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Samsung SE-S184M & LG GSA-5169D |
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Written by Branko Lukic
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Thursday, 04 January 2007 |
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Page 2 of 2 LG´s external model of DVD recorder GSA-5169D is late product on our market. Reason certainly lies in a fact that it is over a year old model, and we add obvious lack of LG´s interest for further development of this model, since for period of 12 months, firmware version did not change from v1.00. Beside all adversities, it is DVD recorder with shifting boundaries of usability. Namely, beside standard functions, this nicely packed DVD recorder offers one completely interesting novelty - OneTouch Recording. Once you connect DVD recorder through USB port to computer for the first time, CD will drivers will be required for installation of drivers for transferring video and image from DVD recorder.
Namely, this recorder has two audio and one video chinch, as well as S-Video connector on its rear side (necessary cables are not provided in package?!). If you connect your miniDV camera or VHR on DVD recorder, you will make yourself a personal studio. The only deficiency of entire concept is that computer is required, since it is making data compression. All operations related to writing of video material, basic editing and recording are performed through given OneTouch application. This completely new functionality is genuine refreshment in bundle of all-alike stuff. Objection for LG is its lack of integration of some low-cost MPEG-2 encoder, which would turn this computer DVD recorder into your home standalone DVD recorder.
During operation, recorder is rather slow. Its response to commands is with uncharacteristic pause. Quality of recorded discs is good, but occasional problems may occur while using older DVD media (4x and 8x). Very good optics indicated that LG finally started to act more seriously, according its leading position on the market of optical drives, which it has been taking for granted during several years. As minor objection we outline lack of support for LightScribe and out-of-date speed specifications.
Similar to Samsung´s model, LG also had problems with data transfer through USB port, even more that his opponent. Namely, on major number of motherboards, transfer is limited to 15-16 MB, and our assumption is that problem lies in a bit more problematic USB interface within LG recorder.
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Optical drives 
