What is the best all around DVD/CD Burner?

[uncleB]

What is the best all around DVD/CD Burner?

I’ve posted questions previously telling you that I’ve burned CD’s & DVD’s with the burner that came with my Gateway GT5056 Personal Computer with Dual Core technology & in it is a TSST corp CD/DVDW TS-H552D DVD/CD Burner. I’ve used all kinds of media including Taiyo Yuden. While most of them have preformed well initially in my Players, still there have been some I’ve made for friends or gone to play for friends, and they haven’t worked. So what, in your opinions (remembering that I’m not made of Money) is the best all around DVD/CD burner combo? One that should be compatible with my Computer and that, for the most part produces or re-produces a quality disk that looks (Video) or sounds (Audio) great and is compatible with most if not all players (CD or DVD) on the market. Also what media do you suggest (CD/DVD) and what speeds do you suggest to burn them to receive the very best results. You guys know so much more than me and I could really use your help. Any tips that you might have to insure good results would be appreciated as well (but if it’s real technical, take it slow & explain, I ain’t that Hep).
Thanks
Uncle Bob

[lordsmurf]

Pioneer.

[oldandinthe way]

If you have used "all kinds of media" and had problems with friends players it would probably help to know which kinds fail.

If your friends have antique players, nothing may help. Or they may only like TYs.

If you buy a Pioneer you will lose the ability to burn "all kinds of media". You will join Lordsmurf in religiously using only "quality media".

You have a perfectly fine drive and it is quite possible that the problems lie elsewhere - not in your computer.

[jman98]

Because of the dye they use in their media. Taiyo Yuden discs have excellent compatibility just about everywhere. I've used 3 different brands of burners on my PCs and I've not seen any difference. I've never had an issue where a friend or family member could not play a disc I burned. Never. In the past I used to use whatever media I could get my hands on. Now I won't touch it if it's not Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden, but I have to be honest and admit that I think that "quality media" matters a lot less for CD-R than DVD+/-R based on my personal experiences.

oldandintheway has a contrarian position on this subject that is completely at odds with what many of us think. Most of us don't worry about the burner so much but the media. His position is that some burners work better with some media in a sort of random unpredictable way and you may, for example, get excellent results out of absolute crap media on burner X and horrible results out of excellent media on the same burner. My personal experience is different, but he is adamant that he is right and all the rest of us are wrong about this. You should read various posts on this subject (mostly in the Media section I think) and decide who you think is most likely right about it.

[hech54]

LG 4167B
LG 4040B
...OK Pioneer....because LG doesn't make either of the above drives anymore.

[Krispy Kritter]

For sharing discs (ie: DVD movies), you should be most concerned with media quality. Regardless of how the media is burned, many standalone players have issues with different brands/types of media. You will want a quality media to have success with a large group of users. Verbatim and TY are the most reliabe and consistent.

[budz]

SAMSUNG S203B nuff said!
Just take a look at the review on this drive at Cdfreaks.com.

http://www.cdfreaks.com/reviews/Samsung-SH-S203B-DVD-Burner-Review

This drive is a SATA dvd burner. If you want just a PATA dvd burner then get a LG H62L or PIONEER 112. I have those dvd burners as well as the SAMSUNG S203B which is now my favorite burner to use.

[Wile_E]

For burner reviews, you may want to go to the www.cdfreaks.com forum. There is a good community over there that actually tests the quality of the burns. Many drives are not accurate at C1/C2 error scanning and showing jitter levels, including the newer Pioneer 112D and 212D drives. The new Samsung 203B is getting good reviews. Lite-On drives are usually recommended for error scanning.

So choosing a drive all depends on if you want to go to the trouble of scanning the discs after burning them. Otherwise just choose a drive that is known to do good burns with the media you use.

