Recommendations for a DVD burner

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rod Speed
  • Start date Start date
Rod Speed said:
Looking at adding another one to my current Pioneer 109,
mainly so I have one in each of the main PCs.

Makes sense to have more than one brand/model.

I only care about what will burn almost any media, even
cheap and nasty media. I dont care much about burn
speeds, what I care about is a reliable burn on any
media without having to fart around doing test burns.

So that basically means a brand/model that has
decent firmware support into the future, and decent
performance with the current firmware too.

I mostly burn RWs, but do care about the R performance too.

What do people like currently, particularly
those with the same criteria ?
Click to expand...

I'm happy with my Pioneer 111 so far, but I only use decent quality media
and haven't tried anything iffy. It did fall over on one particular dual
layer burn which was a little disappointing but since I don't use DL media
as a rule it really doesn't matter that much to me.

No probs with RW media.

I was very happy with my 4KUS (Lite-On) burner which has been uber-reliable
and still works great, but I don't what the newer ones are like.

Was going to go with the LG but I've had bad experiences with LG products in
the past so chose to give them a miss though others swear by them.
 
Rod Speed wrote on [Thu, 27 Apr 2006 06:52:50 +1000]:
I only care about what will burn almost any media, even
cheap and nasty media. I dont care much about burn
speeds, what I care about is a reliable burn on any
media without having to fart around doing test burns.
Click to expand...

Why anyone wants to write to crap media I don't know.
 
Axel VK said:
Hmm. I've got a 110 and have not had any problems whatsoever.
Click to expand...
Then you've merely been fortunate not to encounter media it dislikes or
winds the rated speed back on is all.
 
Groucho said:
Then you've merely been fortunate not to encounter media it dislikes or
winds the rated speed back on is all.
Click to expand...

I never burn any faster than 4X anyway so there may be issues that I'm not
aware of.
 
I never burn any faster than 4X anyway so there may be issues that I'm not
aware of.
Click to expand...

I always set the burns to the max. Saves 10 minutes in burn times:)
My older computer never reached 16X speed swhere my new computer
has no troubles. Some older computers will never get to 16X burning
speeds for an internal DVD burner.

The Pioneer DVR-110 and 16X speed media.
There are 32 brands of DVD-R 16X speed media and 30 brands of DVD+R
16X speed media. Only about 5 burn at 16X at 16X on the 110 drives.

The new Pioneer DVR-111D/111/A11XL drives had the same problems on
release where only a handful of brand names would burn at 16X.

The older Pioneer DVR-109's burn most brands of 16X at 16X.

Bare in mind that DVD 8X speed media is getting fazed out for only 16X
speed media.

Pioneer released a new firmware update for the 111's in firmware 1.19
This new firmware burns 17 brands of 16X at 16X. The other 12 brands
burn at 12X, 8X or if its not even in the firmware then it drops back
to 4X.

I stopped selling the Pioneers around mid January as every update that
was suppose to fix these burning speeds up never came out for the 110
drives. So I had to test many brands of other burners before I was
happy enough to sell them. There was a period of over a month where I
did not sell any DVD burners at all as I was in my testing faze.

I'm happy enough to sell the 111's now though.
Pity Pioneer Australia are only selling the 111D and the A11XL drives.
I wish they would only bring in the 111 drives.

The Pioneer DVR-111D - can't write to DVD-RAM media.
The Pioneer DVR-111 - can write to DVD-RAM media.
The Pioneer DVR-A11XL - can write to DVD-RAM media.

I wish Pioneer would increase their CDR burning speed to 48X like what
many other brands have done.

If I was buying right now I'd get the Sony DW-G120A drives.
In fact a bought in a couple extra of these for my computer recently.
Overall more happy with the latest Sony drives.

SalesMart.com.au
Perth, Western Australia
http://www.salesmart.com.au
*******************************************
Email Contact info on the above site.
*******************************************
 
SalesMart.com.au said:
I always set the burns to the max. Saves 10 minutes in burn times:)
My older computer never reached 16X speed swhere my new computer
has no troubles. Some older computers will never get to 16X burning
speeds for an internal DVD burner.

The Pioneer DVR-110 and 16X speed media.
There are 32 brands of DVD-R 16X speed media and 30 brands of DVD+R
16X speed media. Only about 5 burn at 16X at 16X on the 110 drives.

The new Pioneer DVR-111D/111/A11XL drives had the same problems on
release where only a handful of brand names would burn at 16X.

The older Pioneer DVR-109's burn most brands of 16X at 16X.

