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I checked Lite-On's website today and they're showing a new drive called the SHW-160P6S. anyone have any info on it?

http://www.liteonit.com/ODD/English/e_p ... 160p6s.asp

The specs seem to be the same as the SHM-165P6S, minus support for DVD-RAM.

Ian wrote:The specs seem to be the same as the SHM-165P6S, minus support for DVD-RAM.

That seems to be the case. According to Karr, it's a downgrade version. There's been some discussion at CDFreaks in that thread.

G

Ah, thanks MediumRare.

So the defect SHM-165P6S will be sold as SHW-160P6S?

Some guys make trash to gold

probably more to do with DVD-RAM royalty fees. If the pickup and laser work well enough to do DVD-/+R/RW ... then it should also do DVD-RAM.

Many OEMs probably don't want to pay extra for a feature that isn't really important for the "list of features a computer must have".

rugger wrote:probably more to do with DVD-RAM royalty fees. If the pickup and laser work well enough to do DVD-/+R/RW ... then it should also do DVD-RAM.

Yeah, that too. It's probably much easier to manufacture one drive design and then just enable/disable certain features. BenQ and Pioneer seem to be doing similar things with the DW1650/1655 and 110/110D.

I'm sure it will be only a matter of time before people use a firmware hack to add LightScribe to the DW1650 and DVD-RAM to the SHW-160P6S. And yes, I know you can already do this with the 110/110D.

This sort of fits here...

The HP dvd840i has been available in Europe for a few days at least. c't had a short look at it (fw FF66), and found it fast with low errors on SL-media, but flaky with RAM and DL. According to c't, it's made by LiteOn, but there aren't any corresponding drives listed on the LiteOn website. The capabilities seem to be similar to the SHM-165P6S, except that it also supports LightScribe and will write to CD-RW @32x ZCLV instead of 24x.

Do you know any more about this drive Ian?

G

C't is wrong then because that version (firmware 66FF) is made by HLDS (essentially an OEM GSA-4166B but CD read/write speed in the HP version is limited to 40x for some reason).

I had read that HP was going to use Lite-On for the 840i, but everyone with the drive says its based on the 4166. I don't have one so I dunno.

According to this picture (which even matches the firmware) it sure looks like an LG GSA-4166B! HP's specs seemed to be a bit different: 8X +DL (vs 6x) and 48x CD-R + 32x CD-RW burning speeds (vs. 40x, 24x according to one shop). However, as Ian noted in his review of the 4167, the DL speed can be upped via firmware and LG's website has the faster numbers for CD's.

Makes me wonder a bit about c't though- there were some typos in their last test too.

G

The 4166B writes to DVD+R DL media at 8x. As far as I can tell, the only difference between it and the HP the CD read speeds.. which could be a typo by HP.