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Hi Guys,

I am about to buy a new DVD Burner, and I think I have narrowed my choices down now. I am looking for the burner that will give me the BEST write quality on a wide variety of media. Many of the extra bells and whistles are not that important (i.e. LightScribe, Faster Read Speed, Better Ripper, Scanning Ability, etc.) to me. Here are my top choices as of now:

Pioneer DVR-112D

OR

Pioneer DVR-212D

OR

LG GSA-H22N


Based on my criteria, which one would you guys choose? Or is there a completely different one that I haven't listed that you think is even better? Thanks to all that reply.

SuperG03

I don't think the H22N is as good of a burner as many do. I'd definitely go with the Pioneers at this point, they're pretty good over different kinds of media, but may stumble a bit on truly average/mediocre media. (I think the H22N does well over a variety of media, but does none perfectly; the Pioneer on excellent TY/Verbatim media does amazing).

The LG H10 is an excellent burner overall but pretty much impossible to find. It's 'true' followup, the H42, appears to be pretty decent as well. I don't remember which of the LG H5x series is the followup to THAT one. (LG uses 2 different chipset supplies-- Renesas and Panasonic. The Renesas based drives are usually excellent and the Panasonic based drives are more iffy. The H22 and H30 and Panasonic based)

I have a Pioneer 111 and it produces great burns. I don't know if the 12 series is quite there yet, but with some more firmware updates it'll probably be just as good.

I'm one of the fans of the LG 22N, but LG has been pouring out new drives recently, and you may want to look at a newer model. My LG 42N arrived DOA, so I can't speak to it. The Pioneer 112D is an excellent DL burner, best I have bar none. You won't go wrong with it, as far as the 212D goes, if you are hard up for PATA slots go for it, but I can't see that there will be a performance difference.

Grain wrote:I'm one of the fans of the LG 22N, but LG has been pouring out new drives recently, and you may want to look at a newer model. My LG 42N arrived DOA, so I can't speak to it. The Pioneer 112D is an excellent DL burner, best I have bar none. You won't go wrong with it, as far as the 212D goes, if you are hard up for PATA slots go for it, but I can't see that there will be a performance difference.

Thanks Justin and Grain for your replies. I too seem to get conflicting reports on the LG models. From what I have gathered, the LG burners seem to do an excellent job on good media and a descent job on sub par media. Pioneer on the other hand seems like it does a above average job on a kinds of media, including good media and sub par ones. I however, will not be burning too many DL discs I don't think, so that is not a big issue. But it sounds like maybe the Pioneer is the way to go, because I have heard such good things about the 111D, that I can only assume the 112D/212D will reach the same status after a few more firmware updates. So at this point the only question is 112D or 212D. Now it is really only a $5 or so difference to get the 212D over the 112D, so if that is not an issue, wouldn't I be better of going for SATA? I mean, is there any downfall to going to SATA instead of PATA? Even if there is no advantage thats ok, but is there something that will be taken away by going to SATA, like maybe cross flashing ability, etc? Thanks.

SuperG03

I haven't found any negative's to Sata, the nice little cable is good thing ! You may even find it for the same price if you shop around.

I was in the past a bit a LG-fan and still think they have nice burners, but overall I recommend the latest Pioneer-drives