DVD burners

[TAKTAK]

Following on from the Lite-On thread, and to save taking that thread off track...

What is the difference between burner A and burner B?

Apart from appearance?

Surely if it can burn discs, and you can read the discs on a different drive then jobs a good'n?...

I've always gone by the "buy whatever is cheapest at the time", and i've never had a problem with burning?

Or is it just that some drives are more compatible with media, but even so, i've only ever had 1 or 2 coasters :/

Help?

[Agent]

The main issue is not that it's written, it's how well its written.

Like most common formats, CD and DVD's have error checking. Some disk writes can actually be 'unsucessful' but report that they wrote fine because there is enough error checking data to restore the original data.

PI and PIF report rates are a good example of error rates: http://club.cdfreaks.com/f76/interpr...r-scans-80545/

These can differ on the same media purely based on the writer that is used.

There is a lot of difference between some brands. All are certainly not equal

[TAKTAK]

The main issue is not that it's written, it's how well its written.

Like most common formats, CD and DVD's have error checking. Some disk writes can actually be 'unsucessful' but report that they wrote fine because there is enough error checking data to restore the original data.

PI and PIF report rates are a good example of error rates: http://club.cdfreaks.com/f76/interpr...r-scans-80545/

These can differ on the same media purely based on the writer that is used.

There is a lot of difference between some brands. All are certainly not equal

So in essence it would boil down to rotational accuracy and laser movement calibration?

In that a slight deviation in the rotational speed could cause an erroneous byte?

And while a disc may appear to be perfectly healthy on one player due to error correction, on another/older, it may not, dependant on deviations within the disc?

And with the data already having errored sections, it makes it more susceptible to being rendered useless due to surface scratches and marks?
Making it that a 'better' drive will produce a final product with higher longevity?

But one other thing, surely if it cannot accurately burn a disc, then the drive is not fit for purpose under SoGA?

[Funkstar]

So in essence it would boil down to rotational accuracy and laser movement calibration?

Also laser power and consistency of that power across the whole surface. Though I think there are techniques that some drives use to vary the power in response to scatter and variations in the recording media.

In that a slight deviation in the rotational speed could cause an erroneous byte?

More likely just unreadable rather than corrupt, but yes you can get corruption

And while a disc may appear to be perfectly healthy on one player due to error correction, on another/older, it may not, dependant on deviations within the disc?

Yup. Some drives do a better job at handling bad disks than others. Plextors for example used to b excellent in this regard.

And with the data already having errored sections, it makes it more susceptible to being rendered useless due to surface scratches and marks?
Making it that a 'better' drive will produce a final product with higher longevity?

In theory yes. Back when pressed CDs were first being shown off, the BBCs Tomorrows World showed one that they had spread with jam and roughly cleaned with a scouring pad then it played fine. this was to demonstrate they were far more durable than an LP. if you did that with a modern pressed CD you may well get errors as the pressings aren't as good as they used to be, there are a lot more errors from the outset now. Basicall because there is a certain margin in the CD spec. Manufacturers now know what they can get away with to produce far cheaper media. This goes for recordable media as well.

But one other thing, surely if it cannot accurately burn a disc, then the drive is not fit for purpose under SoGA?

Accuracy is a fairly loose term, just because a disk isn't written 100% perfectly (probably not possible even in a lab) doesn't mean it isn't acceptable. If the drive can't produce working burns on any media at any time the design is either fundamentally flawd or that drive is broken.

[Funkstar]

Oh and as far as specifics is concerned, I always buy Pioneer drives when I can, though I also have a LG HD-DVD/BluRay combo drive.

Plextor used to be my drive of choice until they pulled out of the retail optical market.

Only tried NEC once and it didn't work for me. Never had a LiteOn.

[Sputnik]

Oh and as far as specifics is concerned, I always buy Pioneer drives

Plextor used to be my drive of choice until they pulled out of the retail optical market.

Only tried NEC once and it didn't work for me. Never had a LiteOn.

Pretty much the same for me, Always buy Pioneer now as they used to have the best compatibility and firmware used to be available to upgrade etc.

I did try Samsung once but, After getting 3 faulty drive in a row - I gave up.

[Agent]

So in essence it would boil down to rotational accuracy and laser movement calibration?.....

But one other thing, surely if it cannot accurately burn a disc, then the drive is not fit for purpose under SoGA?

A fair bit can also come down to firmware as different disks use different dyes.
Different write strategies have different results for these dyes. It's the reason why a drive can be horrid at writing a certain disk with one firmware and then get excellent burns with another on the same drive.

As for the SoGA - that's a difficult issue to tackle. Drives sometimes have some small print along the lines of "only certified with XXX media", or a list of supported media by the manufacturer. If you have issues with those, then yes, I'd imagine you could argue it under the SoGA. The problem is there is so much crappy media out there that you can't really pin it on the drive makers easily. DVD / CD writing is that mature these days that if you're having an issue writing, the drive is either totally broken or the media is poor quality. With drives that are not very old, it's almost always the latter.

[jim]

This was really why I made my post in the Scan thread TAKTAK - I just wasn't completely sure whether you were being serious or not, so I didn't go into too much detail. When I bought my first DVD-RW drive, I checked a lot of reviews to make sure that I was buying one with a good reputation, and ended up with a Lite-On LH20A1H (yes, I still remember the name, I'm a sad git).

It had a great reputation in loads of fields - extremely good compatibility with a wide range of DVDs, low coaster-count, 20x burn speed, and of course the good old Lightscribe. And to be fair, I probably could've got away with something far worse, because I never needed to burn DVD-RAM discs, and never used Lightscribe, but I was just fed up of burning bad disks with my Dell OEM DVD-R drive. At the time, the LH20A1H was one of the best on the market for your typical desktop usage, and was £22 I think, so there was little reason to skimp out.

[lawrywild]

Bare in mind, some drives scan for errors better than others too.

I have 2 BenQ's (1620 and 1640) which are well known to be the best disc scanning drives out there (as well as some of the best burners). I also have 2 LG's, an E10N and an H55L for reading discs, as they tend to have some of the best error correction methods and can read discs that a lot of drives couldn't. I'm also using only MCC-004 dye media from Verbatim atm, due to it's superb compatibility and low PI Failures

[Behemoth]

I wouldn't take a leak on a LiteOn drive if it was on fire. Hate them with a passion. used to use them all the time when I was building PC's for people, and they always gave me grief later on down the road. I rememeber two (must have been a dodgy batch) that decided it would be fun to shoot through the actual DVD they were burning to !!

I used either Samsung or LG ones then, and have *touches wood* had no problems with those. My Dad use to swear by Sony writers, but not anymore I forget why now though however.

Currently in my PC I'm using an LG sata drive and so far its not missed a beat since I've had it.

The best DVD Burner drive I've had was my very firt Pioneer A06 +/- writer was legendary, still working well now !!

[Sputnik]

The best DVD Burner drive I've had was my very firt Pioneer A06 +/- writer was legendary, still working well now !!

Same here. only ever bought 4 for myself. A 106,107 and 2x 109's I changed the firmware on the 106 and 107 but, the 109's still have the original firmware on them.

Great drives though.