I bought a BenQ DW1650 a little under a year ago and was thrilled
with the quality of burns I had been getting, especially with Sony
rebranded 8x TY DVD+R's - almost always sub-100 PIFs. After those
discs ran out, I switched to unbranded TY (premium) 8x +R's and -R's.
Those results were less impressive, but acceptable. Then I started
buying various flavors of Verbatims (8x-16x, -R and +R, whatever
100-disc spindle of Verbatims that buy.com or newegg.com had on
sale. These worked fairly well, with the 8x discs scanning better than
16x. Now I just bought my first spindle of Verbatim 16x DVD+R (95098)
and am getting crappy burns (PIFs anywhere from a best of around
1200 to worst of 8000). These are Prodisc Verbs, the best as I can tell.
I also have a stash of TY02's that are getting so-so results. Not terrible,
but just not as fantastic as they used to be. An update to BCIC didn't
seem to help any. I must have put 600 discs through the thing, so I
can't rule out age/wear and tear. I've certainly gotten my $40 out of it.

I finally realized that it it probably time to let the 1650 go. Instead of
spending $$$ trying to find media that it likes, in a world of $35 writers
it would be simpler and cheaper to just buy a new one.

That leaves me with the question - what do I buy? It's been almost a
year since I shopped for a writer, and I'm sure much has changed. Is
there a "hot" writer at the moment? Preferably something that will digest
easily-found media (Verbatims, TY's).

Please excuse me while I take the 1650 out back and shoot it.

I bought a pioneer 112 a few weeks ago and can't recommend it as a replacement (Was noisy and picky about media)

luckily I bought 3 Sony /BenQ 1650's so I should be good for a while.
Maybe you should try an LG or theirs always plextors

If your 1650 (I assume that it's still working correctly) doesn't do great with the media you have, I have doubts any other drive will be much better. I had a similar thought last year when I thought my 1620 needed replacing. That experience only showed that both the replacement drives were not much of an improvement, newer=not necessarily better (and if it is better, by only a small margin )

The Pioneer 112D looks to be a solid drive for writing quality.

My suspicion is it may be the media more than the drive. In December I got a Mintek portable DVD player which wouldn't play Verbatim -R 8x, Verbatim +R 16x or Ritek +R 8x regardless of whether burned on NEC 3520, Pioneer 111L or LiteOn SHM-165P6S burners. After reading some good results in reviews and in forum posts for Sony 16x +R, I decided to try them, and these play perfectly in the finicky Mintek player. You might have same issues with another burner if media is the cause as I suspect.

I get the best burns with my 1650 and Verbatim, with firmware BCFC. (notably better than BCIC)

Best is Pioneer 111, then 112, then LG. Avoid NEC as they now have a lot of problems. Samsung looks interesting but some still see lead-in trouble. Liteon is still Liteon.

Typical - I'm going through some older blanks and realize I still have
some Verbatim 8x DVD+R's left. Burn and scan one, and I get a nice
clean burn. Not old TY nice, but with total PIF of 257, PIE around 16K,
low jitter, Nero quality score of 97. Nice. So I figure I'll just order a
spindle of these Verbatim 94968's only to find that it looks like they
are being phased out. Wonderful.

In my infinite wisdom I flashed from BCFC, which seemed to play well
with my other Verbs/TY's. And now I can't find BCFC anywhere online.
Damn.

BCFC firmware was announced here including a still working download link.

I resurrected my nec 3550 three times with an air compressor, powering down with tray open and finaly disassembling and cleaning with q tip

I have babied my benq 1650 and will clean it till it just dies

Down to 4 working burners and not sure I would like a new one as much as I have liked them

Do you guys really think BCFC is alot better than BCIC? If so I will use the older firmware. What did you notise was better about the older F/W?

For me, much better scans with MCC 03RG20.
With MCCOO4, I get nicer burns at 16X, as compared to BCIC.
But others may have different results. You really need to experiment with it and see what works best for you.

