Thinking of returning liteon 832, Options?

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers
#1

A week old and I think it is a POS. I have been a comp geek since the 80’s, never encountered such a mess as burnable DVD. I don’t think I ever made a CDR coaster execpt when attempting to overburn. Or doing a bad underburn.

Now I got a poor burn with the included TY dvd R+ disk. A poor burn with the included -R disk.

Then I bought some Benq +R disks. (Daxon) some ok burns (but mostly only at 2.4X) but many coasters, and disks that failed to read just putting them in the drive (no chance to burn). I went to burn something and had 4 in a row fail, so I returned these.

Next bought the most expensive made in Japan disk I could find, which was Maxell -R (TYG01). Mediocre burns, fourth disk verified, but scanned with big chunk of PIF of over 100. None of the burned Maxell disks work at all in my liteon 163 reader. Man what a minefield. I am pretty disgusted with poor QC and standards.

I have tried the various FWs up to CG2B, now back at VS08, but all pretty bad. I am at work so I can’t post scans right now. But can later if you are interested. I have posted some in the past if you are that interested.

I don’t think I have one burn that will do a reasonable clean read without dropouts, but my friends burns on his plextor look great on my drive.

I can still return this burner for something else. Is there something that just works and doesn’t coaster every 4th disk?

Are any of these alternatives better: They are more money,but I don’t care:

The shop I bought this at has these:
LG 4120B
HP DVD420i
NEC 3500
Pioneer 108

Keep in mind I have some DVD-R TYG01. I realize media needs to match the burner unfortunately.

#2

The NEC3500 is a great drive and will burn most any media, even cheap media, well. The Pioneer is a good drive too.

#3

I would rather have any of those drives over the Liteon.
The Pioneer 108 and the Nec 3500 are earning a good reputation at the moment.
The Pioneer won’t bitset, but the nec will with a hacked fw.
I bought the pioneer 108 and haven’t looked back.

#4

This seems to be the $100 question. Pioneer or NEC. I read that review. I really like the way Pioneer burned 8X media. But the NEC seems to have more functionality with various FWs.

I haven’t seen much in the way showing one to burn much better quality than the other.

Either of these work better with -R media?

#5

Good riddance to bad HW. I really think it was a bad copy but good luck proving that and not paying a restock fee.

The disks TYG01 that were unreadable burned at 4x in the liteon, burned at 8X by default in the NEC and were readable in my other drive and clearly a better burn.

I know light on readers are not the best for showing scans, still good for comparison. Image one is the only TYG01 disk that the 832 burnt that would play in my rom drive (4x burn). Next the NEC 3500 8X burn:

liteon_Ty.PNG572x672 6.68 KB

Nec3500MxL8X.PNG572x672 6.37 KB