So looks to me like my earlier thought was probably right that the drive has gone bad as I have tried changing media bands, cleaning the optical head, and changing burning softwares all with no change in the burning outcome.
I found the problem with the dvd+r "power calibration" error. Turns out the local stores only stock 16x dvd+r media while my drive is only an 8x. I searched the Internet and found some 8x media which worked just fine. Still no luck with the dvd+r dl though. Got it to work once using dvdclone2 but only once. But atleast I can strip off extras to burn to dvd+r media now.