Bare in mind that DVD 8X speed media is getting fazed out for only 16X
speed media.

Pioneer released a new firmware update for the 111's in firmware 1.19
This new firmware burns 17 brands of 16X at 16X. The other 12 brands
burn at 12X, 8X or if its not even in the firmware then it drops back
to 4X.

I stopped selling the Pioneers around mid January as every update that
was suppose to fix these burning speeds up never came out for the 110
drives. So I had to test many brands of other burners before I was
happy enough to sell them. There was a period of over a month where I
did not sell any DVD burners at all as I was in my testing faze.

I'm happy enough to sell the 111's now though.
Pity Pioneer Australia are only selling the 111D and the A11XL drives.
I wish they would only bring in the 111 drives.

The Pioneer DVR-111D - can't write to DVD-RAM media.
The Pioneer DVR-111 - can write to DVD-RAM media.
The Pioneer DVR-A11XL - can write to DVD-RAM media.

I wish Pioneer would increase their CDR burning speed to 48X like what
many other brands have done.

If I was buying right now I'd get the Sony DW-G120A drives.
In fact a bought in a couple extra of these for my computer recently.
Overall more happy with the latest Sony drives.

SalesMart.com.au
Perth, Western Australia
http://www.salesmart.com.au
*******************************************
Email Contact info on the above site.
*******************************************
Click to expand...
???Sony??? *after* their rootkit BS????
Ya gotta be nutz.
 
I have a Plextor 716A

Never had one single failure.
Write and reads everything (even write DL).
Also reads copy protected audio-CD 100% OK.

Delivered with Plextools Pro and Nero.
 
I always set the burns to the max. Saves 10 minutes in burn times:)
My older computer never reached 16X speed swhere my new computer
has no troubles. Some older computers will never get to 16X burning
speeds for an internal DVD burner.
Click to expand...
The Pioneer DVR-110 and 16X speed media.
There are 32 brands of DVD-R 16X speed media and 30 brands of DVD+R
16X speed media. Only about 5 burn at 16X at 16X on the 110 drives.
Click to expand...
The new Pioneer DVR-111D/111/A11XL drives had the same problems
on release where only a handful of brand names would burn at 16X.
Click to expand...
The older Pioneer DVR-109's burn most brands of 16X at 16X.
Click to expand...
Bare in mind
Click to expand...

Is that the same thing as dirty thoughts ? |-)
that DVD 8X speed media is getting fazed out for only 16X speed media.
Click to expand...
Pioneer released a new firmware update for the 111's in firmware 1.19
This new firmware burns 17 brands of 16X at 16X. The other 12 brands
burn at 12X, 8X or if its not even in the firmware then it drops back to
4X.
Click to expand...
I stopped selling the Pioneers around mid January as every update that
was suppose to fix these burning speeds up never came out for the 110
drives. So I had to test many brands of other burners before I was
happy enough to sell them. There was a period of over a month where
I did not sell any DVD burners at all as I was in my testing faze.
Click to expand...
I'm happy enough to sell the 111's now though.
Pity Pioneer Australia are only selling the 111D and the A11XL drives.
I wish they would only bring in the 111 drives.
Click to expand...
The Pioneer DVR-111D - can't write to DVD-RAM media.
The Pioneer DVR-111 - can write to DVD-RAM media.
The Pioneer DVR-A11XL - can write to DVD-RAM media.
Click to expand...
I wish Pioneer would increase their CDR burning
speed to 48X like what many other brands have done.
Click to expand...
If I was buying right now I'd get the Sony DW-G120A drives.
Click to expand...

Why those in preference to the LG drives you previously sold ?
 
Looking at adding another one to my current Pioneer 109,
mainly so I have one in each of the main PCs.

Makes sense to have more than one brand/model.

I only care about what will burn almost any media, even
cheap and nasty media. I dont care much about burn
speeds, what I care about is a reliable burn on any
media without having to fart around doing test burns.

So that basically means a brand/model that has
decent firmware support into the future, and decent
performance with the current firmware too.

I mostly burn RWs, but do care about the R performance too.

What do people like currently, particularly
those with the same criteria ?
Click to expand...

I ordered an LG GSA-4167B and received an LG GSA-H10A instead. I can't
see any difference in the specs. Both appear to handle all media types
including DVD-RAM.

- Franc Zabkar
 
???Sony??? *after* their rootkit BS????
Ya gotta be nutz.
Click to expand...

Sony don't use liteon drives. They switched to lg.

