LG BH14NS40 14x Blu-ray Disc ReWriter

DVD Write and ReWrite Tests - Nero Burning Rom 9.4.26.0 and InstantBurn 5:

To test the DVD writing performance of LG's new drive I used Verbatim 16x DVD+R, 16x DVD-R, 6x DVD-RW and 8x DVD+RW media. To get the writing times, a 4.38GB image was burned to our test discs using Nero.

When writing to DVD+R and DVD-R media at 16x, the BH14NS40 uses CAV. By looking at the screenshots above, you can see that LG's new drive starts writing at about 5.6x and accelerates, reaching its maximum speed at the end of the disc.

The BH14NS40 also features 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW writing speeds. While the drive uses CLV when writing to DVD-RW media, it uses Z-CLV to reach its maximum DVD+RW writing speed.

When writing to M-DISCs, the BH14NS40 uses CLV. The drive starts writing at 4x and stays at this speed throughout the entire session.

The BH14NS40 performed fairly well in our DVD writing tests. While not nearly as fast as some of the 24x DVD writers we've looked at, it turned in some respectable times with both DVD±R and DVD±RW media.

To check the media compatibility of the BH14NS40, I ran a few tests using some of the media available in my area. The media types, along with the average time it took the drive to write our 4.38GB image, are listed below.

So what about writing quality? Using CD Speed we can test a disc's PI (Parity Inner), PIF (Parity Inner Fail) and Jitter rates. For these tests I used a Lite-On iHAS424 and read the discs at 8x with the PI and PIF ECC sums set to 8 and 1 respectively.

So what are "good" results supposed to look like? When testing with the iHAS424, the PI errors should not exceed 280 and the number of PIF errors should stay below 4. Since POF errors are uncorrectable, we really don't want to see any of them at all.

I also put these discs through a "stress test" by reading them back at 16x. By reading these discs back at this speed, we can see if there are any readability issues caused by the number of errors or high levels of jitter.

The BH14NS40's writing quality was pretty good with most of the DVD+R media we tested. Aside from a few small spikes, the PI/PIF rates stayed within acceptable limits.

Lastly, here are some results from our DVD-R test media. While the writing quality varied from one manufacturer to another, the results were fairly good for the most part.

The writing quality was fairly good for the most part with Milleniata's M-DISC media. However, there was a sizable PIF spike at the 3.5GB mark which caused some readability problems. We saw similar results with the LG BP40NS20 which makes me think its an issue with this spindle of discs rather than the drive.

To test the BH14NS40's packet writing performance I used Drag-to-Disc 9.0. Verbatim 8x DVD+RW, Verbatim 6x DVD-RW and Maxell 12x DVD-RAM media were used once again.

The BH14NS40's packet writing performance was pretty mixed. While it turned in some respectable times with DVD+RW and DVD-RW media, it was not nearly as fast as the other drives when reading and writing to DVD-RAM discs.

Double Layer DVD Write Tests - Nero Burning Rom 9.4.26.0:

To test the double layer DVD writing performance of the BH14NS40, I used DVD+R DL media from Verbatim and RiDATA. I created about 8GB of random files and directories on my hard drive and then burned them to our test discs with Nero.

The BH14NS40 performed relatively well writing to DVD+R DL media. In our tests, the drive took 16:12 to write 8001MB of data to Verbatim's 8x DVD+R DL discs. So what about writing quality? Take a look below.

The BH14NS40's writing quality was pretty good with the DVD+R DL media from Verbatim and RiDATA. Aside from a few small spikes, the PI/PIF rates stayed within acceptable limits and there weren't any readability problems.