I've been having some issues. My first few burns turned out pretty good, but the last few have been pretty bad usually some pifs at the beginning, and a bunch at the end. I've tried Verbatim -R 16x which seem to be the best so far, but they seem to burn pretty bad at the end. I tried some Memorex lightscribe, they seem to be pretty bad all the way through, though better at the end. Can anyone with this drive give me a recommendation for media (lighscribe if possible) and best burn speed. Also, best place to buy said media.
Thanks,
Mike

FYI The burns were all done on a comp that I'm not using for anything else, burned at either 4x or 8x (usally 4x)

Why don't you scan with the Lite-On in CDSpeed at 8X? Scanning with an HP in DVDInfoPro at MAX speed doesn't give you much of a reference point to compare with most of what you'll see here.

The HP is just a rebaged Lite-On. I have been swapping firmware back and forth to see if I can tell a difference. It seems the HP firmware is giving a little better results.

Then I'd flash back to Lite-On, get the latest SmartBurn (test version!) and turn on Online HyperTuning. The Memorex' really look like they need it.

I'll give it a try, also found some Verbatim +R lightscribe for a decent price, so I'll see how they do.