At work we bought in a fair few 110 pioneer drives and have had
nothing but problems with them. We tried the 111 drives too and they
do not handle faster medi ato well. The sony drives are very good.
We have 5 tower cases with sony drives and not a single failure.
Many other mates we know use lg or sony over pioneer.

You got to be nuts not knowing how good these sonys are:)
 
Sony don't use liteon drives. They switched to lg.

At work we bought in a fair few 110 pioneer drives and have had
nothing but problems with them. We tried the 111 drives too and they
do not handle faster medi ato well. The sony drives are very good.
We have 5 tower cases with sony drives and not a single failure.
Many other mates we know use lg or sony over pioneer.

You got to be nuts not knowing how good these sonys are:)
Click to expand...

Actually the Sonys are mostly made by BenQ, which is why they're so
good.. <g>

...Steve ..
 
Why those in preference to the LG drives you previously sold ?
Click to expand...

I liked the LG 4163 with firmware A103 to A105.
I tried the LG 4167 with various firmware updates and they simply are
not as good as the older LG 4163 drives.

The latest LG's will burn CDR at up to 48X like the latest Sony
drives.

Sooner or later Pioneer will have to add 48X read and write support
for CDR media otherwise they'll lose overall sales to the other brands
that offer 48X CDR burning speeds.

If you want my LG 4167 I'll set it for $35 but they are not that good
a drive.

The latest is the LG GSA-H10ABB which has these specs.
WRITE/READ SPEED  
WRITE : (CD-RW) 4x, 10x, 16x CLV, 24x, 32x ZCLV (High Speed: 10x, Ultra Speed: 16x, 24x, 32x)  
WRITE : (DVD-R) 2.4x, 4x CLV, 8x ZCLV, 12x, 16x PCAV  
WRITE : (DVD+R DL) 2.4x, 4x, 6x CLV  
WRITE : (DVD-R) 2x, 4x CLV, 8x ZCLV, 16x PCAV  
WRITE : (DVD-R DL) 2x, 4x CLV  
WRITE : (DVD+RW) 2.4x, 4x CLV, 8x ZCLV  
WRITE : (DVD-RW) 1x, 2x, 4x, 6x CLV  
WRITE : (DVD-RAM) 2x, 3x ZCLV (Ver 2.2), 3x ~ 5x PCAV (Ver 2.2)  
WRITE : (CD-R) 4x, 8x, 16x CLV, 24x, 32x, 40x, 48x ZCLV  
READ : (CD-ROM) Max 48x  
READ : (DVD-ROM) Max 16x  

For now Sony has the best support for constantly updating their drives
with firmware updates. LG take their time with firmware updates as
does Pioneer with their 110 and now 111 drives.

Pioneer 109 better than the 110 due to firmware.
Pioneer 109 for DVD-R/+R 16X is still better than the new 111 drives.
Its all a bit weird, the 109's burn most brands of 16X at 16X but the
110 could only do about 5 brands. The 111 used to do only 5 brands but
now up to 17 brands of 16X. There are 32 brands of 16X speed DVD
media.

I have the PDF files of what all these Pioneer drives burn at to what
brands of media, so I can email them to you if you are interested.

SalesMart.com.au
Perth, Western Australia
http://www.salesmart.com.au
*******************************************
Email Contact info on the above site.
*******************************************
 
Just a note BENQ sold their optical drive business to LiteOn several
weeks ago. The BENQ 1650 is likely to be the last true BENQ drive.
http://www.benq.com/press/news.cfm?id=1331&cat=2&year=2006
Click to expand...

Whew, just went for the 4167B, mainly because its a lot better known |-)

Never been keen on orphans if I can avoid them.
Not to mention that BENQ *lost* NT$4.99 BILLION during the 1st
3 months of 2006 ... no idea how much that is in US dollars.
Click to expand...

160M US$, not quite so bad |-)
 
I liked the LG 4163 with firmware A103 to A105.
I tried the LG 4167 with various firmware updates and
they simply are not as good as the older LG 4163 drives.
Click to expand...

Yeah, there is pretty general agreement on that.
The latest LG's will burn CDR at up to 48X like the latest Sony drives.
Click to expand...
Sooner or later Pioneer will have to add 48X read and write
support for CDR media otherwise they'll lose overall sales
to the other brands that offer 48X CDR burning speeds.
True.

If you want my LG 4167 I'll set it for $35
but they are not that good a drive.
Click to expand...

