BDR-S12XLT vs BDR-212EBK - what's the difference?

[kamild_]

I'm looking for a new BD-R writer (just for regular backups on multi-layer Blu-Rays and occasionally M-Discs) and as far as specs go, I found two devices that seem to satisfy my requirements - Pioneer BDR-S12XLT and Pioneer BDR-212EBK.

But, looking at their specs on the Pioneer's website:

• https://pioneer-blurayodd.eu/products/bdr-s12xlt/index.php
• https://pioneer-blurayodd.eu/products/bdr-212ebk/index.php

...they seem to have exact same specs, except for a different front face design. The former also mentions "PureRead4+" and "RealTime PureRead", which I'm not sure what these are about.

Is there any other difference about these? 

[dbminter]

The only real "difference," most likely, is the S12XLT is the model that superceded the 212EBK.  Meaning, it's replaced the other model, but the 212EBK stock is still available.  Pioneer is known to do this: replace older models with newer ones that do the same thing while still offering stock of the older model.

 

However, I would recommend you forego any Pioneer BD burners.  Pioneer used to make the best BD burners out there.  Had one that lasted for 2 and a half years before it needed replacing, unparalleled in a world where, normally, optical drives need replacing every 7 months, on average.  Over the years, though, their quality has really turned into .  I recently tried a 212 that Pioneer had to ultimately refund my money on.  It died before 2 months!    Plus, for years, the Pioneer BD firmware does not properly write to Ritek 8x DVD+RW and Pioneer refuses to do anything about it! 

 

There are basically 3 manufacturers to choose from for BD burners: Pioneer, LG, and ASUS.  The one with the FEWEST issues is LG, IF you get the RIGHT LG BD burner.  The WH16NS60 is my recommendation.  It has no deal killers, just a few execution choices that make it a slower read and writer, in some cases, than the Pioneer.  However, slower reads and writes are better than catastrophic failures, which are in the Pioneer and ASUS models.  You may be tempted to get LG's WH16NS40 since it's cheaper.  If you don't plan on writing BD DL media, which the NS40 says it supports but does not properly write to, you can get that.  The NS60 supports the M-Disc you're looking for, and I think the NS40 did, too.

[kamild_]

15 minutes ago, dbminter said:

However, I would recommend you forego any Pioneer BD burners. 

That's funny, the reason I was looking into Pioneer drives was because of your advice from 4 years ago... Did it really get this bad in the meantime?

Right now I have the BH16NS40 and it's been causing me trouble for a long time, I'm guessing WH16NS40 is a different one? If it does not properly write to BD DL media, then that's a major disadvantage in my case. I've looked up the WH16NS60, but I cannot find it for purchase anywhere in my country.

Edited September 24, 2021 by kamild_

[dbminter]

Yes, things really did go downhill that fast for Pioneer.  The DVD+RW thing has been there probably longer than that, which was what initially drove me away from Pioneer.  One firmware update fixed the problem, but all future firmware updates regressed the issue back in.  About a year or so ago, I tried Pioneer again, since they had a new hardware model.  Thought I'd hope against hope that they'd fixed their issues.  Turns out, it was actually worse.

 

I think the only real difference between the LG BH and WH models is a case similar to the Pioneers you linked.  The WH16 simply replaced the BH models.  Both support M-Disc, BD XL, and both appear to have the same maximum write speeds.  The difference between the WH16NS40 and NS60 is the NS60 supports UHD.  That's why the NS40 is cheaper, but I recommend the NS60 over the NS40 because the NS40 fails 9 times out of 10 to write BD-R/RE DL media.

 

What country are you trying to find NS60's in?

[kamild_]

To be honest, I don't think I'll be ever recording any DVD+RWs, just Blu-Rays and maybe M-Discs at this point.

3 minutes ago, dbminter said:

What country are you trying to find NS60's in?

