The Benq 16X DL 1620 was on sale for $90 Canadian here in Toronto, so I went for it. Flashed it with the latest firmware, and it worked like a dream, so well in fact that I decided to get a second one for my son's computer. Oops. THIS one gave me problems. The two platforms are identical, and I've been making DVD backups for a couple of years, so I know all the tricks. Why would one work, and one not? This second drive could not burn a -R blank that any of my four players would recognize. Back it went. Now I'm nervous about a 2nd BenQ. There happened to be a Sony 715? DL 16X (only 8X for -R) on sale for the same price so I decided to try that. The burns were OK to play on my set-top players, but the weird thing is, the Sony drive would not play the backup! It wouldn't even recognize there was a DVD in the drive. Same with my laptop! Same with another computer! The Sony was producing -R backups that would play on set-top players, but not on computer drives. What is that all about? I'm using quality 4X Maxell blanks. Anyway now the Sony (Lite-On I guess) is making me nervous, so I return it. On the way, I decided to pick up a third BenQ to try my luck. It worked fine, like the first one. So the way I figure it, the BenQ is batting 0.667 and the Sony 0.000.
Apparently. One bad one in three Benq attempts is a poor showing, and one bad "Sony" in one try is worse. And I knew what I was doing, which many or most buyers might not. So maybe the gist is this is a very cranky spotty error-prone consumer product at this point. Or maybe I don't know what the gist was, it just seemed like a lot of work to get a couple of working drives.
