Looks like you'know more than I do about some NEC lines.

The other thing to remember with testing (and this is valid for PIE/PIF testing as well), is that there are many different reasons why a drive can have problems reading a disc. Tracking, reflectivity, localised defects, unburnt spots, jitter... and unfortunately (unfortunately for testing, but fortunately when recovering data!), not all drives are sensitive to the same problems!

For example, I noticed (and I'm not the only one BTW) that while BENQ/Nexperia drives are very sensitive to high jitter, they're rather impervious to poor tilt (flatness). On the other hand, my NEC 3540 units are totally impervious to very high jitter and low burning quality, but have huge problems with cheaper discs with poor manufacturing quality. The list goes on...

Nothing is ever simple. I've searched a lot for a perfect and simple testing method, and found none until now. Combining low-speed PIE/PIF scanning, high-speed PIE/PIF scanning and TRT, all this in 3-4 drives, is not that bad, I'm happy with it, but sometimes I dream of seomthing simpler than that!

The neat thing with TRT is that as it's a real-world test, you know that if it's successful in any drive, you can count on this drive to retrieve the data later if the disc show poor compatibility in other readers. With PIE/PIF scanning, unless the scanning drive reports POF accurately (something that doesn't seem to be the general rule ), there's always room for doubt.