So why exactly is everyone so opposed on using the Pioneer to do scans? Does it do that poorly?
I am in the market for a new DVD Burner and am debating between a Liteon 18A1P or H and a Pioneer 111D as everything I have read keeps telling me that Liteon and Pioneers are some of the best drives out there… if I have to purchase a Liteon anyway to do the quality scan tests, I don’t see much of a reason to buy a Pioneer… Any thoughts? What am I missing here?
If you’re buying just one drive and want something with reliable scans, you should buy the Lite-On. It has adequate burns if you use good media (Verbatim, Taiyo Yuden).
If you’re buying two drives, you should get the Pioneer 111D, since it produces much better burns. And then buy the Litey to scan the superior burns made in the Pioneer.
Lite-On scans better. Nothing to do with playback quality.
Pioneer burns better. Everything to do with playback quality.
Thanks for the feedback!
After spending more of the morning researching, I’ve gone ahead and ordered the Liteon as my 1st drive since scanning is important to me. If the discs aren’t being burnt at a high enough quality for me, my next drive is going to be the Pioneer 111 since I know it burns beautifully.
Thanks again!!! 
A lot of people will tell you otherwise, but the DVR-111 is not a bad scanner at all if you use DVDInfopro with it instead of cdpseed (the software is better calibrated to the drive than cdspeed…)
Which LiteOn do we buy???!!
I just ordered the 111D from NewEgg to replace a jacked up LG GSA-H22N but I need a scanner.
Everyone keeps saying LiteOn for scanning, but which one???
Also, will it work well in the slave position?
There is also a caveat with latest cdspeed version: going into advanced (in quality scanning page) and putting 1 ECC and fastest scanning speed.
This way many people reported that their scans were much more coherent between themselves, and faster too.
I’ve tried the 1 ECC setting at fastest speed… somehow, sure the results looked like something scanned with a lite-on, but they somewhat seemed too good to be true…
I kind of bothered me that the results were SO different by changing speed settings in cdspeed…
The DVDinfo scan seemed less forgiving… and more consistant at different speed settings.
cdspeed and dvdinfo both agreed on PIF errors, but the PI levels were off the chart (3000-5000) on most good discs I have here (that scanned almost perfect in a litey).
dvdinfo pro however reported more reasonable PI levels… most of my disc I tested reported from 40 to 180 PI … and over 300 for a few bad discs I tested…
Not the same info as a litey, but still closer to values we know how to read in a scan (PI < 280 for a good disc)
WIth a lite-on or benq, i’d definitely use CDSPEED over DVDinfopro… but with a Pioneer, I just don’t really trust it yet!
One thing to remember. you can only compare Pioneer scans with Pioneer scans if you want them to be meaningfull.
i have an 108d and 111d…
the 108d show [B]always[/B] very high errors after half the dvd.
the 111d [B]always[/B] shows VERY good scans. even with a “test-scratched” dvd.
the results are far different from the benq 1640…
change the “really bad” to “useless” 
I got a 112D@112L. Is the scanning still bad? Or did Pioneer improve this function? Does anyone know?
From what I’ve seen on this forum, the Pioneer 112 series is no better than the 111 series for scanning.
In my opinion these drives are not reliable for scanning, and if you have a LiteOn, Plextor, BenQ, Samsung or other more reliable drive then use that instead.
Samsung are not very reliable in my opinion. Latest 182D, for example, give totally strange results, while earlier pre-summer-2006 182D scans very well. I don’t know how 183 scans, but I won’t trust them.
As I don’t have such a drive (anymore; my BenQ DW1620 just died), I won’t be scanning any time time soon :-(. However, I think most burns a Pioneer DVR-112 makes are quite well, thus scanning is a little bit less needed.
well, although less needed, you still may want to scan once in a while to make sure that your burns are up to your standards. you’ll never know if you happen to across a bad batch of discs or if your drive’s optics or motors are about to go belly-up ;). for me personally, my data is way too valuable to simply rely on a gut feeling that “everything’s fine”…
cka
You convinced me :-). I just ordered a Lite-On 20A1P. I think, this is a great scanner (even better than my previous BenQ DW-1620). Thanks for (re)pointing me to the importancancy of scanning!
Ah darn, a little late for the thread, I was gonna recommend the “Lite-On LH-20A1H” @ NewEgg, it’s also got lightscribe, but if scanning is all you need, then you’re picking the best.
Yup, that is my opinion too.
The recent Samsung burners are more reliable in scanning purposes, but the best choice is still an Liteon or Plextor burner.
I don’t need LightScribe, and I read somewhere here at club.cdfreaks.com it is likely that Lite-On willr elease more firmwares for the non-LightScribe burners. That’s why I bought one without LightScribe.
The Samsungs are more reliable than previous Samsungs? Or more reliable than Lite-Ons? (I hope you meant the first one :-))
I can only speak for the 163 SATA I have and for the 18x burners where I have seen scans so far…
relax, pal ;). your lite-on choice is fine! sit back and enjoy your drive 
.
cka