Hey folks, perhaps I could get your input here. I'm using an A03 (IDE internal) on my PC and it has genuine Pioneer 1.68 firmware. (not a rollback or other modded version)

Last year I was burning Princos and didn't have a problem. (a few coasters, but I burned over 250 discs so that's pretty good overall) I'm quite happy buring at 1x if I get good burns.

Now I just bought a batch of Beall DVD-Rs and I've been doing some burns and I'm not very happy with the result. Before I do a pile of burns, I'm curious if there is another firmware that would be better to use with these discs? I'm most interested in stable burns, not speed, so I'm quite happy to use a firmware that only does 1x burns if it means a more stable result.

My thought in geting the Bealls was with the understanding they are a better quality media, but of the 4 burns I have done, I've had 3 coasters and 1 'marginal'. (which took a realy long time for the set top player to recognise) Since I pulled these DVDs from two different spindles I am assuming that it is not a 'bad batch'. Here is the disc info:

00 42 00 00 01 40 C1 FD 9E D8 50 00 02 57 0E 14 .B...@....P..W..
87 88 80 00 03 42 65 41 6C 6C 20 00 04 47 30 30 .....BEALL ..G00
30 30 31 00 05 88 80 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 001.............

I've got ASPI 4.7 installed, and ASPICHK says everything is installed properly. Since I haven't changed anything dealing with the DVD drive I find it difficult to figure out what else could be causing this. I've done CD burns no problem, and I did a DVD burn of a leftover Princo just last week and it worked fine.

So I'm thinking since this firmware was written before the Bealls were made, perhaps I need to update. However I don't want to update to a new firmware revision and suffer with lower compatibility. I need these DVDs to be able to play on console DVD players as well as normal players.(although I'm NOT doing game backups, just video)

I'm hesitant to start blindly making changes, so I'm asking for a hand here. If anyone has an A03 and burns Bealls, perhaps you could let me know what firmware you are using. As I said, compatibility and playability across the most number of DVD players is my main concern, so feel free to suggest a firmware even if it will only give me 1x burns.

Any help people here can offer is greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Savant