Testing The Drive

This is my first time testing a DVD-ROM drive so I only have a DVD movie - 'US Marshals' starring Tommy Lee Jones to test the drive. No DVD-ROM discs were available for tests. The DVD movie disc is a region 2 disc. But fortunately, there is a patch available which allows you to set the Lite-On LTD-122 into a region-free drive.

So, I tested this drive using various types of discs - DVD Video, Audio CD, CD-ROM, Video CD and CD-R. All of them run flawlessly. I heard that some drives are plagued with incompatibility problems with media like CD-R or CD-RW discs. I couldn't test its compatibility with CD-RW media because I don't have one myself. But such problems usually happen with first generation drives only.

I watched the 'US Marshals' movie using the software player included with the drive - PowerDVD 2.55. The movie played without any noticeable shuddering or in other words, it was real smooth. I tried running it on PowerDVD 3 with no problems whatsoever.

Noise

Almost all current CD or DVD-ROM drives in the market are very noisy. The spinning rate is at about 5000-8000 rpm. This creates a lot of noise - a very high pitched whining sound. This drive is no exception.

Just like other drives in the market, when the disc starts to spin, there is some weird spindle sound. Even my old 24X LG CD-ROM drive creates some noise when spinning up. You can control the whining noise by using Nero Drive Speed to adjust the maximum spinning speed.