What good are these reviews?

[Waldgeist]

Please don't take the question as an insult - I'm just wondering what good these tests and reviews really are if it turns out that many of those celebrated new stars of hardware appear to be malfunctioning quite often when sold to the public.

My motivation: I used to have a LG GSA-4082B DVD-Writer. It worked just fine for a couple of months and then it went mad. Stopped playing DVDs properly, didn't recognize different media at all or didn't burn them as expected. Tried all availalbe FW - to no avail. So I sent it back to Amazon.de and got my money back.

Now I'm trying to find myself a new writer. I read all those reviews. Especially the Plex 712A sounded great in many tests but all the same there seem to be a lot of people complaining about them. Same story with my former writer (the LG). Those user comments at Amazon.de were very favourable - still it died unexpectedly.

How useful is an assessement of quality (and reliability???) such as a review? BTW: I read the two threads about "My best DVD-Burner" and "My worst DVD-Burner" initiated by LITEONRULES. The quintessence - there's such thing as a perfect burner.

I just don't know whether to opt for the 712a, wait for a proper version of the 716a or just take... maybe the new LG 4163. Comments?

Oh, one last thing: The question of "quality of buring" was often raised. What do these test by PlexTools and others mean? Do I have to be concerned as a non-professional user, if the results are less than "perfect"?

[Ian]

I've learned a few things:

1. With anything, there are lemons. To rectify this, make sure you buy a drive from a place where you can exchange it if you have problems.

2. People with problems are going to complain.. loudly. However, those with no problems are usually not going to say anything.

As far as assessing quality or reliability of a drive in a review.. that is hard. Commenting on quality is purely subjective. Reliability.. let's just say we'd never get any reviews done if we used the drive for months to see if it would break.

[jberry]

this is just luck of the draw I think....the guys here really do their best and I think the reviews really are helpful.


Unfortunately, I think companies like LG and others are putting out WAY TO MANY DRIVES....it seems like every few months or so new ones are popping up....just wait until -R DL is out in Jan 2005.

I think this will only get worse....the reviewers will not be able to keep up with all the new drives, which may be just what the manufacturers want to happen

[Waldgeist]

As far as assessing quality or reliability of a drive in a review.. that is hard. Commenting on quality is purely subjective. Reliability.. let's just say we'd never get any reviews done if we used the drive for months to see if it would break.

Well, that makes sense. What about the writing quality? There are a number of threads concerned with this problem, but I - as unexperienced user - have difficulties seperating the "quest for perfect recordings"-lot from the "it won't even run on my stand-alone player"-crowd. Is the general quality of today's writers averaging "acceptable" concerning compatibility (and therefore no writer is *really* way off) or is that an issue?