Ok, picture this:

I have a 3D movie due in 2 weeks and I am doing the final renders. I have 3 computers, 2 rendering and the other so i can do some other work. The one which isnt rendering has a DVD Burner which I brough for Christmas.

THinking that I had some time to kill (Over 3 minutes a frame for over 400 frames), I thought I would make a simple DVD of my dancing competitions. But first I decided to burn a data DVD of some data which needed backing up.

The time is 1:00am, I had decided to upgrade the firmware to the latest because Premiere Pro was complaining while burning (But the burn still failed). After I upgraded the firm ware, I had to go out and get some new blank DVD's because the others were currupted.

Fast Forward in time to Today at 1:00pm. I had tried reflashing the drive, tried different firmware and Changing whihc IDE bus it was one and millions of other things. I had been up all night. On a hunch I looked at the back of the DVD's and they had some scratches on the inner edge. So I went out and brough some more, but a different brand (Sony, the others were Imation), and low and behold, the burner burns like a dream now.

The moral of the story:
If you are going to buy cheap products, dont expect them to work

What brand was the old one?

The year before last, I got a Lite-On DVD burner.  I really wanted a burner but I was initially dissapoined to get a 'cheapo' brand.  Turns out my burner is actually a fine piece of hardware.

Make no mistake, I preach 'you get what you pay for' more than most, i'm just surprised a cheaper burner wouldn't work.

Those "Imation" DVD's are hilarious.
It's like the company tried to make their name sound as close to "imitation" as possible.

Glad you got that sorted out. I swear by Maxell DVD's (Memorex for DVD-RAM), never had a problem with 'em.

TDK all the way for me.

Well, my burner is a Sony DRU810A DVD DL Burner, so I thought that I would get their DVD+R (I still get confused about the difference between DVD-R and DVD+R). One would think that their DVD's would work with their burners.

One strange thing which led me to a dodged batch of DVD's was the fact that I could burn Normal CD-R's easily.

Quote (Mr. B @ Dec. 28 2005, 11:42 pm)

What brand was the old one? The year before last, I got a Lite-On DVD burner.  I really wanted a burner but I was initially dissapoined to get a 'cheapo' brand.  Turns out my burner is actually a fine piece of hardware. Make no mistake, I preach 'you get what you pay for' more than most, i'm just surprised a cheaper burner wouldn't work.

I've got a Lite-On CD/DVD writer too (came with the computer) and never had problems with it, outside of being stupid and getting the wrong kind of blank DVDs.  

Is DVD-RAM (Random Access Memory?) something I'm unfamiliar w/, or did he mean DVD-ROM (Read Only Memory, which doesn't really make sense either)?

Quote (Agent007 @ Dec. 29 2005, 9:47 am)

Is DVD-RAM (Random Access Memory?) something I'm unfamiliar w/, or did he mean DVD-ROM (Read Only Memory, which doesn't really make sense either)?

DVD-RAM is the third and least common type of the DVD formats (other two being DVD+ and DVD-)

I think the specialty of DVD-RAM is that you can use it like a floppy disk or hard disk, drag files into it, delete, rename etc on the fly.

Is it a different kind of disc?

So what's the difference between DVD+R and DVD-R?  I always assumed it was just a stupid gimick type thing, like "Look at us, we have a + in the name of our media format, we're better than those bastards with minuses."