Samsung releases 22X SATA and PATA DVD burners

The Samsung DVD formula has been high speed with reduced noise and lowered power consumption, according to a high-ranking official. Three new 22X internal DVD burners, which start shipping today, join an external model in the same series.

Samsung is today adding three new internal 22X DVD burners to the Super-WriteMaster S223 series first launched with the SH-223F external DVD burner released earlier this year.

Like the SH-223, the three new DVD burners come with technology called over-speed recording, for writing at 22X speeds of up to 29.7 megabytes per second (MB/sec) on either 22X media or less expensive 16X media, as well as at lower 16X speeds on 12X media, said Rich Aguilera, Samsung's national sales manager for optical storage, during a briefing with BetaNews.

Meanwhile, Samsung is also differentiating itself from competitors by including technologies for noise reduction and "eco-friendliness," BetaNews was told.

Samsung's new SF-223Q drive with embedded LightScribe label-making technology uses a SATA interface. The pre-loaded LightScribe software provides a number of different label layouts and designs, according to Aguilera.

Samsung's new PATA-enabled SH-222A and SSH-222L drives, on the other hand, are geared to older PCs that aren't outfitted with SATA interfaces -- in other words, that use the original IDE setup. Many owners of these older PCs are now interested in upgrading to faster 22X drives, Aguilera said. The SSH-22L PATA drive also comes with LightScribe, although the SH-222A does not.

Burners in the new series support 22X recording on to DVD-R, allowing users to burn 4.7 gigabytes to disk in about four minutes and 26 seconds, for a 6% faster speed than a 20X DVD writer, Aguilera told BetaNews.

Users can also burn disks at lower speeds on to the following DVD media: 16X DVD+R Dual Layer; 12X DVD-R Dual Layer; 12X DVD-RAM; and 8X and 6X DVD-RW.

Read performance is 16X for DVD-ROM; 32X for CD-RW; 40X for CD-R; and 48X for CD-ROM. Users can also write to CD-RW at rates of 32X and CD-R at 48X, according to the national sales manager.

"But consumers today care about more than speed," he contended. To help save money on energy, the 22X writers reduce power consumption by 21% in fast mode, 15% in standby mode, and 14% in sleep mode versus earlier 20X drives, he illustrated.

The new writers also use an aerodynamic frame design aimed at reducing air borne noise by preventing pressure from building up in any particular area of the drive.

In internal tests, Samsung's drives produced sound levels ranging from 28 decibels at idle to 53 decibels running at maximum 22X speeds, for noise "well within the the general sound levels in the average office or home," BetaNews was told. Initial lead-in noise measured only about one-third that of competitors, Aguilera maintained.

Like other optical disk drives in Samsung's WriteMaster family, the three new drives use several technologies from Samsung designed to optimize performance, including Speed Adjustment Technology (SAT); Optimum Power Control ("Double-OPC"); Tilt Actuator Compensation (TAC); and Buffer Under Run Free (BURF), for writing under high speed.

In addition, he said, all drives in the series comply with restricition of the use certain hazardous substances (RoHS), a directive that bans placement into the European Union market of new electrical and electronic equipment containing more than agreed levels of lead, cadmium, mercury, and other hazardous chemicals.