Hi every body…
My old Nec 2510 is no more, can’t burn Any media, and
reads dvd only every third day ( or so) 
I’m gona by a new Nec burner next week and my
little question is:
Wich of these burner is the best over all Burner/Reader that you can buy
today (ofcourse i’m gona flash it with Liggy & Dee’s wonderfull firmware),
i’m gona choose between these one’s:
3550, 4550 and 4570… Any idee’s ???
x550 have stable firmwares
4570’s firmware is very new, can’t make good burns
Yes, that much i understand by reading in the forums, but the big
question is: wich of the x550 burners to choose ???
Any one got an ide’eee Liggy ?? Dee ??? 
Get a Pioneer 111, they are the better NECs. Same Chipset but better burning- and much better readingdevices, and there is an existing support for that device.
What are your needs??? if you need ram, then 4xxx, if you need ram and labelflash 4xx1, if not then 3xx0/1
My needs??
I have no needs for labelflash, and no needs for ram, thats
why i wrote x550 … but wich model gives the best burning
result with decent medias, 3550, 4550 or 4570 ???
I want the best and most stabel burner with less problem, no
need for crossflashing and that kind of stuff.
but i like Liggy and Dee’s media speedup and write strategy
fixes for better burns
The x55x drive is OK, unless you plan burning at 8x (does it relatively slow). If you want to buy a NEC, by one of these models and avoid the more modern x57x
The firmware is 8-9 months old, I would’t call it new. But since it is the first release, it might be immature. Anyway, I lost my faith in NEC with these drives. Till the 4570 I could buy a NEC without investigating and I’d be very confident that I’d be good. Now I no longer do that 
You may not need ram, but for almost the same price why shouldn’t you get a drive that can read and write DVD-RAM discs?
And, at the end you may discover the beneficts of the format someday.
Same about lableflash.
I’ve got the 4551 and so far it seems to deliver according to my expectations when I bought it, but one of my requirements was DVD-RAM support, due to reliability of burning process and life expectancy of the discs.
I agree with BurningFish, buy a Pioneer 111. It’s one of the better burners available now. It doesn’t need firmware mods to burn well. And read through this thread.
Even Dee says:
For quality burns on CD-R and DVD R, the Pioneer 111 is probably the best overall burner in my collection.
if you can spend some more money get a drive that read/writes ram, they have very good error correction, and it’s said many times, good media good burn’s.
Thank you for the help.
By reading what you all say here, and reading in the forums
i decided to go for the Nec 4550, because i know that i
never gona use Labelflash.
I will NOT choose the Pioneer because it have LOUSY bitsetting
support 
Thank you everybody 
And thank you Liggy & Dee , for your wonderfull firmwares, you two
are the main reason that i choose the Nec
What are you talking about? 
Flashing a 111 with the Buffalo 8.26 firmware is easy and gives you automatic bitsetting on +R and +RW. You also gain Labelflash, but you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to. In the US, Labelflash media isn’t available so that feature is useless to me. But the the Disc T@2 is cool and very useful. I don’t see how this is any different than using one of Liggy and Dee’s firmwares. Both are unofficial and will void your warranty. Dee’s firmwares can only do so much and if you have a crappy burner to begin with, like my 3550, there is not much that can be done. If do a little searching in this forum, you will see than most people have been very unhappy with the x55x and x57x series.
Totally agree with RickDriver about ease of bitsetting on the Pioneer, but I’ve seen many more complaints/problems on the NEC the x55x and x57x series than on the Pioneer. The Pioneer is the hands down winner IMO and was a very easy decision for my recent upgrade burner.
Don’t forget that the Pioneer 111D burns DL media much better than the NEC 3550. I have both the 3550 and 111D. I don’t think the 3550 is horrible (it isn’t), but it can’t do anything better than the 111D.
The NEC drives are faster than the DVR-111 and much better readers, for all media types. NEC drives are also capable of producing excellent quality burns.
IMO. The problem with NEC at the moment is consistency between drives. I can make my own drives burn media with better quality than any other drive in my rig, by modifying the writing strategies. The problem is making these modifications work well on other peoples drives.
I have the 3550 with 1.y6 and it is a great burner, high quality and no media problems, although I have been using TY 8x and it burns a little slower. I can do a good burn on a two hour movie encoding and writing in about 16-22 minutes, I personally don’t think that is bad at all.
Why is the 3550 rated below average in reading test review for reading burned DVD video if NEC drives are much better readers as Dee-27 states? My own experience with the 3520 as well as other posts I’ve read in which 3540 and 3550 users had problems reading burned disks on NEC drives seems to indicate the 3550 review reading tests to be more accurate indicating NEC is not as good reading burned disks.
I have a 3550 and a samsung sh-s162l and I burn on both, I have never had a problem with my NEC reading a burnt DVD or CD, maybe I’m just lucky, but I don’t think so. My scans are consistantly in the mid to high 90’s, due to the fact I use great TY media.
CDFreaks haven’t reviewed the 3550 drive, but we have reviewed the 4551 which is the same hardware. Maybe you need to check out the reading performance in our review. 
http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/266/3
Sorry I made a typo error about below average reading test review. The review of the NEC 3540A says, “The NEC ND-3540A performed below average reading Single Layer DVD-Video and average on Double Layer DVD-Video.” The 4551 at http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/266/3 did have excellent reading rest results.