Poland

[dbminter]

Beyond the DVD+RW issue on the Pioneer 212 I last had, like I said, it died before 2 months had passed.  It stopped writing BD-R.

 

In the US, the NS60 could be found on Amazon.com and NewEgg.  That's where I've gotten mine before.

[kamild_]

I can see the NS60 on Amazon, but the price for it is insane (965 PLN, which stands for about $245) and unfortunately, NewEgg does not offer their services here.

I've had another look at what my local shops offer, but outside of old LGs like mine, the BH16NS55 and a whole lot of ASUS and Pioneer drives, I don't see much more of a choice  

[dbminter]

Well, the ASUS BD burners may be an option if you never intend to burn DVD+R DL.  I never got beyond testing the last ASUS BD burner I got for testing a few months ago after it failed to properly write to DVD+R DL.  BD-R was fine, but I only ever got around to testing DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD+R DL, and BD-R.  And the DVD+RW, while the ASUS drive had moved beyond the catastrophic failure of DESTROYING DVD+RW it used to do, I hadn't thoroughly tested the DVD+RW burn results.  Initial indications were it didn't write correctly as they had playback problems on the PS3.  But, I never got around to thoroughly vetting them yet when the catastrophic failure on DVD+R DL was a deal killer.  I told ASUS, but, of course, they don't listen.

[discuser]

On 9/24/2021 at 1:19 AM, kamild_ said:

I'm looking for a new BD-R writer (just for regular backups on multi-layer Blu-Rays and occasionally M-Discs) and as far as specs go, I found two devices that seem to satisfy my requirements - Pioneer BDR-S12XLT and Pioneer BDR-212EBK.

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.

 

Edited November 29, 2021 by discuser

[dbminter]

Ah, I was not aware the Optiarc was still in manufacture.  I used to love those.  They were my drives of choice until they disappeared, as far as I could tell.  I use BD burners now, so I wouldn't get an Optiarc, but it's nice to hear they still make those.

 

Thanks for pointing out about the Pioneer 213 line coming out.  I was about to try a 212 again to see if Pioneer had fixed the glaring issues with the drives/firmware that turned me off of their models.  But, if a new one is coming out possibly next month, I'll wait to see if a 213 is available.

[discuser]

17 hours ago, dbminter said:

Ah, I was not aware the Optiarc was still in manufacture.  I used to love those.  They were my drives of choice until they disappeared, as far as I could tell.  I use BD burners now, so I wouldn't get an Optiarc, but it's nice to hear they still make those. Thanks for pointing out about the Pioneer 213 line coming out.  I was about to try a 212 again to see if Pioneer had fixed the glaring issues with the drives/firmware that turned me off of their models.  But, if a new one is coming out possibly next month, I'll wait to see if a 213 is available.

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).

Edited November 30, 2021 by discuser

[dbminter]

For the past 5 or so years, Pioneer BD drives have had 2 fatal flaws.  The first is they will always fail to write to Ricoh/Ritek 8x DVD+RW media, when they used to write fine up until like 1.03 firmware on some model from years ago.  Ever since, they will always fail Verify, even when using unformatted discs.  If you regressed the drive back to 1.02 firmware, writing was fine.  Every firmware since has had this flaw.  I keep telling Pioneer about it, every time I try one of their later models to see if they fixed it, but they refuse to.  The MID is listed in the master media list, so there shouldn't be these compatibility issues, and there weren't until after like 1.03 of the firmware for that model.

 

Also for the past few years, BD-RE from Ritek/Memorex refuse to Verify at anything beyond 2.1x for the vast majority of Verify time.  So, it takes about twice as long to Verify a full BD-RE as it should.  This is the 2nd fatal flaw in the firmware.

 

Plus, the last Pioneer model I tried had no staying power whatsoever.  Pioneer replaced it after before 2 months, when it died, and the replacement died after 2 months, too, necessitating a refund.

 

All of these things turned me off from Pioneer, which I used to love.  Pioneer made the first ODD I ever had that lasted beyond 2 years.  I got 2.5 years out of that BD drive.

