i'm going to buy a dvd-rw but never had experience with lite-on nor pioneer. i already had benq dw1650.

which one is the best between lite-on and pioner dvd-rw?

or do you prefer any better brand?

thanks in advance..

I'd personally go for Pioneer

are you using pioneer dvd-rw right now? how is it going so far?

i have used both in the DVD only world...it was awhile back....

I have to say they both last about the same time...

Look at the pioneer and see if they still have a feature called laser memory...

If you leave CD's in the drive and get pissed off about the spin up(lag) from time to time when you are doing things this helps that allot....or at least it did for me.....but it was more important in the windows98 days

Now with XP and since i have autorun off it never checks the drives till i want it too.....so all is good.....but if you find that you have to wait on cd rom spin up now and then with a game or other disk left in.....the pioneer if it has laser memory will be a good idea....

Bottom line
i think the build quality is similar....but Liteon's can be flashed region free if you import DVD's. And if pioneer still has laser memory....well it has advantages.

oh i see. so they will have almost the same performance and have their own advantage/disadvantage.. thanks

basically, go with wichever one is cheaper. u will not see the difference between two brands except maybe in sound cuz lite-on is kinda loud.
only benchmarks (like nero read-speed test or w/e) will tell the diff. the worst the speed can differ is like a minute or 2 between the brands.

oh ok, i'll check the price to the local store tomorrow. thanks if only they can get one year replacement warranty like benq has.

i hear benq is cheaper

First of all I like your avatar. Go for Pioneer. I have a Pioneer car stereo, home stereo, DVD theater, and DVD-Rom drive in my computer. I have never had any complaints with their product. Pioneer participated in setting the standard for DVD.

my avatar? ye its a lambo diablo.
anyway, i also have a pioneer dvd burner from 2003. It still works to this day, and never had any probs with it (crosses his fingers)

they are in the similar price range (around $43-44).

thanks for the input. hope this noon i'll get another dvd-rw and i also hope that it's bundled with nero 7

do you like korn too?

sorry folks. i ended up buying sony dru-830a dvdrw hehehe.

it seemed the best deal for me with 18x speed with nero 7 essential bundled software. it was also able to copy a movie to hdd which benq could not. so far so good, i love the model too, so cool

sony is one of the best also. u could've saved a lot of money buying online though

it's sold for USD 44 here in Indonesia since it's made in Indonesia too. lol

ooo i see.. i asumed us. srry/

I have one of those. Its been a good drive, no problems of any kind.

I've got 3 Pc's in my house, two with twin burners. Built upgrade and maintain 13 in total in ex's houses and family members.
I've used Sony, LG, Lite-On, Pioneer, NEC, and Plextors.

The only one I had repeated problems with was plextor failing about every 6 - 9 months. But plextor delivered a new drive the next day on reporting it with new warranty from delivery date, something they did twice more after that. So poor drive but excellent service.

The others are really much the same, although the Lite-on is noisiest and NEC generally queitest (with one NEC exception which sounded like a helicopter taking off and deemed not faulty by NEC when sent back, but they did refund my money after further complaint. But it put me off them) Sony seemed to have the shortest shelf life but that was still 2 years plus, but life expectancy is determined by number of burns rather than time served and it got some hamer.

Speed wise varies with the media used playing a big factor. Especially with DVD's. If you visit their home sites they normally list recommended media to use for specific drives for optimum performance and speed. Some media sites list the registed compatable drives for the media on sale, like svp. An example my LG 16x drive will burn a full DVD in 4.56mins to make an image from source and 3.57mins to burn the copy using Ri Disc Xtreme 16x Silver printables and Nero 7. Same source but using DataRite Titanium 16x white printables takes 7.24mins to burn the copy of the same disc.

Some media and copying forums also have custom fireware for set drives to increase compatability and speed. Though very effective especially at getting 8x discs to burn at 16x speeds, using a custom fireware voids your drives warranty

Down loading latest firmware often increases your drives compatability list with various media and sometimes ups you performance time on existing media. So always worth checking and updating every few months whatever your drive.

For overall media compatability NEC and LG seem to cover more media options than their rivals, but sony has a decent compatability ratio.

lastly burning on the fly. Source drive plays a major factor. For one you won't burn on the fly at 16x speed with a 16x speed burner if the source ROM drive is a couple of years old and has a maximum speed read of only 8x. (A very common fault) And daft as it sounds same make does not always ensure maximum drive compatability. I initially purchased an LG DVD ROM drive to compliment my LG DVD RW RAM drive, but had poor on the fly performance. It was taking 24 minutes on the fly, (thats direct reader to writer without an image being made to PC first) Where as it was actually quicker to use it to copy image to PC first, taking an overal copy time of about 8.5 to 9 minutes. I swapped it for my SONY DVD RW, using that as the source and performance increased drastically to an on the fly performance of about 5.25minutes.

Basically all good. Some quieter than others, and look at media compatability for the drive you consider buying.

thanks.. that's a relief

wow that are lot experiences i guess this sony is a bit lack of quality when burning, but the reading is pretty fast..