Optorite DD0405 burning

[Slavamon]

I received an Optorite DD0405 8x +/- r/rw as a replacement for an RMA'd DD0203 which I thought was a good thing. The DD0203 stopped burning DVD's after about 60+ burns without any coasters. Since I got the DD0405, my burns (Nero 6.0) have been poor to say the least. All the discs (Ritek G04 4x, Ritek G05 8x, etc.) burn successfully with Nero, but I have problems with playback on my Panasonic stand alone. The playback is blocky, stutters, stops, etc. Some have the problem right from the beginning, others not until halfway through the movie. It's not a bad rip either since I've tried to burn backups off my hard drive which were successfully burned previously with the DD0203 before it died. I have had some success burning the 4x and 8x discs at 2x on the DD0405. I have DMA set and the system shouldn't be a problem since I was successful burning with the DD0203 at 4x. I'm running XP and can playback the burned movies fine on my PC (with Power DVD 5.0), but have problems on the stand alone. I also tried other stand alone players and have same problem.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

I'm in the process of working with Optorite Tech Support (for over 2 weeks) and am at the point of RMA'ing again, but it's getting costly.

[888888]

Maybe try 1st class media like Maxell or Taiyo Yuden. I have had discs verify succesfully with NERO on my Optorite DD0201 only to have them be unwatchable or otherwise crappy on all my players. Check the disc surface after you burn, is it solid color, or is there flowy dye type stuff and patches of light and dark and maybe little dark dots? If there is, it might be a media problem.

[Slavamon]

I have had success with this media nearly 100% of the time prior to my DD0203 burning up. I'm pretty much convinced it's not the media and I probably just have another bad burner as a replacement. As I stated earlier, I can get these to burn at 2x with the DD0405 but when I try 4x or 8x, they burn fine, but playback gets chopped up. Nero Tools show no errors (scan disc or files).