discuser

I also forgot to mention that the Pioneer BDR-S12XLT that you purchased, which is the premium retail model for the European region, has the additional feature of Piioneer's PURE READ version 4+, which is for the purpose of maximum CD red book audio reading accuracy and error correction / interpolation. PURE READ function is avaiilable only on their premium drive models only and not available on the lower models such as BDR-212EBK or BDR-212DBK. So the differences are beyond cosmetic compared to the lower models. You can read more about PURE-READ development / concepts here in these Google translated Japanese pages: https://jpn-pioneer.translate.goog/ja/pcperipherals/dvdrrw/story/index_17.html?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US https://jpn-pioneer.translate.goog/ja/pcperipherals/dvdrrw/story/index_27.php?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US There's also a huge index of Pioneer ODD development articles in this index page and that gives the reader an idea how deeply they are involved in their ODD development in every aspect and component of it as they're they only remaining ODD manufacturer that makes all their own components. Japanese text in images on pages don't get translated. Only actual text based characters will be: https://jpn-pioneer.translate.goog/ja/pcperipherals/dvdrrw/story/?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US You'll also need to download the Pioneer BDR-S12XLT utility for more specific drive control to fully use the drive's capabilities, available here for that model: https://pioneer.jp/device_e/product-e/ibs/device_e/dev00001r_e.html#DriveUtility Might as well also check for available firmware updates while you're on that same page.

They still are presently. Your problem solved.

I think you should look a bit more closely at all the Ritek OEMed optical media. They have several brand names and some are licensed to them for use, like Plextor, which is licensed to Ritek for media branding, while Vinpower appears to have licensed the Plextor name for ODD hardware. The Ritek group markets optical media under nine different brands for different geographical regions and media grades. Just click on these sub-brands of the Ritek group to review the media offerings: https://www.ritek.com/brand https://www.traxdata.com/products-dvdr/ The media MID is probably Ritek anyway so as far as the drive goes it is the same media, more likely than not. You'll just have to buy some to try them out and find out. Also, presently Maxell DVD+RW media is supposedly OEMed by Ritek. I've used those also under the Maxell brand.

Most modern casings use tooless drive bays, but you can always add screws to further secure the mounted drives and you can use nose-tipped pliers to hold screws as you operate a screwdriver. Building your own system allows you to have full flexibility and choice of components.

That's a new one I've never heard of. It's not that hard and it's not like watchmaking, so I think if you tried it, you'll probably discover that you could build a system since everything is standardized and modularized. If you can hold a regular screw between your fingers and operate a screw driver, then you probably can build a system. There are also various tools but generally building systems these days don't require more than perhaps a flat blade or Philips screw driver at most. Many computer casings are tooless and the only time you need to deal with screws are mounting the motherboard and dealing with expansion slot screws. I've been building all my computers since day one so I've never known what it's like to buy a pre-packaged system, which generally uses much cheaper components. Systems I've built for myself and others have easiliy run 1 1/2 decades or longer without major problems. The only time I would end up getting anything pre-packaged is a notebook computer but you can even easily customize / upgrade those these days. It's probably not a good idea to buy a Pioneer 12-series ODD when the 12-series is already on the way out. Best to wait for the 13-series and their various variants. I do plan to pick up a premium 13-series model sooner rather than later. And for reasons I explained earlier, I doubt I will be using any type of DVD media again much, unless it's for a bootable disc for system restore, that sort of thing. But since BDs are bootable with any bootable ISO written on it, anything larger than a single layer DVD will go to a bootable BD for me.

There's still a good number of PC casings with two or more externally accessible drive bays, though they are rarer than before. Most of the lower end casings have them. I usually look for those instead of transparent panels on the side and useless flashy LED illumination in the casing and components.

Yes, the Pioneer BDR-S12XLT BDXL writer is perfectly fine even though it was just discontinued. I just got one for a system I'm building for someone else and am expecting it to work as well as the several 09-series I have. I hope to acquire a new 13-series soon at some point. The newer generation Pioneer BD drives have faster action in BD recognition to get to ready state when such a disc is inserted. They also manufacture all their components in the drive.

And this review of the Pioneer 12-series on CDR-Info Poland, the review of which is in English (they have some English articles sometimes), details the now discontinued Pioneer 12-series BD / BDXL writer model variants in detail, which goes back to the original topic of this thread: https://www.cdrinfo.pl/artykuly/artykulPioneerBDR212S12X12English/ The test report is very extensive but the author also misses a lot of the unique / high end features of the Japanese domestic versions of their premium BDXL drive model variants, presumably because this information would only be noted if they had read the Japanese information for those ultra-premium models, which cost about four times the cost of their regular models, a price that few people buying ODDs these days would be willing to shell out.