[uncleB]

Thanks for all the input.
With Verbatim’s, is there any difference, are some better than others? Can I get them at Best Buy, or a store off the Internet, or doesn’t it make a difference? I know I can’t get the Taiyo Yuden’s at a discount store, so which ones and where, do you suggest, that I get them (a nice low price wouldn’t hurt). Also could the speed that I use to read or write the Media make a difference? If so what do you suggest, again like I said take it slow, and be specific, cause you’re not working with a rocket scientist here.
And Again, Thanks
Uncle Bob

[budz]

Thanks for all the input.
With Verbatim’s, is there any difference, are some better than others? Can I get them at Best Buy, or a store off the Internet, or doesn’t it make a difference? I know I can’t get the Taiyo Yuden’s at a discount store, so which ones and where, do you suggest, that I get them (a nice low price wouldn’t hurt). Also could the speed that I use to read or write the Media make a difference? If so what do you suggest, again like I said take it slow, and be specific, cause you’re not working with a rocket scientist here.
And Again, Thanks
Uncle Bob

Buy the VERBATIM from BEST BUY this week since it's on sale $12.99 for a 50 pack spindle. If you want to use TAIYO YUDEN then order them from www.rima.com. Depending which dvd burner you purchase will determine the burn speed of those brands of media. The best speeds to burn the VERBATIM would be 8x - 12x speed, although using my SAMSUNG S203B drive it can burn 16x spd without any playback problems on the standalone dvd players that I have. With the DVD+R TAIYO YUDEN 8x spd w/MEDIA ID T02 you can burn up to 12x speed using the SAMSUNG S203B drive by using MEDIA CODE SPEED EDIT.

As mentioned check out the forums at Cdfreaks.com. SAMSUNG's latest drives are excellent burners & excellent readers especially with discs that are scratched.

[disturbed1]

I used to be one that needed the best write quality from the best writer. To be honest, it's nothing more than a waste of time and money. It sucks to have to wait for 6 days for a shipment of discs to arrive from the West Coast to the East Coast just to wonder how badly the discs will be damaged, among other things. All the while looking through the Sunday adds wishing I could use those 'el cheapos Staples had on sale.

Pure burning BLISS is when you can head to the local shop and pick up a 50 pack of DVDs on sale for $10 and have 50 good discs come out. Not having to spin around 100's of cake boxes to look at the bar code searching for the golden words Made in Japan. When you achieve that, it feels so much better than burning that bumpy Taiyo Yuden media with your 2x the cost burner, only achieving a 2% better burn than the average main stream media with last years on special MadDog do it all for $20 burner.

To answer the OP directly, I have good burns using CMC, Optodisc, and AML media using the 2 burners in my profile. Good meaning, they playback without errors in my select DVD players (Panasonic S35, Apex 1100, Symphonic TV/DVD combo, Philips DVP642, and who knows what else ), and the files can be read/copied by my PC. For CDs, I use what ever MicroCenter happens to be selling for $4.99/50 at the time I need some discs, could be Ridisc, Philips, Magnavox, whatever, I seriously have other things to think about other than who makes my media. Those 3 media codes account for most of the media you buy at the local stores. DVD media/burning has came such a long way in the last 6 years, media is rarely a concern for me anymore.

Burning speed can make a difference. While you're burning the DVD/CD, watch the buffers. If they drop/fill repeatedly for a greater deviation than 5%, there's issues going on. My drives ping between 98-95% through out the burn cycle. System could be too slow for selected speed, background tasks running, fragmented drive, burning laser has calibration issues with that media at that speed. Just lower the burn speed. There isn't a large difference between 8x and 16x. 16x is not twice as fast as 8x, since burning is not a constant speed. It needs to ramp up to the higher speed. When I burn at 20x, it only actually burns at 20x for the last 10-15% percent of the disc, with an average burning speed of about 10x. Going from 1x to 2x is twice as fast (~60 minutes to ~30 minutes) then going from 2x to 4x is yet again twice as fast (~30 minutes to ~15 minutes), but once drive makers started turning out 8x and up burners, unlike the previous burning speeds, which where constant, these new burner start out slower, usually 4x-8x depending on media, firmware and drive, then make their way up to the top speed. Authoring application and burning software can play a huge role in the quality and compatibility of authored media.