I use MCC 03RG20 also, but ALOT of TYG02 media. I use my 1650 mostly just for reading and scanning, since it's harder to find good scanners. My Samsung SH-S182M doesn't scan nearly as well as my 1650.

Bless you, kind moderator! May all of your PIF's be low and your discs forever burn true.

You're welcome! Thanks for your kind wish.
My PIFs haven't always been low nor my burns always true, but perhaps now they will be!

I know this might seem kind of silly or maybe self-evident, but do you clean your drive regularly with a can of air and a laser lens cleaner?

Once every couple of weeks, I first blow all the dust off the protruding drive tray with a can of compressed air. It's amazing how much dust accumulates on that, especially in the area where the media sits and spins.

After doing that, I then use an Allsop 8-brush cleaner to remove any dust that has accumulated on the laser lens, as well as any I may have inadvertently blown onto the lens while cleaning the tray (that's why cleaning the tray first and then the lens is important).

Does everybody do this, or is it just me?

I haven't cleaned the lens, but I am obsessed with cleanliness when it comes to
the media I put in any optical drive. I always carefully blow off every disc, then give
the tray a little shot of air, being sure not to blow dust into the drive. I'm sure dust
still finds its way in, but I really hate to start poking/blowing around inside unless
absolutely necessary.

There might be hope yet for this old boy. I just received two spindles of TYG02 this
afternoon. I was a bit worried that they might not be real premium TY's as promised
(they come in a 100 disc cakebox instead of 50, the tape sealing the box is new (to
me at least), the discs don't sit flat in the cakebox for some reason, and the box is
made from ABS when my old TY boxes were PS). I took the first disc out, blew some
dust (!!!) off of it, and ran it through Qsuite. Attached is the result. I was not pleased.
I burned it anyway and then scanned it with CDSpeed. Eureka! I still wonder why
Qsuite thought this was a bad disc???




Taiyo Yuden Premium 8x DVD-R (silver thermal), 100-disc cakebox
WK622A305510GG
Benq DW-1650, fw: BCIC, burned at 8x
SB off/on
OS off
WPOC on

Second disc, same settings. So far, so good.

Looks like you found a good replacement.

new drive or old drive with a dust off?

He didn't have much of a choice with that user name. It better last forever because I don't think they are readily available anymore.

Neither, DaChew. Just a new batch of TYG02's. Here are a few recent
scans of Verb 16x +R's in the same drive. What really bothers me about
this particular spindle of Verbs is the varying quality from disc to disc.
This drive never burned any Verbs quite as nicely as TY's, but they did
always at least burn very consistently, disc to disc. Hopefully it is just
a bad batch, and not a sign what to expect from Verbatim in the future.

The first one is burned at 12x with BCFC. The rest are 8x with BCIC. All
from the same spindle, using same version of Nero, everything is the same
except for the results.

The TY's burn beautifully, but now there is the talk about TY bonding issues
and longevity. Sigh. So I'm right where I was when I started with my $2500
1x Ricoh CD-R ..... I still don't trust the available media and wind up burning
important things onto at least two different brands, while keeping another
copy on HD or DVD-RAM for REALLY important stuff. With REALLY, REALLY
important stuff also copied to flash memory. I wonder if I will ever see a truly
dependable (and affordable) long-term storage medium in my lifetime?

BTW, if anyone is looking for a good deal on some TYG02's,
I bought these from Neato.com. Factoring in their ever
present 20% off coupon code (currently GTFS), and even
having to pay for shipping, the price for 200 discs was still
only $59 - a hair cheaper than Meritline/Supermediastore/Rima.
Nice sturdy packaging, just like last time.

I don't know why Neato.com isn't mentioned more often
on these forums, but I love them, especially living on the
east coast (no more waiting 10 days to get a beaten up
spindle of discs shipped from CA). Ordered late Wednesday
afternoon and burned my first disc on Friday. Love it.


http://www.neato.com/CD-DVD-Media/ta...k/default.aspx

Never blow compressed air directly into the laser assembly. It can disalign the laser head and your scans will show that unfortunate result.

The laser is head together by flexible wires and if you stretch those, it remains stretched