You might be interested in this review on CDR-Info Poland, on the current Vinpower-Optiarc AD-5290-Plus: https://www.cdrinfo.pl/artykuly/Testy/ The article is in Polish and unfortunately Google Translate doesn't work in translating the site into English, so you'll have to copy and paste chunks of text into Google Translate to get the gist of it. The PLUS suffix on this drive is the overburn capable version of the current AD-5290 series, of which there are four sub-versions of. In fact, I had just installed this very model for a new system build recently and will soon be able to test it out alone side a Pioneer BDR-S12XLT as this is a dual ODD system. This test report is extensive and also uses Imgburn 2.58 as part of their test tools. Overall, this Philips-Liteon OEMed drive has quite good performance, on par with Sony-Optiarc drives. So I would say Vinpower did a good job of carrying on the Optiarc name. This drive has good performance reading flawed / damaged discs, performed well on CD audio extraction tests, had good access times on the faster side, and overall a pretty good drive. Those that liked the later generation Sony-Optiarc ODDs will find the Vinpower-Optiarc DVD writers to be a worthy successor to carry on the name. What's surprising is that in this 2017 test of an early production sample of the Vinpower-Optiarc AD-5290 DVD writer, the older Pioneer 02/03 series BD writers really didn't perform that well for CD/DVD media tests, though a much later 09-series BD drive did much better. This reaffirms my hunch that it's best to have a dual ODD set up with one Optiarc CD/DVD writer and a Pioneer BDXL writer (or whatever BD writer one might prefer) so that each drive can produce the best writes on their respective media that they are best specialized to write on. I don't doubt the 13-series CD / DVD performance has improved compared to the older generations, but for anything non-BD I would use the Optiarc instead and save the wear from the Pioneer BD/BDXL writers. The Vinpower-Optiarcs continue to use Mediatek chipsets, which works fine with quality analysis utilities like Opti-Drive Control.

Not sure how you can regress a Pioneer firmware as the Pioneer firmware upgrader doesn't allow that. I write to all DVD media in the Sony Optiarc (as mentioned earlier), and only use the Pioneer BDXL writer for BD media only. The Ritek DVD+RW 8X media I recently used was from an old spindle still having left over virgin media and is the same as the Amazon URL you showed above. I no longer use any DVD media. Error rates on DVD media are also mediocre over long term, and either have to be rewritten or recopied to new discs. One of the most important points that most people miss is that CD and DVD media were primarily designed first and foremost as read only media, with writing capability added afterwards, whereas BD media was designed from the outset as recordable / rewritable media. As a result, BD's file system has the important advantage over CD / DVD media in that the BD-RE file system provides for bad sector management / remapping. With CD / DVD media, if you run into bad spots on the media, there's no recourse for logical sector replacement / remapping. You just get corrupted data. For this reason, in additional to low capacity, I no longer use DVD media, rarely so, unless it was a special situation where the DVD was made to be bootable, which is why I wrote that DVD+RW in the first place, as an emergency boot disk for HDD back up image restoration for a back up program. I would only use CD media if it was for red book audio, such as CD-RW for a car player. Other than that, there are extremely few reasons for me to use CD or DVD these days. I've fully migrated to BD-RE-TL for archival (outgrew the 50 GB capacity a number of years ago) and am very glad to leave CD / DVD media behind.

Nope, it's not related to M-Disc. I did a bit of digging and BD ODD models with B-prefixed models are retail, presumably retail packaged and includes ODD software. W-prefixed models are bulk / OEM. I suppose this is similar to what Pioneer does with their ODD models also, with the branded and unbranded OEM type models where the latter are cheaper but more or less the same drive internally. The Hitachi-LG BD/DVD drives that have C and U-prefixed models are BD-read only with DVD write capability. These particulars are applicable to internal ODD drives from Hitachi-LG or LG alone.

Funny you should mention Ritek DVD+RW 8X media made in Taiwan, because I had just finished writing to such a disc just fine a couple of days ago, though I believe I did it on the Sony Optiarc DVD writer. I only use my Pioneer BDXL drive for BD media to keep the wear down. I try to avoid DVD media these days as the capacity is too small for my own use and I think that's why I continue to build systems that have dual ODDs, one of which will be an Optiarc DVD writer. I've not had a single failure though with any Pioneer DVD or BD writer over the last two decades and my 09-series BDXL writers have worked normally, as have a past 06-series BD writer. Perhaps your two failures in a row have been incredibly bad luck. As for BD media, I personally would buy discs actually made in Japan only, and avoid other discs. There are numerous ways to ensure the media is Japan made. For sure, for any BD triple layer media, it is for sure made in Japan presumably due to the manufacturing difficulties of triple layer media.