If you are one of the few that do see a point in striving for the perfect burns while only using those golden samples of media, pick up a nice Pioneer, LG, NEC, or the newest Samsung burner, and mail order some Taiyo Yuden DVDs and CDs. I'm happy spending $10/50 pack for DVDs, and $5/50 for CDs and just not passing a care about the whole thing anymore :P

Current price for TY DVDs=$33/100 + S&H
CDs=$23.99/100 +S&H

2 days ago I bought 100 DVDs (PleoMax 16x DVD-R) and 100 CDs (Philips 52x) from MicroCenter for $32 after tax. Rima's TYs would be $56.98 plus $8.71 if I wanted to wait the 6 days for UPS to throw the box at my door. That $20 saved can buy me a new DVD, or pay half on a night out for me and lady (I'm cheap like that )

[lordsmurf]

"seriously have other things to think about other than who makes my media"

Some of us are more concerned with the quality of our work, not the few minutes it takes to skim ads to buy the best product. If you don't care about your media, you basically get what you deserve in the long-haul (dead discs, unrecoverable backups, lost memories, etc).

This is not new to DVD. The problem of quality media existed with CD, audio cassette, VHS ... even 8-track!

[obs]

Here's the thing: a "good" burner should be able to burn lots of different types of blank media well; if you're only buying "good" media, then the majority of modern burners should be able to burn it well.

Since you buy media more often than you buy writers, I would try to match the writer to the media that you're usually going to be buying. For example, if Verbatim is regularly on special in your area, find a writer that burns those Verbatims well.



As far as Pioneer goes, the problem here is that Pioneer drives do not support Booktype Management/Bitsetting unless you install third-party firmware, but there's no third-party (Buffalo) firmware for their current SATA/212 drive. Of course, if you don't ever use +R media, it doesn't matter .

Which leads to other criteria to keep in mind when selecting a writer: extra features (eg. riplock, error scanning ...)

[lordsmurf]

Even if you do burn DVD+R, it still doesn't matter. The need for DVD+R as DVD-ROM is almost non-existent. You can just as easily use DVD-R on the few players that hate DVD+R. Booktyping single-layer DVD+R usually still does not fix a problem of a player that hates DVD+R, as it comes down to physical traits of the media.

Error scanning is very limited in usefulness. Even former big-time vocal supporters of scanning seem to be recanting in more recent years, having finally witnessed the truth of how small variables can wildly skew results. There have been some recent posts on this site about that topic. Scanning is largely a hobby, a sport, entertainment only, with very limited usefulness coming from the scans. Those absolutely DO NOT determine media quality.

Riplock is not important at all for burning media. In fact, using a DVD burner as a ripping drive will almost always guarantee premature death of the drive. It wears it out.

Most burners will burn Verbatim well. That's one reason why it's good media. As opposed to low-grade media, which wildly varies in burn quality, longevity and playability.

I'm surprised that, even after a wealth of information made available in so many places by so many people, 6 years after the technology was made widely available, that people would still be advocating cheap crap. The only folks that win there are the companies that make and sell the crap. The consumers lose. Sure, you saved $5, but at what cost? It's negative economics.

[budz]

Even if you do burn DVD+R, it still doesn't matter. The need for DVD+R as DVD-ROM is almost non-existent. You can just as easily use DVD-R on the few players that hate DVD+R. Booktyping single-layer DVD+R usually still does not fix a problem of a player that hates DVD+R, as it comes down to physical traits of the media.

Riplock is not important at all for burning media. In fact, using a DVD burner as a ripping drive will almost always guarantee premature death of the drive. It wears it out.

Booktyping to DVD-ROM is good for the older standalone dvd players that are not capable of playing DVD+R media. It has nothing to do with a player hating DVD+R.

