STRANGE burn problem Pioneer DVR-106

[kubozuka27]

Well.....I've burnt around 50 DVD+Rs with this thing, many many different brands of different qualities. For the first 40 or so everything was fine and dandy, but suddenly i'm turning out coasters right and left. In fact, I've only had one successful burn out of the last 15 I've tried.

All the discs i make are video. There are no error messages along the way, and the disc doesn't take any longer to burn than normal. I can see the problem, though, when I look at the disc. There's a tiny, microscopic, unburnt ring about 1/4 of a mm from the beginning of the burn. It really is microscopic; some people I've shown it to have had trouble finding it. It's always in the same place, and the same size. This doesn't seem to happen when I make data discs, or when I do anything with CDRs. It's just when working with DVD video.

-I've always used the latest Nero (6.6.0.6 as of now), and to solve this problem I just tried RecordNow DX.
-I've also tried rolling back my Nero to an earlier 6, and even into the older 5 series.
-I've done a basic lens clean with a store-bought lens cleaner.
-There have been no major changes to my operating system from the time i bought the burner.
-I am using the latest firmware ( 1.08 ).

Any ideas? Anyone who had a similar problem?
I could bring it back where I bought it, but it's not under warranty anymore, so it doesn't really matter. I haven't burned many DVDs...it can't be time for a new burner, can it? ^^;

[Blazey]

Sounds like bad media. We're all the bad burns from the same batch of discs?

Dump Nero. Try DVD Decrypter.

Good luck.

[kubozuka27]

No, here are just some of the media I've used in the past month:

YUDEN000-T02
WFKA11-111
and one NO_ID_PRESENT-001

I should point out, I've been entirely using +R media...
AND now that I'm checking out the IDs of some of the discs, it's having trouble reading the ones it's burnt before, so I can't tell you which media I was using when the drive was working fine. ^^; But even those media were starting to not work.

It was like a slow progression....at first it seemed to be just one specific media that had the problem, but then it started to happen to my good media too, now it happens 9 out of 10 times, no matter what media I use.

It has no problem reading and playing store-bought DVD movies...but it seems it can't read anything it previously wrote.

[kubozuka27]

UPDATE: I can't burn data discs anymore either. ^^;
Maybe I need to try -R and see if i get the same results...

I'm still open to any ideas or comments ^_^

[Blazey]

Your laser may be going. I just tossed a 106 for the same problem. I've read that shooting some canned air at the lens may help, as well as taking the drive apart and cleaning the lens itself. If you smoke, it could be a nicotine build up on the lens.

[kubozuka27]

That would be sad, the laser going after only 50 or so burns ^^;
And unfortunately noone in China knows what canned air is haha
I'll take it apart, clean it, and see what happens