The Samsung SD-616 is a 16X DVD-ROM drive that offers lightning-fast speed with stable performance. An internal drive based on the industry standard DVD format, the SD-616 offers an average access time of 90 ms for CD and 110 ms for DVD, and a data transfer rate of 16X for DVD and 48X for CD. The drive offers single and double side replay, optical pick-ups adopting annular mask lens, and a recording capacity for CD-RW of 650 MB (Type 74) and for CD-R of 700/650/550 MB (Type 80/74/63). The SD-616 also offers motorized tray loading, a buffer memory of 512 KB and Samsung's exclusive Adopted Acoustic-noise Reduction System to optimize sound quality. Digital audio data can be extracted from audio CD at Max 32X (DAE), and soft MPEG decoder plays DVD-Video without an MPEG decoder board. The SD-616 can be mounted both horizontally and vertically, and can read most disc types, including DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-Video, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM/XA, Video-CD, CD-I/FMV, Multisession Photo CD, Extra CD, Mixed CD, and CD Text. Through Samsung's Automatic Ball Balancing System, any vibration caused by unbalanced discs can be controlled automatically.
1 If you have a problem, good luck, because you won't get help
I actually have an earlier model Samsung DVD player, and it, along with other Samsung models at the time, had a horrible skipping problem on many DVDs. Samsung's support was almost non-existant -- I found out there was a firmware upgrade for the player, but not through their website (where I couldn't find any help whatsoever), but through a friend with the same problem. HOWEVER, the firmware upgrade did not resolve the problem, and the last I heard, there was a class action suit filed here in Pennsylvania (which I received an invitiation to be a part of, but could not participate in, I think because I no longer had the receipt). Considering their lackluster customer support, I would advise anyone against buying any DVD player from this company. Players are much cheaper nowadays anyway, and you can get an excellent Sony or Toshiba for a modest price.
2 No support, not compatible with XP
The drive worked sporatically under WinMe (sometimes it read DVD's and sometime it just hangs). When I upgraded to XP it stopped reading DVDs and DVD-ROMs but it did stop hanging so the rebooting went away. Samsung does not support the drive and has removed any support information from thier web site regarding it. Even thier more current drives have very little support information. I would strongly recommend against purchasing any Samsung optical drive because of the lack of support.