A dvd burner that has no riplock on the read speed has the advantage of ripping the files faster. DVD burners are so cheap these days you might as well buy one instead of a DVD-ROM.

[guns1inger]

A local magazine (PC User) has on it's cover headlines for an article on HD video cameras, and fitting 8 hours of quality video onto cheap dual layer discs. I don't care how good your source it, you don't get 8 hours of quality video on a DL disc - acceptable, perhaps - but quality ? And for a magazine to advocate cheap dual layers discs . . . .

To paraphrase Mr. T, I pity the fool that buys it, reads it and believes it.

[lordsmurf]

Booktyping to DVD-ROM is good for the older standalone dvd players that are not capable of playing DVD+R media. It has nothing to do with a player hating DVD+R.
A dvd burner that has no riplock on the read speed has the advantage of ripping the files faster. DVD burners are so cheap these days you might as well buy one instead of a DVD-ROM.

The more you type, the more I'm convinced you have to idea what you're talking about.

The only reason to change booktype on a DVD+R is because a player/reader has a problem reading a DVD+R as-is. Now, that's great and all, but the issue with a DVD+R is more often related to the player/reader rejecting it on physical issues, and no amount of booktype changing can help it.

As we slowly approaching 2008, this problem is almost non-existent now.

The ability to play DVD+R as-is is a standard "feature" of modern DVD players, along with MPEG-4 (Divx/Xvid/WMV), MP3, WMA, photo discs, progressive output, etc.

I hate to sound like a valley girl, but "booktyping is so 5 years ago". Seriously.

Buy a burner to burn. Get a good one, known for burning quality (and to hell with everything else, such as scanning and ripping). Burn with it. Nothing else. Want to rip discs too? Fine, buy another drive. If that's a burner, so be it. But the more you work that drive with reading/ripping, the more you kill it. Reading/ripping kill a drive far faster than burning does. And it often takes a while for a person to attenuate themselves to what works best in the burn. If you kill it early, you won't even have a chance to learn what media it was good with.

Then again, some of you sound more interested in "backing up" Blockbuster video. That's not why I'm here. That's a waste of time.

[budz]

The only reason to change booktype on a DVD+R is because a player/reader has a problem reading a DVD+R as-is. Now, that's great and all, but the issue with a DVD+R is more often related to the player/reader rejecting it on physical issues, and no amount of booktype changing can help it.

You're so full of bubbles LS! The more BS you post no wonder your moderator status was pulled. You are a barrell of freaking laughs.

Some older standalone dvd players were not equipped to playback DVD+R media PERIOD. Booktyping to DVD-ROM for some of those standalone players enabled DVD+R media to playback. So it has nothing to do with the player/reader having problems in reading the DVD+R disc. Older standalone dvd players just did not have the feature/capability play DVD+R media.

My friend has older standalone PANASONIC dvd player that cannot playback a DVD+R disc. But if he burns DVD+R media & booktypes it to DVD-ROM with either his BENQ 1655 or PIONEER 111L drive (has hacked buffalo firmware) that disc can playback in his older standalone PANASONIC dvd player. FYI that older PANASONIC standalone dvd player features only playback of DVD-R/RW media :P

[lordsmurf]

You seem to acknowledge player errors with DVD+R, but you don't seem to know why. The reason is physical in nature, and booktyping often did not help.

Can you not see that we're saying the same thing? It helped, but only sometimes. Read your own words, then read mine, sit back, and let it all sink in. See how it matches? So what the hell are you arguing about? If you think I'm stupid, then you must be double-stupid, because you're saying the same thing I am. Stop trying to pick fights.

I have a Toshiba that "features" DVD-R and DVD-RW only, but it plays DVD+R (booktyped or not), DVD+RW, and DVD+R DL. Matsushita (both JVC and Panasonic) and Toshiba are/were DVD Forum members, and therefore did not have anything to do with RW Alliance formats. What's stamped on the feature list and what actually works is not the same thing. So your Panasonic example is proof of nothing.

