DVD drives sold at Wallmart

[Junk Parts]

Does anyone know anything about the off brand IDE dvd drives sold at Wallmart? I don't recall the brand name or the exact price. I just looked at it in passing. It sold for $29.99 or $39.99. I'm going to go grab one this morning so I can maybe burn a few DVD's. If you know some names please post them then I can tell you which junk I was looking at...

[willawake]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

$29.99 is price for samsung, lg, liteon dvd burners not off brand

[ratdude747]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

what i find odd is most on the forum denounce liteon, yet all of my liteon drives work fine, some after years of heavy use. lg/samsung... i had a bunch of dell pulls by them that never worked... iirc its a firmware thing but too bad you need windows to do that... and im liking linux too well.

[Junk Parts]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Well Wallie World "WallMart" was out of the cheap ones so I went to Best Buy. Ended up buying a LG GH22. It came down to the fact of just finding a IDE/PATA drive at all. I didn't notice until I got home that it says H-L Data Storage on the box. The unit shows up in device manager as HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GH22NP20. I didn't have very good luck with H-L drives in my Dell Lappy. Its a 22x unit and so far it has a perfect record! I've burnt one movie onto a Imation 16x DVD-R blank and the copy works fine. I'm going to do another one now on a Sony 16x DVD-R blank and see what happens...

[Wizard]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Good choice on LG.

Cheers, Wizard

[Junk Parts]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Ok I've burnt three movies and did have one fail during the burn using Sony 16x DVD-R media. Just put another Sony blank in and ran the project again without hitch. Need to find a local store that sells good media and doesn't want and arm and a leg for it. Don't like Sony, Memorex at all.

[kaniki]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

for the dvd drives.. i have not have nad any luck with lite-on myself.. I have had a DVD-rom in my computer and a TV DVD Burner and neither lasted.. just out of warranty on both and they died..

For the DVD media.. Do not buy teon brand.. they are crap...

[i4004]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

i have one liteon burner and one reader, and i won't be having more...hehe...

lg?
i will.

[370forlife]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

At first I though lite-on was pretty good. Now not so much. The drive in my gaming computer is acting up. Half the time when you put the eject button, it makes a sound like it is going to open up, but doesn't actually, then starts reading like you have just closed it...sigh...

[seanc]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

I dislike Lite-on drives.

I've built batches of PCs, only to find they're all useless and had to replace them with LG drives. The latest (bar one, and even that one struggled) failed to read the Windows 7 DVDs shipped in OEM packages.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

I've got a new LiteOn downstairs, and a new Sony in my rig. No problems from either so far, but it's only been a few months.

[Junk Parts]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

The unit that was just replaced was a Sony DRU800A. It has been replaced two times before its under warranty. Guess what! The Sony DRU800A is a rebadged LiteOn. Who makes LG? Is it Samsung???? With all this under cover who makes who's BS I need a pill! Oh by the way the software that came with the LG is mostly BS too. Had to go back and reinstall my real full versions of Power DVD, and Nero7!

[i4004]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

lg and hitachi make lg...it's ex "goldstar" and hitachi was always hitachi..
oh yeah, it's "hitachi-lg data storage"
hl-dt-st

[seanc]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

The cheaper Sonys at the moment seem to consist of Sony/Nec/Optiarc, I don't know the specifics, they just all seem to be the same drives and identify very similarly.

My personal Lite-on drive worked for maybe 6 months.
Going back to what ratdude said, the 2002 Lite-on CDRW I pulled from an old machine at least seems to read CDs OK, which is more than any of the newer Lite-on drives can do.

Also LG drives in Dells from the early 2000s, some were cooked by Mandriva/Mandrake at the time I do believe.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Luckily my Sony is a genuine NEC-based Optiarc drive While that doesn't guarantee that it's not a POS, at least I know it's not a lite-on! I've burned a good 10-15 DVD's, a few music CD's, and ripped about 20 DVDs and CDs with it so far. I only had one coaster, but that's when I had AHCI enabled which may have had something to do with it (found on Google that AHCI can make some opticals kinda finnicky).

I've had the same experiences with old (~2000, 2001) Lite-Ons as you guys. They all seem to spin up and read CD's just fine.

[shadow]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

what i find odd is most on the forum denounce liteon, yet all of my liteon drives work fine, some after years of heavy use. lg/samsung... i had a bunch of dell pulls by them that never worked... iirc its a firmware thing but too bad you need windows to do that... and im liking linux too well.

I have only had a handful of Lite-On's in my lifetime. They were quiet decent although I was still not exactly happy with them. Mind you this was all the way back in 2002 or so. It may be my luck that they have gone down the shitter since I last used Lite-on stuff.

The Lite-on DVD-ROM I had was decent. It worked well, it died early this year, roughly 7 years worth of faithful service I find is not too bad. It started not reading certain discs properly until it got bad enough to just stop using it.

The Lite-on DVD-RW I had was only ok. It had problems burning certain brands of discs which was annoying as hell. Sometimes burns were not the best (mainly with certain discs). However it performed perfectly at reading all discs. It died recently after around 5 years of service. It just got dodgy all of a sudden. I was disappointed with this.

I installed a Lite-on CD-RW into my sisters computer some time ago, works perfectly even today. Granted it has only been in use for around 4-5 years.

I installed another Lite-on for my friends brothers PC, works till today but it has only seen around 1-2 years of use.

In short I have had some good and bad experiences with Lite-on. That DVD-RW saga is enough for me to avoid them, especially if they are even dodgier now than before.

[Junk Parts]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Plextor is also made by LiteOn now and that IS SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT! So what the heck is the best DVD burner? Looks like they are all cheap plastic bebadged junk to me these days.

[seanc]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

Pioneer?

[i4004]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

>Looks like they are all cheap plastic bebadged junk to me these days.

more or less...

[ratdude747]

Re: DVD drives sold at Wallmart

At first I though lite-on was pretty good. Now not so much. The drive in my gaming computer is acting up. Half the time when you put the eject button, it makes a sound like it is going to open up, but doesn't actually, then starts reading like you have just closed it...sigh...

thats what my one samsung drive does.

i have done well with liteon, but since i have to kiss bill gates's a** to fix the firmware, the lg/hl/samsung drives are bricks to me.

any way to use linux to change firmware? or am i screwed?