LG GSA-4040B or Pioneer/Liteon please help???

[steve h]

I got a good price($110cdn) for LG GSA-4040B(Retail) in the boxing week. But eversince I read it's reviews about compability issues I am now a little doubtful whether I should open the box or should I go for Pioneer or Liteon which are around $170-$175(cdn) and that too OEM. Is it worth to spend extra $65 to get Pioneer A06? What would you do? Please advice. Thanks in advance.

My current system:
Athlon XP1600 w/ Win XP Pro
80GB WD + 40GB Maxtor HD
Liteon 24x10x40 cd-rw
Pioneer 16x dvd-rom
512DDR Ram [/b]

[jrsdsl]

Just my experience with the 4040B but it has worked fine for the couple of weeks I have had it. I haven't burned any video with but for data +/- R disks from Verbatim (CMC), Phillips(CMC), Apple, & Ritek G04 have not produced a coaster.

[bluntman72]

I wouldn't worry to much about it's compatibility problems with different media, firmware A301 solved many of them and A302 was released a couple of weeks ago. I mean no burner will work 100% with every piece of software and every media that one can buy, but with firmware upgrades those odds get better and better all of the time. If you find media that works great with the drive and works great with the DVD player that you use then stick with it. Periodically check the media database in this site for ones that work well with the drive.

FWIW, I bought the 4040 back in September last year and its never made a coaster (I may have caused it to a couple of times, but it wasn't the fault of the drive). The software I use (Nero 6, CloneDVD and Pinnacle Studio 8) all recognize the drive and I've found readily available media (Memorex 4x +R...burns at 4x!) that works great with the LG and my standalone DVD players (Princo 4x -R discs now burn at 4x, thanks to the A301 firmware, but don't do so well in one of my standalone DVD players). It's a great drive at a great price, open it!

[steve h]

Thx for the response guys.
bluntman,
What DVD players are u using to play the media burnt with this drive. I have a Panasoniv DVD player RV41 and so far it has played everything I used. And I checked it here as well and seems to be compatible with DVD+/-R. My main concern is only DVD audio/video.

[bluntman72]

I have a Panasonic RP-91 in my home theater and an older Panasonic A120 in the bedroom. I was surprised that both play +R discs since Panasonic isn't part of that "camp". My new Panasonic e80 DVD recorder doesn't play +R discs at all.

[jim5055]

It will either work with you hardware or will not. If not if will be extremely frustrating. Only way I got it to work was in an external IEEE/USB2 drive box (and lost access to DVD-RAM doing it). I suspect issues are cos my mobo is tres old and the 4040 is very touching about ide hardware driving it. So, if your other system hardware is old - take it back and get the pioneer. If current hardware then keep it.

[hech54]

I still have A300 in my 4040B. One coaster so far...bad media....BUT....it was a Ritek G04. What a bummer. It really DID look funky after DVDDecrypter notified me of the burn error. Looks like a big greasy fingerprint in that disc....weird.

[spiderman2k1]

Get the LG Electronics GSA-4081B it burner's 8X DVD+R it's only 25 dollars more then 4040B you can get one at www.newegg.com and the 8X DVD burner's might burn duel layer DVD's with firmware update's.