[oldandinthe way]

oldandintheway has a contrarian position on this subject that is completely at odds with what many of us think. Most of us don't worry about the burner so much but the media. His position is that some burners work better with some media in a sort of random unpredictable way and you may, for example, get excellent results out of absolute crap media on burner X and horrible results out of excellent media on the same burner. My personal experience is different, but he is adamant that he is right and all the rest of us are wrong about this. You should read various posts on this subject (mostly in the Media section I think) and decide who you think is most likely right about it.

Oldandinthe way has the contrarian position that any DVDburner which meets the appropriates specifications, should be capable of burning and verifying the burn on any media which meet appropriate specifications. And they should be capable of doing it at maximum rated speed (drive or media whichever is lower).

He believes that any burner that does not is DEFECTIVE and that only a fanboy would find that acceptable. There are burners which can do this - LG and Samsung make some and there are others as well.

Media is important. Lordsmurfs work on avoiding coasters is important and highly useful. But as LS's posts on specific user problems also show it is not the exclusive cause of problems. His work is as much a result of burner failings as media failings.

There are reasons for burning at lower than rated speed, but it should not be essential to burn to completion.

Quality media is not available uniformly in all areas. TY is virually absent from retail channels. Verbatim pretty much limited to BestBuy and Officemax. It should not be a requirement to burn successfully to order via mail or Internet and subject your media to potential temperature variation in shipment.

As well as the documented benefits of quality media, quality media are the band-aids which make inferior burners function.

By the way, my theory, which I cannot prove, is that the reasons some burners cannot tolerate many types of media is that they are inadequately tested against media other than the DVDForum or DVDAlliance standard test media. It isn't random. Media varies significantly, and those brands which are closer in characteristics to the standard media are more likely to work.

If my position is contrarian, posters need to consider what their position says about their standards.

An afterthought and further clarification.

Posters who have read my posts over time have seen me harp on appropriate write-strategies time and time again.

It has dawned on me that many posters might think that a correct write strategy is limited to telling the drive what speeds a given mediaID can be written at. This is particularly common as people clone mediaIDs, modifying firmware to support higher speed media. Sometimes successfully, other times not.

The write strategy includes far more than the speed. It tells the drive about laser power levels required for the media as well as other factors. Burn with the wrong level and you will get a failed or marginal burn. Do media differ based on their chemistry in their ability to be burned at the wrong level. I think so, but I am not a media guru.

[budz]

You seem to acknowledge player errors with DVD+R, but you don't seem to know why. The reason is physical in nature, and booktyping often did not help.

Can you not see that we're saying the same thing? It helped, but only sometimes. Read your own words, then read mine, sit back, and let it all sink in. See how it matches? So what the hell are you arguing about? If you think I'm stupid, then you must be double-stupid, because you're saying the same thing I am. Stop trying to pick fights.

I have a Toshiba that "features" DVD-R and DVD-RW only, but it plays DVD+R (booktyped or not), DVD+RW, and DVD+R DL. Matsushita (both JVC and Panasonic) and Toshiba are/were DVD Forum members, and therefore did not have anything to do with RW Alliance formats. What's stamped on the feature list and what actually works is not the same thing. So your Panasonic example is proof of nothing.

:P

[lordsmurf]

oldandintheway, there is some merit to your assertion, but not quite as far-reaching as you'd like to go. Your generality is too far-reaching, and you give burners too much credit.

Certain burners are more tolerant of burning onto marginal quality media. This is true. But you're still going to end up with some degree of failure, because it is "marginal quality media".

