poor performance on +R
Dual layer media.

·        
Poor performance with
Verbatim –R media.

Conclusion:

---

Let us summarise
the most important positive and negative points below:

The LG has
confusing performance issues. It will read most of the media without any
problems, but when it comes to writing, it’s very picky and it will frustrate
many people. The reason behind this being the two failed burns that we had.

Most modern drives
have no issues burning Verbatim media. However the GH22NS90 failed to properly
burn the –R media, and also the +R Dual Layer Verbatim disks. The Drive also
supports the new M-DISK format, however we didn’t have any media to test this
function.

Booktyping is one
feature that many users will appreciate, and it’s available for DVD+R/DL.

To sum up, this is what we would
say:

“The GH22NS90
has a good price to start with and it also will allow you to burn M-DISKs.
Overall the performance is good, but there are some serious issues with +R DL
and -R burns. For the two failed burns I can only give the average award”

Because of the
generally confusing results we give the GH22NS90 the “Average” award.

You may comment on
this review below.

Thanks to: