DVD-R media tends to be popular among those burning DVD movies as it tends to have better compatibility with older consumer DVD players over the DVD+R format. With speeds rated at 16x for both types of media, the choice of which to use really comes down to player compatibility and media availability.
The surprise in this test was from the LGE GSA-4167B burner. It was able to complete the full disc burn a full 46 seconds faster than the second fastest drive, the LiteOn 165H6S. It was almost a full two minutes faster than the last place Plextor PX-750A drive. In fact, the Plextor drives had fairly disappointing performance for such a highly regarded brand.
In terms of playback performance, the LiteOn 165H6S drive provided the strongest overall performance reaching a full 16.24x speed, higher than the 16x rating. Best access times were posted by the LGE GSA-4167B and Samsung SH-S162L with sub 100ms random access times. In terms of CPU usage, both Plextor drives used the least amount of cycles.