I've long noticed how a couple of burners (NEC is the most famous example) are more accepting of CMC, for example. Inversely, some pretty average burners (such as BTC, an excellent reader!) have trouble with TY. TY is a consistent product that may not work well in an inconsistent burner. CMC is an inconsistent product that may not work well in a consistent burner. Those same NEC drives don't necessarily give you the best quality burns. LG drives have become pretty inconsistent lately too, as far as I'm concerned, choking on various media such as Verbatim.

Anybody who has a perfect burning experience on cheap media is either: (1) lying, (2) not testing media, so they really do not understand their media's quality, or (3) so lucky they should consider buying lottery tickets on a regular basis. If you claim to be #3, fine.

[oldandinthe way]

Lordsmurf

I believe you are oversimplifying as well.

All CMC media with the same ID is not equal. CMC media with TDK, Imation and HP labels is less likely to have obvious physical flaws than house brand CMC media like Staples. There is obviously a quality control difference.

I have no coasters with branded CMC media. Whenever I have a coaster with house brand CMC media, I can see the physical flaws. I now inspect prior to burning and always can burn to completion. Verification occaisionally shows a correctable error.

We come down to an issue as to whether the longevity of the media is affected. Even your other posts suggest that the longevity of lower quality media will exceed the age of my media so I have no opinion.

You cannot tell me that your data is not influenced by empirical experience. If the sample you use is at all similar to the postings in the media section of this site, it is clearly biased by writing with improper write strategies.

I also think you may be biased in part by greater experience. Using BTC as an example for instance. Isn't BTC out of business? Was it one of the companies which were merged to form Lite-ON?

I truly believed that media quality difference was the source of failure until I actually experienced failures with Memorex 16x media in my first Samsung drive. Memorex insisted the failure was firmware, but shipped me 100 new disks. While the disks were in transit, I recieved an automatic firmware update from Gateway. The failing batch of disks and the new batch burned perfectly. I didn't know anything about the quality of that media, but I now knew that reports of failure had multiple potential sources.

As I did further research I discovered how the specifications for DVD hardware placed a great deal of the requirements for successfully burning media on the write strategy. Burn any media at the wrong laser power or angle and you will not get the full quality of the media. Do it to quality media and it might work. Do it to lower grade media, it won't work.

You're classification of media quality may be 100% correct, I have no reason to believe it isn't. But the line between good enough and not good enough differs strongly among brands and models of drives.

There is a reason other than cost that manufacturers like HP are willing to put their name on CMC media. It's good enough.

I'll be trying some of the made in China Kodak media (on sale at Stapes for .12/disk Black Friday), because I want to see if Kodak has any standard left.

[lordsmurf]

No, I'm not oversimplifying, as I agree with this area as well. Some media companies (not all, unlike myth) have varying grades of media. Or at least do now, or have had in the past (this changes from time to time). Whether or not CMC is one of these is up for debate, as a spindle of HP or TDK or Maxell media could be crap while a no-name Nexxtech or Dynex could be fine. Other people experience it differently. Not because of burner or phase of the moon, but because of how unreliable the media has proven itself again and again in the last 5 or so years since 2x CMC debuted.

CMC has its supporters, but it's inconsistent and those people almost always recant when they burn a lot of disc. I mean thousands and thousands of discs, not a spindle of 50 (which is the majority of CMC supporters that simply do not have a clue). CMC has certainly put out some good discs, but it was random, and even discs in the same line before and after were crap. It's not consistent, regardless of burner. All this "bad batch" nonsense was started by the same individuals. If anything, they got it backwards, where they somehow got a "good batch" out of a typically shitty disc.

BTC doesn't have anything to do with LiteOn. It's some third-rate discount Asian computer parts company, known best for making keyboards and things of that nature. DVD drives was a short-lived fluke. But it turned out to be one of the best readers ever, just a mediocre burner (it works well with Verbatim DVD+R, and not much else, not Maxell or TY or even Verbatim DVD-R).

Now it is true that the DVD burner has some control over how well a disc is burned, but the onus of a bad experience will always lie on the media, especially when said media is so variable even in so-called "good" burners. And assuming everything was fairly controlled and sufficiently tested. Those last two conditions tend to nix about 90% or more of people online who leave feedback.

