Best DVD Reading Drive Brand?

[Deathlike2]

This isn't a topic I would normally care to post, but with a DVD drive my parents use is somewhat annoying... failing to read stuff that was burned from China (probably with cheap brands to boot) and I need to know what brand works the best for this type of stuff. I primarily use Samsung drives because they are cheap, but I guess that is the obvious reason why it's not so great. I was looking to LG, but haven't really looked into them very much and most importantly... the drive needs to be easily firmware moddable for RPC1 (for various reasons). The drive doesn't have to be a great burner... just good enough will do AND it must be inexpensive as well... I'm not going to spend like $100 for like a Plextor or whatnot since you could probably just buy a Bluray drive for the same amount.

So anyways, please enlighten me on this matter... it drives me up a wall since my parents complain about this shit.

Note: It should be a SATA drive (because, this PIO Mode resetting shit annoys me too).

[diminish]

I can personally recommend LiteOn drives. They are regarded the best scanners (you can do disc quality scan and jitter scan, most drives only have disc quality, LG drives have nothing). You could choose something from the iHAS lineup. Good place to read on this stuff is Club MyCE.

[odditude]

iCanHASgoodDVD?

[DEFIANT]

I would go Liteon. Other than user error, mines never failed yet.

[Deathlike2]

Alright, I will strongly consider LiteOn. Thanks guys.

[Deathlike2]

FYI, I have chosen this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827106335

[snkcube]

Excellent choice. I think I may have the same one as you.

[DEFIANT]

Nice.

Heres's mine, but they don't stock these any more.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827106073

[sweener2001]

i actually put an ASUS in my desktop, but i really don't know much about its read-ability.

i know it works great for me and rips quickly.

[lordmissus]

I tend to prefer Pioneer drives, but LiteOn is good too.

[Deathlike2]

It's nice how there's a 3rd party tool to make virtually any modern drive to be RPC1 for LiteOn drives...

[I.S.T.]

RPC1?

[Gil_Hamilton]

RPC1.

[paulguy]

I wqs curious, too so I looked it up.

RPC1 was some older standard requirements for features that hardware manufacturers have to abide by.

Basically, there's 1 and 2.

2 adds forced region code checking and the 5 changes limitation. 1 lacks any region locking, and will read all discs.

[Deathlike2]

RPC2 was enforced since 1/1/2000.

[kode54]

And if you have a RPC1 drive, either old hardware or by firmware modification, you can't use it to play encrypted DVDs with Windows Vista or newer unless you also equip a player that supports decrypting on its own, or use AnyDVD. Which is kind of silly, since both of those solutions also work with RPC2 drives, I think.

[Deathlike2]

Months later, I had to RMA the drive... The drive could not recognize DVDs anymore (burned or not, yet still recognize CDs). I guess I was unlucky somehow. Hopefully I'll have more luck with the replacement.... What sucks is the cost to ship the drive back is effectively half the cost of the drive... so much easier to buy another... :-/

Although, I did buy another Samsung DVD drive recently (SH-S223L)... maybe I'll try LG at some point.

[Deathlike2]

Ugh... RMAing the replacement drive (which is drive #2).

Clearly the DVD burner is like possessed or something. Tried to burn a simple CD and it fails on verification.. plus the data on the burned CD is not quite all there. (FYI, it was burned @ 16x speed, which should improve burning/readability).

Unbelievable loud noise is OK as long as the other shit is working... too bad I think they are both related... you would be scared too if you put a valuable CD/DVD into the drive.

Again, there's gotta be some Samsung luck... because the one I got (SH-223L) burned the same thing w/o issue. I'm using Verbatim CD-Rs to boot...