Just ordered one from Netplus freight free thanks, about lunchtime thanks.
I would have taken up your offer if I had waited for you reply, bugger |-(
The latest is the LG GSA-H10ABB which has these specs.
WRITE/READ SPEED
WRITE : (CD-RW) 4x, 10x, 16x CLV, 24x, 32x ZCLV (High Speed: 10x,
Ultra Speed: 16x, 24x, 32x) WRITE : (DVD-R) 2.4x, 4x CLV, 8x ZCLV,
12x, 16x PCAV
WRITE : (DVD+R DL) 2.4x, 4x, 6x CLV
WRITE : (DVD-R) 2x, 4x CLV, 8x ZCLV, 16x PCAV
WRITE : (DVD-R DL) 2x, 4x CLV
WRITE : (DVD+RW) 2.4x, 4x CLV, 8x ZCLV
WRITE : (DVD-RW) 1x, 2x, 4x, 6x CLV
WRITE : (DVD-RAM) 2x, 3x ZCLV (Ver 2.2), 3x ~ 5x PCAV (Ver 2.2)
WRITE : (CD-R) 4x, 8x, 16x CLV, 24x, 32x, 40x, 48x ZCLV
READ : (CD-ROM) Max 48x
READ : (DVD-ROM) Max 16x
Click to expand...

Yeah, I avoided that one just because not as much is known about it.

I prefer to not operate at the bleeding edge.
For now Sony has the best support for constantly
updating their drives with firmware updates.
Click to expand...

One thing I'm not that keen on with the Sonys
is the variety of drives they rebadge.
LG take their time with firmware updates as
does Pioneer with their 110 and now 111 drives.
Click to expand...
Pioneer 109 better than the 110 due to firmware.
Click to expand...

Yeah, got one of those already and wanted something different,
makes it easier if things are strange for some reason.

The damned things are now so cheap that it makes sense
to have on in every system that you use much, even if just
to be able to boot the bigger DVD diagnostic DVDs etc.
Pioneer 109 for DVD-R/+R 16X is still better than the new 111 drives.
Its all a bit weird, the 109's burn most brands of 16X at 16X but the
110 could only do about 5 brands. The 111 used to do only 5 brands but
now up to 17 brands of 16X. There are 32 brands of 16X speed DVD media.
Click to expand...

Just noticed that the pack of 25 someone gave me because
I have been burning some for her since she's stuck on dialup
are only 4X. Work fine and I dont really care about the
speed, I dont burn that many Rs, mostly just RWs.
I have the PDF files of what all these Pioneer drives burn at to what
brands of media, so I can email them to you if you are interested.
Click to expand...

Yes please, the email address is valid and you have my main one too.
 
Looking at adding another one to my current Pioneer 109,
mainly so I have one in each of the main PCs.

Makes sense to have more than one brand/model.
Click to expand...

Why?

Would've thought that if you had a brand/model you were happy with then if
you used that one exclusively you'd have less learning time, avoid
confusion and also be aware of what blanks worked best.




alvey
 
alvey said:
Rod Speed wrote
Click to expand...
Why?
Click to expand...

Basically because if you see something undesirable,
like not being able to read a particular DVD or not
being able to burn particular media reliably, it would
be handy to try a different decent burner.

Or to look at it the other way, makes no sense to have
two of the same when you can have two decent burners
for the same price as two identical burners. In fact the
Pioneers tend to cost a bit more than the alternatives.
Would've thought that if you had a brand/model you were happy with
then if you used that one exclusively you'd have less learning time,
avoid confusion and also be aware of what blanks worked best.
Click to expand...

I'd rather be able to burn particular blanks in one of the burners.
 
Bazza ([email protected]) wrote in alt.video.dvd:
Just a note BENQ sold their optical drive business to LiteOn several
weeks ago. The BENQ 1650 is likely to be the last true BENQ drive.
Click to expand...

Bummer. I've got a 1655 that I love. No "RipGuard" speed reduction
was the big plus for me, since I watch my DVDs via the "jukebox" method
on my PC.
 
Jeff Rife said:
Bazza ([email protected]) wrote in alt.video.dvd:

Bummer. I've got a 1655 that I love. No "RipGuard" speed reduction
was the big plus for me, since I watch my DVDs via the "jukebox" method
on my PC.
Click to expand...

The BenQ DW1670 is yet to make an appearance, which one of the latest Sony
models is based on.
 
On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 06:52:50 +1000, Rod Speed proclaimed:

Time to back up all those macros Rod?
I personally like the LG range of burners, they support DVD-RAM as well.
 
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