Kodak doesn't even make good film anymore, as far as I'm concerned (at least not the crappy stuff sold in places like Walmart). If you buy fresh film from a pro shop, sure, but you can't grab a 4-pack from Walgreens anymore and get the same quality you could even 10 years ago.

Pioneer is a few primary reason that DVD burning even exists. So when a third party company's blank DVD works crappy, the problem is not likely to be on Pioneer's end. Clearly there will be exceptions. LiteOn is another company with a history of burning expertise, whereas a cheap Chinese media company is not. To say that LiteOn is to blame for the Chinese disc not working well is absurd.

The problem here is some of you out there want to base the rules on the exceptions. Well, that's not how it works. If you run across great CMC media in a cheap Memorex burner, good for you! But it's not normal, and those products are usually crap.

I wish all media was good and the hardest decision was which disc had a prettier color or company logo. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

[oldandinthe way]

Lordsmurf once again your opinions are at odds with the industry which produces the drives and the media you base your livlihood on.

The problem of incorrect write strategies is important enough so a variety of companies have built drives which attempt to create correct write strategies and others are developing means of doing so. Drives which have this strategy creation include some models from Plextor, Phillips and Lite-ON. There has even been a method proposed by TY, who some think has the least to gain by the adoption.

Try a google search on DVD write strategies and you will find a variety of interesting articles and papers.

You can pick a vendor of media and a drive manufacturer and if it doesn't burn to completion I place the blame on the drive maker. Yes the drive maker is responsible for burning to completion any media which is certified to meet the DVD+R or DVD-R media specs. If the burn is crap - that could be either's problem.

If the cheap chinese maker meets the standard it the the responsibility of the drive maker to have a write strategy which meets the needs of the media. If the cheap chinese company uses a mediaID which is associated with another maker's product which requires a different write strategy, that's the Chinese media's fault.

I'm not making the rules the DVD Alliance and the DVD Forum did. Unfortunately they failed on test procedures to guarantee compliance.

DVD differs from CD and the attitudes developed from writeable CDs. Many people believe that it was years after writeable CDs before TY introduced the first reliable writeable media. The designers of DVD knew of this history and made significant improvements in the specifications to avoid a repeat of that situation.

[lordsmurf]

"If the cheap chinese maker meets the standard" -- you give far too much benefit of the doubt to media, and that's at odds with reality.

I don't like it either, but that's how it is.

[lordsmurf]

I really wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, so I hit Google to see if everybody I deal with has magically overlooked something. But that's not going to happen...

Write Strategy Optimized to Handle Poor DVD±R Media

December 2004 Issue

Inexpensive but poor-quality appendable digital video discs (DVD) are becoming increasingly common. As a result, write faults and other problems are also becoming more frequent during recording. For users who save their precious image data or irreplaceable photographs to appendable DVDs, constant write faults and data loss are simply unacceptable.

To address this problem, Taiyo Yuden has developed a technology named Autostrategy (see Fig) which reduces recording errors by automatically adjusting the write strategy on a per-disc basis. Normally specific write strategies already available in the DVD drive are used for recording to discs from the major media manufacturers, but now write performance can be improved even without them. Because the adjustment is made on a per-disc basis, recording errors will be reduced for quality fluctuations in both media type and individual disc characteristics.

Taiyo Yuden hopes to license the technology widely to recording DVD drive manufacturers and establish it as an industry standard. The first drive featuring the technology has already been released: the PX-716 Series from Shinano Kenshi Corp of Japan, offering recording at up to 16x speed. The drive uses Autostrategy technology before writing to DVD-R or DVD+R single-layer media. The technology is implemented in an IC manufactured by Sanyo Electric Co, Ltd of Japan.

