Seriously, the sell the worst burners. My stupid SOSW-852S broke just out of warrenty because of the same exact problems that everyone else is having with their stupid drives: faulty lasers.

I guess I'm out 50-100 bucks. Maybe now that it doesn't matter, I'll take it apart and see if it is something I can fix myself. Although, I really doubt it.

Why can't they just accept responsibilty for their shoddy merchandise?

Yup, those 852S drives are a real POS.

liteon is garbage my 1635 is a coaster factory

Yeah, maybe I can file a report with the BBB or something. Not like that'd do anything.

Then RMA the drive here's some scans from my 1635. http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=157741

I too must agree. I have a 14 month old 851s that will no longer read DVD's. At the time I was in a hurry to complete a job so it was purchased at locally at Best Buy for $139 on sale. What a RIP. I will make sure the next drive is not their's or branded.

In defense of Liteon I will say that all manufacturers have a few units that are not up to standards, just return the drive, or buy whatever you like to replace it. Its a crapshoot
nomatter what you buy. Look at some of the Benq owners that have returned 4 or more drives to get one that they were happy with. If you check this forum before you buy at the least you can make an informed purchase. I have been buying Liteons for about 5 years now and only returned 3, 2 1635's that would not burn as well as i had hoped and a 1633 that worked for 20 months and was returned on extended warranty
with more burns on than any other burner I have owned.
Budzos

Unfortunately, Lite-ON has lost some of its well-built respect and trust as a good company by its CD-burners, which were certainly awesome. But their first DVD-burners were not - sadly, you can find it out yourself. The 832S and 1213S are considered the worst DVD-burners made by Lite-ON.
But I definetely can't agree on the "crapness" of the 1635S, which is a very good burner, along with the 1693 and 16H5S, if you want LightScribe. I'm also looking forward to their brand-new 165P6S.

And hey, I've got a 2 year old LTR-52327S, which works flawlessly! I think that proves something.

I did not mean to say the 1635s were pieces of crap, simply stated the ones I bought
struggled to keep the pifs under 2000 with a maximum of less than 4. They were not up to my standards. The 1693s I exchanged for averages about 175 pifs a burn or less and the maximum is 2 or less. Big difference. Maybe I will try another 1635s but I will wait a while and buy from a different place to make sure I don't get stuck with a lemon.
Budzos

Strange... my Lite on 812S,which is just a 832S without DL support in the firmware, but identicle otherwise, was one of the best drives I ever had. It never gave me a coaster, and allthough I now use the NEC 3500 instead of it, it still works fine. It worked very well with TY02 DVD+R media, keeping PI below 8 and PIF below 4 every time, also did a good job with cheap media. I will admit however that when I upflashed it to an 832S it really sucked at burning DL, barely making a playable copy.

I can't comment on the 12xx or 16xx drives however, as I switched to BenQ/NEC due to better DL support.

My 832S still works just fine so long as you feed it decent media. Copes with the latest cd versions of safedisc too.

@danio_89
the 832S is a very good drive. with 8x speed on quality +r media it performs very well, better than some newer drives at the same speed. DL writing isn't good of course, but it was the first gen to support it.

Although I was a bit disappointened in the consistancy of the earlier LiteOn DVD Burners 401 etc. Mine was a POS, my brothers worked great with very good scans. I now have a 832s which has works very well and I still have a 52327s that I use for burning cd's

Yep, from what i read i'd only buy a 1693 for burning. I can say my Benq is as unreliable as the 3 LiteOn i've had - actually more. I've had a few perfect scans (99 QS and sub 50 PIF) from Benq burns that were the first TYG02 discs ever that didn't play on 2 of 3 standalones. My 1653 is better even if scans are bad. Both my 411 and 811 were worse..... much worse but predictable bad
Pioneer let me down on 1/2 - NEC and LG never let me down...

Actually it also burns quality -R media (TY, MCC, japanese manufactured Maxell) very well too. It just performs poorly with low grade -R media.

So far as dual layer is concerned, I never burnt a coaster with Vebatim dual layer media so I have no complaints on that score either.

Hate is just a 4-letter word. Hey.