dbminter

As Scary Gary Alan said, "It's New Year's resolution time! Kiss another year goodbye! These New Year's resolutions are just another pack of lies!"

It's possible I might be able to get one this month. Depends on if something I am expecting to come out this month that will cost me $79 is released or not. It's been delayed twice now since November.

The difference is in the clear plastic exterior. The DVD+R DL's are thicker on top so they don't stack with older ones where the top is thinner. I don't know why DVD+/-R uses MCC and DVD+R DL uses MKM.

I tested a 3.10 firmware updated drive back in 2019, but never updated this post with my results. The 3.10 firmware seemed to fix the DVD+RW and BD-RE destruction issues. I did not encounter that with the 3.10 firmware. However, the drive was still borked. This time, it was a test of MKM-003 Verbatim DataLife Plus DVD+R DL. Burn completed correctly but failed Verify at the Layer change. I took the next disc in the cake stack and burned the same image with my LG WH16NS60 and it was fine, so I laid the blame on the firmware. It COULD have been a simple bad disc in the cake stack, but I highly doubt that. Could also have been a bad CD/DVD laser in the BD unit I got, but, again, I highly doubt that.

Thanks! That really helps! And you even used the cheaper CMC media. However, I still need to test with MKM-003 DVD+R DL. The firmware may be fine with CMC media but may be borked with MKM. Still, it's good news going forward for testing again. I've bookmarked one of these ASUS drives for June. That's the soonest I can free up $99 to test it again. I'll update my original thread with those results IF I get a 3.11 drive. I should update my original review post to reflect the 2019 tests I ran.

I've never tried Test mode, so I can't say how accurate it is. However, I believe LUK has said the Test mode is only an emulation of the actual Write mode, so it may return false negatives.

There are other benefits to switching to AZO/DataLife Plus away from CMC. Even if you get CMC's to work in your drive and they burn, verify, and play okay, they will most likely become unreadable far sooner than the AZO/DataLife Plus ones. So, one of the benefits of the more expensive quality media is that they will generally last longer. I've only ever had 1 MKM DVD+R DL from Verbatim die on me after it successfully burned, verified, and played.

Thanks for all that info! If you're willing to possibly waste a DVD+R DL to test the ASUS 3.11 firmware with, by all means do so! Saves me having to buy it, test it, and possibly return it. If you do test, look for a failure to Verify at the Layer change, so make sure the image you burn is more than 4.7 GB. As for the destruction of DVD+RW and BD-RE, 3.10 apparently fixed those two issues. Those were the first two things I tested in 2019 when I tried updated firmware for that ASUS BD drive. It was when I tested DVD+R DL that I sent the drive back after it failed. In 2016, when the drive was relatively new, the first thing I tested was DVD+RW. I had a chance to write a BD-RE shortly after the DVD+RW failure so I decided to go ahead and try it in the ASUS as another test and it destroyed the BD-RE, too. If you test DVD+R DL and post the results, if you get it work without failure, I'd be inclined to try the drive again and run my battery of tests on it.

3.11?! Intersting. ASUS appears to have updated the firmware, but NOT provide a firmware update package for updating drives with. I have since tried that ASUS after posting that review. When I did test the most recent ASUS I got, the firmware was 3.10. On 3.10, it was borked with DVD+R DL media. It failed to Verify at the Layer change on quality MKM discs. Just for my own piece of mind, would you open ImgBurn with this ASUS attached and copy and paste the Devices Found list from the log upon opening ImgBurn? I want to make sure what it says for the device string and firmware string. If there is a 3.11 firmware for this drive, I may invest in testing it out again. See if they fixed the deal killer with DVD+R DL. Thanks!

I've found use in keeping old spindles. Verbatim changed the style of spindles they ship their DVD+R DL in so they only stack with those kinds of spindles. They don't stack with standard spindles. So, when I get new supplies of DVD+R DL, I have to put them in one of the older spindles so they'll stack properly. A real pain. DataLife Plus will be either MCC or MKM Mitsubishi media. MCC for DVD+/-R and MKM for DVD+R DL.

Those cheaper priced DVD-R are still the high quality MCC Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation discs. Just got them today and checked them out.

If ImgBurn supports those disc image formats, it would be as read only. I've never heard of those extensions before so I couldn't say what program would create those.

The Device Buffer is self explanatory to me, but I am curious as to what the Image Buffer precisely is. Thanks!

Interestingly enough, I just noticed. It's cheaper to buy 2 of the 50 disc spindles than the 100 tape wrapped stack! Not only do you save a few dimes, you get 2 50 disc cake stack holders which aren't included in the tape wrapped offering.

On a side note, if you're after quality Verbatim MCC inkjet DVD-R, Amazon has them for nearly 50% off. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000A0CV9S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1 I was thinking of getting some to have on hand in February as I have a few left right now, but at that price I may go ahead and get them. 1.) they're nearly half off 2.) if I use my Discover credit card before December 31st, I get 5% Cash Back Bonus on Amazon.com purchases.