[discuser]

10 hours ago, dbminter said:

For the past 5 or so years, Pioneer BD drives have had 2 fatal flaws.  The first is they will always fail to write to Ricoh/Ritek 8x DVD+RW media, when they used to write fine up until like 1.03 firmware on some model from years ago.  Ever since, they will always fail Verify, even when using unformatted discs.  If you regressed the drive back to 1.02 firmware, writing was fine.  Every firmware since has had this flaw.  I keep telling Pioneer about it, every time I try one of their later models to see if they fixed it, but they refuse to.  The MID is listed in the master media list, so there shouldn't be these compatibility issues, and there weren't until after like 1.03 of the firmware for that model. Also for the past few years, BD-RE from Ritek/Memorex refuse to Verify at anything beyond 2.1x for the vast majority of Verify time.  So, it takes about twice as long to Verify a full BD-RE as it should.  This is the 2nd fatal flaw in the firmware. Plus, the last Pioneer model I tried had no staying power whatsoever.  Pioneer replaced it after before 2 months, when it died, and the replacement died after 2 months, too, necessitating a refund. All of these things turned me off from Pioneer, which I used to love.  Pioneer made the first ODD I ever had that lasted beyond 2 years.  I got 2.5 years out of that BD drive.

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.

[dbminter]

No, not incredibly bad luck.  Repeated tests bear out it's the firmware.  I try unformatted discs: failure.  I then regress the firmware back: success.  I then try fully formatting a disc that had failed after regressing the firmware back: success.  Repeated unformatted disc tests for years bear out the same results.  Your success MAY have been on a Pioneer, BUT it was definitely written on a different drive.  Initially, some Pioneer firmware would work IF the disc was first fully formatted on a different drive.  Any formatting the Pioneer firmware would do failed.  However, even that workaround eventually stopped working.  Discs formatted in other drives, like the LG WH16NS60, would also fail on future Pioneer firmware.

[dbminter]

BTW, I'm curious about your Ritek 8x DVD+RW.  What is the MID on these you wrote in a Pioneer drive and which Pioneer drive was it, if it was, in fact, a Pioneer that you wrote them in?  As far as I know, Ritek is the only manufacturer still making 8x DVD+RW.  And they can only be purchased in Imation branded discs.  If you can find other Ritek 8x DVD+RW, let me know where you got them.  I've got a few left over Ricoh/Ritek branded 8x DVD+RW that I bought 4 years ago when Amazon.com had only 3 of these left:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000B8FRF4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I bought them out of stock.  The only Ritek 8x DVD+RW I can find now are these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E3G32O8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

They don't have to be Ritek.  If you can find ANY 8x DVD+RW, let me know where you got them.

[discuser]

10 hours ago, dbminter said:

No, not incredibly bad luck.  Repeated tests bear out it's the firmware.  I try unformatted discs: failure.  I then regress the firmware back: success.  I then try fully formatting a disc that had failed after regressing the firmware back: success.  Repeated unformatted disc tests for years bear out the same results.  Your success MAY have been on a Pioneer, BUT it was definitely written on a different drive.  Initially, some Pioneer firmware would work IF the disc was first fully formatted on a different drive.  Any formatting the Pioneer firmware would do failed.  However, even that workaround eventually stopped working.  Discs formatted in other drives, like the LG WH16NS60, would also fail on future Pioneer firmware.

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.

Edited December 1, 2021 by discuser

[discuser]

On 11/29/2021 at 7:22 AM, dbminter said:

Ah, I was not aware the Optiarc was still in manufacture.  I used to love those.  They were my drives of choice until they disappeared, as far as I could tell.  I use BD burners now, so I wouldn't get an Optiarc, but it's nice to hear they still make those.

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.

Edited December 1, 2021 by discuser

[discuser]

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.

Edited December 1, 2021 by discuser

[dbminter]

2 hours ago, discuser said:

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.