When the new function is used in the PX-716 Series it takes 30s to get the Media ID, used to detect media type, and another two and a half minutes to determine the optimal write strategy. Even so, Shinano Kenshi has said, once the optimal write strategy has been determined for a specific media, write will begin much sooner on successive discs of the same type. Write strategies for 40 media are automatically stored in internal memory. Autostrategy can also be launched manually to determine the optimal write strategy for individual media, even if already registered.

16x Recorder Speed

Making it possible to write even on low-quality media is not clearly a benefit for Taiyo Yuden, which is pushing high-quality media. Even so, the firm is promoting widespread adoption of Autostrategy technology because it recognizes the danger of users becoming leery of using appendable DVD at all.

Behind these developments are two key changes in the environment surrounding appendable DVDs. The first change is that more and more homes are buying DVD recorders for daily use. As Taiyo Yuden's Arai explained, "Consumers using DVD recorders believe that they will be able to record properly on any media."

The other change is that as recording speeds rise for appendable DVD media, recording errors are much more likely even with high-quality media. Japanese media manufacturers who stress high quality in their product offering could not rest easy given this situation, and techniques of improving recording quality were essential.

by Naoki Asakawa

(December 2004 Issue, Nikkei Electronics Asia)

This is clearly what you read with Google-only research. That method in and of itself is flawed, but it can turn up interesting information.

That article was written 3 years ago. I'm sorry, but garbage media still exists, and no amount of engineering genius is going to compensate for the piles and piles of coaster-quality junk being pumped out of certain factories.

This nugget seems to also have been overlooked in your reading: "Making it possible to write even on low-quality media is not clearly a benefit for Taiyo Yuden, which is pushing high-quality media."

If you actually read this article it states quite clearly that sub-grade media exists. They can try and try and try to make a burner work better with it, but it is done solely for the advantage of stupid consumers. Learn something, quit buying crap, and the companies producing said crap will either fold (and many have come and gone in the past 6 years!) or learn to get better (and several have gone this route, too!).

It's pretty evident that this magic technology doesn't work all that well. At best, I imagine it makes the burner work overtime, and might ... maybe ... if you're lucky ... make a borderline-crappy disc actually work decently. This is not at all at odds with what I'm saying. There is clearly some degree of write strategy accuracy/tweaking involved in a good burn, but it is absolutely not as important as you keep preaching.

Your own document says that (assuming it is the same document, and given your previous post details, it most certainly is).

Yes, you're right, but not as much as you want to be.

[nicky57]

I agree with LS.
There is a 1st time for everything.
Pioneer is the best all around burner and it pays to spend a little extra to get the quality media.

[ofbarea]

I hate to sound like a valley girl, but "booktyping is so 5 years ago". Seriously.

I think this depends on where you live. In Costa Rica it is still a good thing to booktype to DVD-ROM. It is improving but it is still a real problem

By the way, I only use Verbatim Media as this is the one that seems to last best.

[obs]

Even if you do burn DVD+R, it still doesn't matter.
...
Error scanning is very limited in usefulness.
...
Riplock is not important at all for burning media.


The dude asked which is the "best all around" DVD/CD burner ...

While the above mentioned features have nothing to do with burn quality (and these features may mean nothing to you), they are nice features to have.

It all comes down to a person's definition of "best all around", doesn't it?



You seem to acknowledge player errors with DVD+R, but you don't seem to know why. The reason is physical in nature, and booktyping often did not help.

It's pretty easy to determine when booktyping helps and when it doesn't. You burn two copies, with the only difference being that one is booktyped to +R and the other is -ROM. If the player/drive refuses to read the +R one, but reads the -ROM fine, then I guess booktyping helps.

But you're correct: booktyping isn't so much of an issue in 2007. However, the Pioneer writer isn't so much better than other writers that I would give up the Booktyping feature.

Which brings me to another thing ...
If you're not a big believer of error-scanning, then how do you determine which drive is a better writer (such as Pioneers), and which media (such as Verbatim) is good quality media?