Are Philips and Lite-On basically the same company?

[dbminter]

My current Lite-On drive is listed with PLDS in its ID string in ImgBurn.  I found that PLDS stands for Philips & Lite-On Digital Solutions.  So, does that mean that Philips and Lite-On are basically the same company?  Sort of like how Sony and Optiarc were basically the same thing after Sony bought them up.

 

 

I ask because when I choose my next Blu-Ray burner, I have a choice of Philips or Asus over LG.  I had a Lite-On Blu-Ray burner and it swore me off of Lite-On after my last DVD burner from them was bad, too.    So, I definitely don't want a Philips if they are essentially Lite-On rebranded, or vice versa.

 

 

Thanks!

[LIGHTNING UK!]

They might have joined forces on certain things (optical related) but they aren't the same company.

 

I'd personally choose between LG and Pioneer.

[dbminter]

Oh, yeah, there was also Pioneer to choose from.  I forgot about that.

 

 

I currently have an LG but there are limitations to it that make me wary of getting another one.  The DVD-RW's it writes are apparently written in some proprietary way.  DVD-RW's it writes cannot be formatted or used in my Panasonic DVD recorder until they are fully formatted by one of my Lite-On's.  And it's just iffy on rewritables to begin with.  My experience with DVD+RW has been that, randomly, writes and verifies will finish, but when you try to read the contents, the discs are unreadable and can't be reused/formatted again.  So, there's apparently some sort of proprietary write strategies to rewritables on this LG that make it unusable.