Gigabyte GO-M1600A Multimedia 16x DVD-ROM Drive with integrated FM/MP3 playback Review (5)
Overclocker 2 Nov 2003

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Conclusion

GO-M1600A is definitely something that will change the whole concept of DVD-ROM or even DVD-RW in the future. With a nice feature set, this unit is one of the most innovative product that we review this year. This product stands out from the crowd and it is a dream come true - a device that plays CD, MP3 and FM tuner without powering up PC.

Installation of the unit is quite straightforward. If you use a desktop casing, this is definitely easier as there is ample space to meddle with with the connectors and card. If you use a Small Form Factor box, you would have to try and squeeze your fingers if you do not intend to dismantle parts of the casing to layout the IDE cables and the installation of the daughter card.

In our daily usage, we find that device is easy to operate via the remote control provided. If you lose your remote control, I think you would have problems trying to adjust some of those settings like FM Station Preset, WoW depth etc. Another thing that we noticed about the unit is that you can eject the tray but there is no button that allows you to close the tray. What that means is that you would need to push the tray after putting in the CDROM/DVDROM. You can't eject the tray within Windows unless you press the Eject button on the panel as the tray is hidden behind the front panel. This is something that should be improved on.

Performance of the unit is all right for a 16x DVD-ROM drive, but it is not the fastest among the competitors. We are exceptionally impressed with the low CPU usage and the throughput of 1MB/s. In the package, there is documentation provided which shows a step-by-step guide on how to install the device and the card provided. One thing that confuses me is the label of the ports, Gigabyte could have given a better description of the ports and their functionalities. Also take note that the card only supports left+right output, thus there is no 4 speaker support from the standalone device. Audio from the DVD-ROM are channeled through the normal means as the rear speakers are still connected to the rear speaker connectors of the sound card or on board rear out. The front speakers are connected to the daughter card via Rear Out (J3) and the Rear In (J2) is connected to the front speaker ports of the sound card or on board audio.

Although the unit allows you to playback MP3, CD Audio and FM Radio, it would really be nice if the unit can be connected direct to a AV connector and you can playback your DVD directly without powering it up. (will that happen soon??).

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