Lite-On has once again turned to Nero for their software bundle. The CD that comes with the iHAS422 contains the Nero 7 Essentials suite which includes Nero Express, Nero Vision, Nero Recode, Nero ShowTime and InCD.

Nero Express 7 - With Nero Express, Nero has taken the features and performance people have come to expect from Nero Burning Rom and combined them with a user friendly interface. Redesigned to maximize ease-of-use, Nero Express gives users the ability to quickly and easily burn audio, data and video to CD or DVD.

The version of Nero Express that Lite-On included with their new DVD±RW drive is 7.10.1.1.  You can download the latest version of the software from Nero's website.

Nero Vision 4 - Nero Vision 4 is Nero's video authoring application. Thanks to a user friendly interface, Nero Vision makes it easy for users to capture, edit and then burn their favorite videos to VCD, SVCD or DVD or export it to Nero Digital format.

Nero Vision also lets users add things like transitions, custom backgrounds, animated menus and text effects. You can even use it to turn your photos into custom slide shows. 

Nero Recode 2 - This program from Nero can copy unprotected DVD videos onto recordable DVD media. If the source disc is larger than 4.7GB, Nero Recode has the ability to remove unwanted material and compress the contents so that it will fit onto a single blank DVD disc.

Nero Recode 2 will also let you convert your DVD movies to Nero Digital. Using Nero's own MPEG-4 audio and video encoder, an entire DVD movie can be compressed so that it will fit onto a CD. Better yet, Nero Recode 2 does this with little loss of quality.

Nero ShowTime 3 - Nero ShowTime is Nero's software DVD player. Along with support for DVD's, ShowTime can be used to play back VCD's, SVCD's and miniDVD's as well as any MPEG, AVI or Nero Digital files you might have on your hard drive.

InCD 5 - InCD is Nero's packet writing software. Like Roxio's Drag-to-Disc or Sonic's DLA, it allows a person to use their CD-RW or DVD±RW drive as a big floppy disk. The person can then drag and drop files onto a CD-RW or DVD±RW disc.

While affordably priced, the iHAS422 delivers an impressive number of features. This Serial ATA equipped "Super AllWrite" drive not only supports all major DVD formats, it sports some of the fastest DVD reading and writing speeds available. The iHAS422 is capable of 22x DVD±R, 8x DVD±R DL, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW and 12x DVD-RAM writing speeds and a maximum DVD read speed of 16x. Along with support for LightScribe, the drive includes many of the features we've come to expect from Lite-On as well as more advanced ones like SmartWrite and SmartErase. With all this, it's easy to see why the Lite-On iHAS422 gets the full 10 points for its features.