Battleangel

Here we go again. Even though the Zebra Mod is old news by now I hadn’t tried the upgrade until yesterday. Upgrade went great. Used Omnipatcher to tweak the firmware and change the media info for the intended DVD+R so that it could be written at 8x instead of 4x. The problem is .. I got two coasters right away. Wrote three big .avi files and one in three was always inaccessible.

Maybe it’s just bad discs. Memorex 4x (CMC Magnetics) is not top of the line for one. However, there are still reasons to rejoice. Lite-ON just released a new set of firmware upgrades for the entire line of DVD Writers. Including the 811S, 411S and 401S. Better than nothing I guess. And plenty of people are using their 401/411 to write DVD+R at 8x so I guess it’s a media quality question. Using the upgraded burner for 4x operation. Status quo.

As for finding 8x rated media it’s not quite as easy.

Nor are dual layer discs looking affordable any time soon.

Still have a 25 pcs spindle of Datawrite Yellow 4x -R discs also. Maybe I should save them for when I get a new burner (like when dual layer discs drop in price and I have to upgrade). Will try them again with this new firmware but I hear that still after one year, Lite-ON can not do proper -R burning. At least not near the media compatibility of +R discs.