[QUOTE=Stereodude;2703507]You may want to qualify your statement to what format discs you’re referring to. I don’t have any recent LG Blu-Ray drives, but the GGW-H20L certainly doesn’t fit your characterization. It is a much better CD burner than a BDR-206D or BDR-207M (I own both BDR’s). I haven’t burned too many Blu-Ray discs with the GGW-H20L, but there is some back and forth between the two depending on the MID of the blank on which one is better.[/QUOTE]
I haven’t burned a CD in years, and not many DVDs lately either, but when it comes to BluRays burn quality any model above the BDR-203 (and the BDR-203 itself) is in my view miles ahead of the GGW-H20L. BDR-205 and above is where Pioneer really shines.
I remember at the time the GGW-H20L (which I still have somewhere) making a mess of many of my expensive TDK & Verbatim BD-Rs (the good old stuff, not today’s rubbish) which the Pioneer BDR-203 (and any of the following models, particularly from BDR-205 onwards) burned very nicely. The 8x LGs were also rather poor in my view. I’ve got one of those around as well. The 10/12x LG models were much better. I’m still using one of them in my secondary PC. The 14/16x LGs are not as good in my view. I’ve only burned a few BD-R discs with my BH16, but those discs burn much better in my iHBS112/212 class burners and in the Pioneer ones as well, so I’ve got little incentive to use the LG other than perhaps testing to see if newer firmwares improve things now and then.
Ever since the BDR-203 days I became a Pioneer convert, and as a result I’ve got all desktop models since BDR-203 (except the 207D and 208D models, because I preferred to grab the 207M and 208M models instead). I do not regret buying any of them. Quite the opposite. They are good and dependable BluRay burners. The GGW-H20L got better with the YL05/07 firmwares, particularly for some media, and like any drive likes some MIDs better than others, but overall in my view as a BluRay writer it is not in the same league as any Pioneer BD desktop model.
The situation might well be different for CDs and/or DVDs, but then I’ve got dozens of DVD writers from the good old ND-3500 onwards (and some older ones as well) which I can dig up and use to burn CDs or DVDs should I need to 
But I’m going rather off-topic really …
@pcus3r
That Buffalo looks like a BH16NS40 clone. There aren’t any other 16x drives around, so that must be it. If you see any 14x drives around, those will also be LG drives, using the same hardware as the 16x ones. LG is the only manufacturer who do 14/16x drives. Another give-away of this LG family would be Mdisc support (only LG drives have that as far as I know).
If you see a 15x drive, that would be a Pioneer drive/clone. No other manufacturer sells 15x drives.
Regarding the LiteOns, yes they are older than most and they’ve been around for a few years, but no other desktop BluRay burner can do BluRay scans, so there is very little choice.
Another possibility would be to buy a BD-Combo drive for scanning purposes, such as the iHES112, but that might not be that much cheaper compared to an iHBS112 burner.