Regressing the firmware on Pioneer BD drives was never officially supported by the company.  As you said, the updaters themselves strictly state you "can't" go back, even though, of course, you can... just with a little outside help.  Years ago, LUK directed me to an unsupported utility that lets you regress the firmware back.  You just extract the firmware package from the updater and feed it into the utility.

 

I only use CD and DVD for playing Audio CD and DVD Video.  Everything else goes to BD-R for storage, even if it fits on a smaller media.  With the price of BD-R being what it is, it's affordable enough to "waste" the space to get the longer life storage of BD-R.  The only reason I'm using DVD+RW at all is for temporary DVD Video discs to test before I make the final DVD-R of things like my VHS tape library I've been converting to DVD over the last 2 years.

[dbminter]

1 hour ago, discuser said:

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.

If I had a PC tower that supported half height bays and had 2 of them, I would keep 2 BD drives.  The WH16NS60 for reading and writing DVD, CD, and BR-RE and a Pioneer for BD-R.  Unlike the NS60, on Pioneer models, you actually can get 16x write speeds on 16x BD-R.  However, my tower only has 1 slim bay in it, so my NS60 is housed in a VanTech USB 3.0 enclosure.

 

I used to rock dual ODD's in my towers back when they made PC's with half height bays and had an extra one in them.  I had a Pioneer BD and a LiteOn for DVD and CD.

[kamild_]

On 11/29/2021 at 10:05 AM, discuser said:

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.

 

Thanks for the advice, but shortly after creating this thread I found a nice deal on a new S12XLT for about 60 EUR, so I chose that one. Compared to my previous BH16NS40 - no issues so far, it's quieter, faster (the old drive often liked to stall the "closing disc" process for up to an hour) and hasn't failed to verify a single burn yet. Hopefully it remains that way for long.

[discuser]

6 hours ago, kamild_ said:

Thanks for the advice, but shortly after creating this thread I found a nice deal on a new S12XLT for about 60 EUR, so I chose that one. Compared to my previous BH16NS40 - no issues so far, it's quieter, faster (the old drive often liked to stall the "closing disc" process for up to an hour) and hasn't failed to verify a single burn yet. Hopefully it remains that way for long.

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.

Edited December 1, 2021 by discuser

[discuser]

6 hours ago, dbminter said:

If I had a PC tower that supported half height bays and had 2 of them, I would keep 2 BD drives.  The WH16NS60 for reading and writing DVD, CD, and BR-RE and a Pioneer for BD-R.  Unlike the NS60, on Pioneer models, you actually can get 16x write speeds on 16x BD-R.  However, my tower only has 1 slim bay in it, so my NS60 is housed in a VanTech USB 3.0 enclosure. I used to rock dual ODD's in my towers back when they made PC's with half height bays and had an extra one in them.  I had a Pioneer BD and a LiteOn for DVD and CD.

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.

[dbminter]

I can't really build my own rig because of the size of my hands.  I'm 6 foot 6 and a half and my hands are pretty large.  It's difficult to work inside of a tower for me.  So, I've never built my own machines.  I just get Dell's, which I'm (Generally.) happy with.  Dell's used to have 2 half height bays in them until like 4 years ago, when I got my first Dell that had a slim BD in it.

[dbminter]

17 minutes ago, discuser said:

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.

I had an Amazon.com page bookmarked for a 212 burner soon.  Today, it was listed as In Stock Soon.  Order Now.  However, I highly doubt they will get any more stock, considering if Pionner did discontinue the 212 line in favor of a 213.  The good news is by the time I can get the money together for the 212, the 213 may be available for me to test with.  I'm curious if the Pioneer works well with the Imation 8x DVD+RW.  They have a different MID to the Ricoh/Ritek 8x DVD+RW that I still have that were discontinued.  It was those discontinued ones which the Pioneer firmware has had such difficulty with, but maybe the MID of the Imation ones work better.