Samsung SH-S162L 16x DVD±RW/RAM

The SH-S162L we received from Samsung was the bulk, or OEM, version. While they were able to provide a copy of the software CD, the drive did not come with anything else.

Physical Features:

The drive Samsung sent us for this review was manufactured in December of 2005 and had firmware TS01.For this review the drive's firmware has been updated to version TS04.

From the front, the SH-S162L looks very similar to Samsung's other 16x DVD±RW drives. It not only shares the same basic bezel design, but has many of the same logos. Along with the large "WriteMaster" logo, you can see a few showing support for theDVD+R DL and DVD Multi specifications, as well as HP's LightScribe technology.

Below the tray you can see the SH-S162L's single LED. Itlights up green when the drive is reading or writing.

The rear of the SH-S162L is fairly straight forward. By looking at the picture below you can see the drive's IDE interface, power connector and audio output connectors.

Starting from the left of the IDE connection you'll see the jumper switch for master, slave and cable select. Next to the jumper block is the analog audio connector. The connector on the far left is the digital audio output.

Technical Specs:

The specs below have been taken from Samsung's website and the manual located on the software CD.

LightScribe:

Note: We took a much closer look at LightScribe technology in our review of the BenQ DW1625. In this review we'll just go over some of the basics and see how the SH-S162L performs with the bundled software.

The SH-S162L is the latest drive from Samsung to feature LightScribe technology. Developed by HP, LightScribe lets you burn durable, silk screen quality labels directly onto your CD's and DVD's using the same drive that burned the data. According to HP, it's as simple as burning the data, flipping the disc, and then burning the label.

Of course you can't do this with just any drive, media or software. While LightScribe capable drives use the same laser when burning both the data and label, they have to be able to accurately control the laser's focus and position as well as the spindle speed. They also must be able to recognize LightScribe media. These special discs have a thin dye coating on the label side that absorbs laser light. This triggers a chemical reaction that produces a color change, allowing the user to print text, artwork or graphics.

Even if you have a LightScribe capable drive and media, you will need software that supports it. Most major software companies have pledged support for the technology. However, at the time of this review the list of compatible software is still relatively short. For the SH-S162L, Samsung turned to Nero. Using the bundled software you can both create and burn LightScribe disc labels.

Once you've created your LightScribe label, you're ready to print it. Before you can do this though, you will need to choose the contrast. Keep in mind this option not only changes the level of detail, it also affects the amount of time it takes to print the label. The higher the quality, the longer the process will take.

How long does it take to print a label? For testing purposes, we created a few discs using Verbatim's LightScribe (v1.0 and v1.2) CD-R and DVD+R media. In all cases, the quality has been set to "best". The results are shown below.

Verbatim CD-R - 25 minutes		Verbatim CD-R v1.2 - 21 minutes

Verbatim DVD+R - 29 minutes		Verbatim DVD+R v1.2 - 21 minutes

As you can see, the LightScribe v1.2 media offers a considerable performance advantage. These discs utilize a new coating that allows for faster printing speeds. In some cases, it can cut as much as 30% off of the total printing time.

If you want to use LightScribe v1.2 media with your SH-S162L, simply update your computer's LightScribe host software. This update can be downloaded from Nero or the LightScribe website.

More Features:

By looking at the picture below, you can see that Samsung's new DVD writer is identified as a "TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S162L."

Nero also shows that the SH-S162L has a maximum CD writing speed of 48x and a 2048KB buffer. This buffer is also backed up by MediaTek's Super Link technology. According to Nero, Samsung's new DVD writer can also write CD-Text and overburn. When testing the drive's capacity, it had no problems overburning up to 99 minutes with our CompUSA media.

Using Alex Noe's Weak Sector Utility we were able to determine that the SH-S162L is a "two sheep" burner and is capable of backing titles protected by SafeDisc 2.90. Like most drives, it did not pass the "three sheep" test.

Here is a screen shot from Nero's InfoTool. This program queries the drive to see what its reading and writing capabilities are. InfoTool had no problems detecting the SH-S162L's maximum reading and writing speeds, recording modes, buffer underrun protection and 2MB buffer.

InfoTool also shows that the SH-S162L is an RPC-2 DVD drive. This means that the drive's region is stored in the firmware. The region can be changed five times and after that it cannot be changed anymore. Unfortunately, a patched RPC-1 firmware is not yet available for this drive.

While InfoTool gives us a quick glance at the SH-S162L's features, DVDINFOpro provides a little more information on some of the drive's reading and writing capabilities. By looking at the screenshot above you can see that while Samsung's new drive can read and write to DVD+R DL, DVD-R DL and DVD-RAM media, it does not support the Mt. Rainier format.

Samsung's new DVD writer also supports a feature called "bitsetting".The SH-S162L automatically sets the book type of DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD+R DL media to "DVD-ROM" without any input from the user. This feature comes in handy if you have an older DVD player that has problems playing recordable media.