I've read the many various comments about the new NEC drive so I thought I would tell you what I have come across after updating from the Pioneer 105 drive (firmware upgade 1.33). The NEC is original firmware.

1. Some retail R0 dual layers (asian) DVDs that could be read by pioneer do NOT read on NEC.
2. Some of the cheaper brands Blanks I wrote and read on pioneer cannot be read on NEC.
3. The NEC seems to write to a variety of blank dvd-r's. Some would not write on the Pioneer (thankfully I didn't bin them !), but did on the NEC.
4. Some blank DVD-r (Bulkpaqx4,x8, datasafex4,x8) seems to have very high read rates, but then again some.....read point 2.

Generally a bit of a dissapointment. I wish I had not sold the pioneer. The firmware cracks for the NEC seem to have their reported fair share of problems too. seriously considering swapping it for the Pioneer 109.

I use dvddecrypter, dvdshrink,copy2dvd/Nero.