LG-GSA4120B Triple Format DVDWriter

updated as on 28 August 2004

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DL Media Test: Mitsubishi Chemicals/Verbatim 2.4x Dual Layer media

Intrinsically both media below are analogous.Media codes used by the 2 media are also akin.

First Attempt:

Using Nero Burning Rom 6.3.1.15/f.w.A102 (no bitsetting, so the DL media was rendered as DVD+L, not DVD-ROM). The below media used is MC, not Verbatim packaged.( some users have reported quality difference between MC and Verbatim Dl media, though both share the same mediacodes, MKM001)

The above DL media was read back in LG4120 itself, LG4082B( f/w A206) and TDKcombo 523252BC (f/w N7E3) perfectly.

My experience of using NOAD bitsetting f/w produced coasters of Verbatim and Mitsubishi Chemicals DL media, both with media code MKM001, though some users from cdfreaks have reported success.

Second Attempt:

LG has released new firmware A104 which supports bitsetting ( i.e. changing booktype for DVD+R and DL+9 media) but it could only be achieved by using approproate softwares, such as Nero 6.3.1.20 and DVDINFOPRO 3.

However, DVD+RW should work the same and in Nero 6.3.1.20, you could actually choose the booktype DVD-ROM for DVD+RW but the result was disappointing. The booktype remained DVD+RW. For the time being apparently DVD+RW could not be booktyped to DVD-ROM.

A user from cdfreaks designed a very small and useful tool that sets the booktype for + media for LG4120B. You can find the details here and the tool works well.

With the booktype of DL+9 set to DVD-ROM, the burning was completed flawlessly using DVD Decryptor 3.2.30.

The rendered DL+9 looked like this under media code check in DVDINFOPRO 3:

As seen above, the rendered DL+9 showed excellent Kprobe results.

There are some users reporting that with the new booktype change incorporated in the firmware A104, DVD+R and DL+9 rendered are not readable or read incorrectly with wrong capacity in Liteon or Liteon-based dvd-roms ( not Liteon DVD Writers, if not I could have not been able to read and test for kprobe results in my Liteon 832s). This observation is in fact true. I tried the DL+9 disc in TDK523252BS ( N7E3) combo drive and the disc was not recognised at all. In winxp sp2 ( same for sp1), in Explorer u can see it is recognised as a 'CD' and when you click it, the content is empty.

I do not have other dvd-roms to test out so I cannot draw other conclusions. However, my Apple iBook's combo drive Matshita 8312 can read the disc flawlessly. It seems that only Liteon/Liteon-based drives have problems playing back the disc. Hopefully the next firmware could right this wrong.