The current Optiarc DVD ODDs under Vinpower aren't the exact same drives as those made by Sony, so how good / compatible they are remains to be seen. But since Vinpower had technically consulted with Sony for continued development, I'm hoping they are decent. I actually once used one of the later Pioneer sunset models that I believe are similar or the same as the current Vinpower version of the Piodata DVD writers, and they had some problems with CD playback. I'll have to test out the Optiarc drives to see if they have any of these problems as I had just set up a system with one of the Vinpower-Optiarc 5200 series DVD writers, since all of the DVD ODD brands including Plextor, Piodata and Optiarc under Vinpower are all OEMed by Philips-Liteon and all have that distinctive and identifiable drive covered shape that you can tell is a Philips-Liteon OEM product. I think a new system build with an Optiarc DVD writer plus one BDXL writer is still a good dual ODD combo. It also saves the BD/BDXL drive from unnecessary wear from DVD / CD playback, etc. I'm not sure why Vinpower picked up the Optiarc line and restarted production with the AD-5000 series instead of the AD-7000 series, which is where Sony-Optiarc left off when they quit the market. https://www.optiarcinc.com/ What problems with Pioneer BD writer firmware are you referring to? I assume you're aware there's a media compatibility list for each of the BD drives they release (even with the Pioneer BDR-212V customized by Vinpower).

I hadn't noticed this drive before. But it is a Hitachi-LG drive so not sure what chipset the drive is using, but I suppose I could ask them. However, that it can support disc quality scanning will depend on whether it's with the Vinpower scanning utility or Opti-Drive Control utility. The odd part about the Pioneer BD drives is that while they use the Renasas chipset, it is possible to run Opti-Drive control on it for error rates check, but only on DVD media only, and not BD media. I do have a recent model Hitachi-LG ODD that supports BDXL and it doesn't work with Opti-Drive control. I'll have to dig into this a bit further about this drive. Of course, there's always the Pioneer professional BD writers that supports error scanning, but they aren't BDXL drives. Speaking of Hitachi-LG drives, I wonder what the difference is between their BH-series and WH-series BDXL writers? The model number suffix appears to depend on if the drive is branded primarily Hitachi-LG or just LG, respectively. Also, it does seem like LG is using the Mediatek chipset, so that gives some hope of using it with Opti-Drive control for BDXL quality scanning. I would say though, when it comes to firmware updates, Pioneer's updates are somewhat more organized / consistent over the life of a given ODD model as well as providing information on the improvements of the firmware update, compared to Hitachi-LG / LG, both of which provides barely any technical information about their drives in the first place, much less firmware update details / improvements.

The Pioneer BDR-S12XLT is the premium branded retail version with glossy piano black front bezel and uses additional Pioneer premium features like honeycomb embossed anti-vibration drive casing, anti-dust design and sealing, etc. The BDR-212EBK is the branded regular OEM grade model. Both were concurrently available models within the Pioneer "12" series ODD product line, which have now been discontinued. The 13-series models will soon be launched by 2021 mid-December in Japan. Most 12-series inventory are now mostly depleted. If you can, wait for the 13-series models. Based on past models, you can probably expect a BDR-S13XLT, a BDR-213EBK (the E-suffix appears to denote European market model), BK-suffix denotes black coloured bezel, because Pioneer used to offer several bezel colours, including black, white and a 3rd colour which I don't remember at the moment. There will likely also be a BDR-213DBK OEM unbranded model, which is a BD (non-BDXL) only model, where the D-suffix denote deletion of the DVD-RAM writing function. For North American, there should be a BDR-2213 branded retail bundle with BD software. Pioneer so far has announced two domestic Japan models for the 13-series, an ultra premium model and a regular branded model. I personally use multiple Pioneer 09-series BDXL writers and their performance and consistency have been superb and predictable so far. I also recently installed a Pioneer BDR-S12XLT and will soon find out if this drive will perform as expected. An alternative could be the Pioneer BDR-212V BD writer (non-BDXL) whose V-suffix denote the DVD firmware portion optimization by Vinpower for improved DVD media writing and overburn. This drive is fairly reasonably priced. Vinpower is a California based American company who manufactures and distributes ODD duplication towers, as well as continuing Sony-NEC's Optiarc DVD ODD brand (with technical consultation with Sony), Plextor brand and Piodata (having taken over Pioneer's previous DVD line), all of these DVD drives which are now OEMed by Philiips-Lite-On in Taiwan.