Product Listing

LITE-ON SHM-165H6S Internal DVD Writer

By Vincent Chang - 17 Apr 2006

Additional Burns

Additional Burns

Despite all the research that goes into making DVD media, it still retains an element of unpredictability, thanks to the various 'dyes' used to manufacture the media that differs from one vendor to another. Throw in the many branded media that actually repackages media from OEMs and it could be quite a messy situation.

Hence, as part of our tests, we put the DVD writer through its paces by testing its compatibility with a range of media, varying in brands and speeds. This will hopefully tell us which media is best for a particular drive and reduce the odds of getting coasters. However, it would be near impossible for anyone to test a truly comprehensive list of media so we have tried to include only the more common brands found off the shelves. If you would like to see the results of a specific brand of media, kindly feedback to us the manufacturer ID of the media and we will try to include that in the next review.

Also, over-specification writing is something that many enthusiasts are interested in. This is the ability to write the media beyond its nominal speed. Not all drives allow this and those that do may be picky about the brand and type of media. Hopefully the LITE-ON SHM-165H6S is capable of doing this.


16x DVD±R

Brands of Media used:-

  • Prodisc 16x DVD-R = PRODISCF02
  • Sony 16x DVD-R = SONY16D1
  • TDK 16x DVD-R = TTH02
  • PHILIPS 16x DVD+R = PHILIPSC16
  • Sony 16x DVD+R = SONYD21
  • TDK 16X DVD+R = TDK-003

The LITE-ON failed to write the Philips 16x DVD-R at its rated speed of 16x. Instead, it burned the disc at 8x, though at a decent timing for 8x. This was not the case for the TDK 16x DVD+R, which despite the 16x burning speed requested, the final result was a woeful 11 minutes wait.


8x DVD±R and More 4x DVD±RW

Brands of Media used:-

  • Ritek 8x DVD-R = RITEKG05
  • TDK 8x DVD-R = TTG02
  • Fujifilm 8x DVD-R = TYG02
  • Fujifilm 8x DVD+R = YUDEN000,T02
  • LG 8x DVD+R = PRODISCR03
  • MKM 8x DVD+RW = MKMA03
  • Maxell 6x DVD-RW = JVC1VICTORD7
  • Smartbuy 4x DVD+RW = PRODISCW02
  • Verbatim 4x DVD+RW = MKMA02

Unfortunately, over-specification was not enabled in all our media tests as we did not manage to do so for any of the brands of media used above. This is not a failing of course as the media and writer performed to its specifications. Going by the timings we noticed, we were glad to report that the LITE-ON drive performed to expectations for all the media.

**Updated on 18th April 2006**

LITE-ON does provide a workaround to the drive's default lack of over-specification writing via their own unadvertised bundled Smart-Burn utility. For those who would like to experiment and extract more out of their drive, you can enable the OverSpeed function within the utility.

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