CDRLabs.com

Well to start off, I had problems burning some cheap CD-Rs (YDD, CM www.chenmoun.ebiz.tw) although I was able to burn them in my Pioneer 111D. I also lost a couple of Verbatim DVD+R DL's as well so I think I should be looking for a new burner..

Is there any burner out there that can beat my DW-1655 in terms of:

1. Quality (most important)
2. Compatability
3. Speed
4. Features

?

I wouldn't replace it, especially if it still works on good SL media.
Otherwise, a Pio 212 or a Samsung 203 should be as good.. but still, try to check how the 1655 works on other media..

LG Renesas-based-drives are also good for DL-media

The LG h22n also burns DL media very well, even the crappy Ritek D01 I ended up with for cheap, and at 8x too boot. They might not always test well but they play in the pickiest player I own. The Pioneer 111 always seems to burn DL very well also. I haven't tried my new s203b with DL yet but for regular media it does fair to excellent, though most users seem to get better quality scans then I've gotten so far.

LGs of late have not been very good with CD-Rs. Pios and even NECs are much better at that. In fact, those are the drives I use to burn cd-rs on my machines, not BenQ, Samsung or LG.

For DVD I think LG are even worse (great on some, crap on many other media). I think even Samsung 20x series might be more consistent.

LGs latest Renesas-models like H44/62 are great with most DVDs.

Mediatek-based-drives like Liteon not great with CD-R at high speed

Still using my Benq DW-1655. I also bought the Samsung S203N burner as well.

Strange, if I burn Verbatim DVD+RW 8x with Samsung it won't recognize in my standalone DVD Player but Benq works perfectly.

slimeballzz wrote:Strange, if I burn Verbatim DVD+RW 8x with Samsung it won't recognize in my standalone DVD Player but Benq works perfectly.

Maybe the booktype?

The 203b doesn't remember the booktype after you reboot unless you have a program reset it each time you use it. Nero can do it and many others but you have to tell it to set to dvd rom or it will just use plus next time you run it .

With the SH-203B, I use ImgBurn and it auto-booktypes to DVD-ROM for Samsung and LG drives.

Some of the programs are smart enough to auto set it to rom, others you have to set it once then it should reset the drive every time you run it from then on.
I really hate the fact that it seems LiteOn bought BenQ just to kill them and then sell inferior LiteOn clones with the good BenQ name on it.
The 203 is a great drive but for me it's not as godlike as some folks seem to think it is, BUT with a few updates it may be a godlike drive...

So anything I burn, I should set the booktype to DVD-ROM?

I usd a program called DVDInfoPro to check the booktype and it shows the DVD+RW for my 203N is set to DVD-ROM.

I use ROM-Booktype only for DL-media, the most not so old players and drives have no prob with DVD+R-Booktype

But my old Noname DVD-Player have big probs with DVD+RW with ROM-Booktype

My Panasonic e80h dvd recorder will not play any plus media unless book typed to dvd rom and I still use it everyday to record my favorite shows and docos.
I don't play many movies in it but I want whatever I have to play in it just in case.

I guess it varies by the player..

I just used tried using ImgBurn and the buffer started off at 100% but declined to 0% during the burn process for more then half the time and then it went back up to 100% later on. Is this normal?

Here are some pictures in case that helps:

defrag your hard drive before burning... don't multi-task... turn off your virus scanner during the burn. Change your media to Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden...

How much RAM you got in your rig and what is the cache on your hard drives? What drivers are you using... etc.

SithTracy wrote:defrag your hard drive before burning... don't multi-task... turn off your virus scanner during the burn. Change your media to Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden...

How much RAM you got in your rig and what is the cache on your hard drives? What drivers are you using... etc.

Hard drive has been defragged already with only a 10% improvement (using PerfectDisk). Is it really necessary to turn off virus scanner? I've burned many discs with Nero without any buffer issues.

My system has 2GB of RAM and am using a 74GB 16MB Raptor. E4300 CPU @ 3 GHz.

I'm guessing it could just be the media?...

"Is it really necessary to turn off virus scanner?"

I'm wondering about this part as well. I'm using Kaspersky and I find myself never turning it off for any reason these days.

As long as the 203 gets a good data stream it doesn't fluctuate much on the buffer. You probably do have some bad media or something else is messing with the burn process.

SkaarjMaster wrote:"Is it really necessary to turn off virus scanner?"

I don't turn mine off either, but it helps in freeing resources for people having trouble... Of course if you are using the trash they put out called McAfee VirusScan you should kill it during a burn. That thing will hold on to a file and not let go... Next thing you know you've got a coaster.

I use a Freeware called Avira, never need to turn it off during burning.

But some programms need much RRAM and stress the HDD