A bit late with my annual bit of holiday cynicism. However, I've been sick since Monday and may still be so over Christmas. This year, I reached into a classic I've quoted a few times here: Merry Christmas you suckers, you miserable men That old festive season is with you again You'll be spending your money on cartloads of junk and from here to New Year, you'll be drunk as a skunk Merry Christmas you suckers, it's perfectly clear that you fall for it all a bit sooner each year If it goes on like this, you will find pretty soon you're singing "White Christmas" as early as June This Christmas card racket will cost you a packet Each season it seems to expand The cards are so clever, though nothing whatever to do with the subject in hand You'll be taking the kids 'round to multiple stores to be frightened to death by some old Santa Claus Then it's parties with spirits and vino and beer Merry Christmas you suckers, and a happy New Year Merry Christmas you suckers, you bleary eyed lot You'll never get rid of that headache you've got but I hope you feel splendid, you certainly should with your stomachs distended with turkey and pudd Merry Christmas you suckers, jump into your cars Roar off to your neighbors to sink a few jars Though your vision is double, just keep smiling through There are others in trouble a lot worse than you Beyond any question, acute indigestion will plague you and make you unwell You won't take the warning, you'll wake up each morning undoubtedly feeling like hell But stick to it suckers, go swallow a pill for this is the season of peace and good will While we patiently wait for that nuclear blast Merry Christmas you suckers, it may be your last

That's what I've been doing whenever I encounter a file, like a FLAC, that won't load as input into a CUE file: convert it to temporary WAV lossless output and import that WAV. Then, delete the temporary WAV files when done.

I wish my alma mater had offered German courses as I took it all the way to German III in high school and I'm fairly comfortable in that language. But, my college only offered French and Spanish. So, I took French as the "closest" to German.

10th grade Christmas for me was 1989. The big Christmas gift I was waiting for was Robocop for the NES. Well, what I majored in is a long story. I can tell you what my degree is in, but it's not what I majored in. I wanted a degree in computer science with a mathematics minor, but ended up with a mathematics degree and no minor.

30 years ago, I was having my 2nd Christmas season in college.

Yes, CMC Pro discs should be Taiyo Yuden. I don't remember if I used their CD-R or DVD-R, though. I know what I did try a few years ago were quality Taiyo Yuden MID's and they burned and played fine. Which leads me to believe the MID's weren't faked. And one other user on these forums has had the same experience as they pointed out the CMC Pro discs for me to try.

LG is sort of 50/50. They sometimes listen to me. For instance, the running change on MCC DVD-R I mentioned. They fixed that in a firmware update. However, I've told them for years their firmware for Verbatim BD-R only writes at 12x to 16x rated media. Yeah, I think Amazon just had some really good Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals. I intended on getting a Samsung T7 2 TB USB SSD this month. It was listed at $129 but dropped to $99 around Black Friday/Cyber Monday. So, I went ahead and ordered one early. Now, they're back up to $129. So, it looked like this year the Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals were better than their Christmas deals.

I would say it's not a case of fake MID's. It's easy to fake an MID, but not so much to fake the branding labels on top of the discs. If you're going to fake an MID, you're trying to pass off cheap as quality in order to make money. Faking the branding would dip into those profits. It's most likely just a change in manufacturing process. The firmware update reflected that change. And it might have been possible had I had any of the inkjet discs that were manufactured at the same time as the branded, they would have failed, too. Running changes during production are not uncommon. Quality Verbatim MCC DVD-R were rendered useless on the NS60 at one point because of a running change in manufacturing that a firmware update fixed.

LG's are the best of what is available. Everyone else has a fatal flaw. The NS40 used to have that one fatal flaw of not writing to DL BD media. Don't know if it's still present or not. The NS60, while it had faults like only writing at 12x to 16x Verbatim BD-R, had no fatal flaws, just faults. Well, Pioneer's BDR-213 doesn't have any fatal flaws on its current firmware. Just a lot of faults that add up: writing 8x DVD+RW at only 6x, writing 8x DVD+R DL at only 2.4x, etc. And, the 213 DID REINTRODUCE the 8x DVD+RW writing fatal flaw AFTER having removed it and THEN removed it again with the last firmware. Sometimes you get things you can't explain. I had a Pioneer that would write to 8x DVD+R DL that were inkjet printable but NOT to the branded discs. BOTH were Verbatim DataLife Plus and BOTH had the SAME MID of MKM-003. A firmware update eventually fixed it, but I can't explain HOW such a problem existed before or HOW it could have been cured.

I was referring to the cheaper, low priced inkjet DVD+R DL from Verbatim DataLife Plus I recently got off of Amazon.com.