LiteON was having a LOT of problems with DVD-Rs to begin with. This is why the LDW-401s was released initially, instead of the LDW-411s, which was SUPPOSED to be the only of the two drives to be officially released. However, I believe some of these problems were fixed in the LDW-811s.

I would not recommend DVD-R writing on the LDW-411s very much. All the discs I've burned so far work fine in my DVD-ROM, but a lot of them will not play on various stand alone DVD players [xx(]. Luckily DVD+R is only about $0.25 per disc for me now

(in reply to erthis)

I used the "CD Bremse" from http://www.cd-bremse.de/ to force 1x
writing with the Fujifilm 4x DVD-R's and got a disk that will play
on my stand-alone players. I have been using Nero 6.

The program is in German, but easy to figure out.

(in reply to erthis)

thank you for the info! I will look into that as well!

(in reply to erthis)

Excellent news..... thanks for the information!

(in reply to erthis)

Hi,

2 cents from my side as well. Actually, I have posted some of it in Lite-on forum under CDR/RW writers, but it seems that this forum is more appropriate for this subject.

So, my first impressions are not very nice (I have good experience with Pioneer A104 for DVD and Plextror PX24 for CD before). First, it did not accepted any cheap DVD-R media I used before (mostly it was Fujifilm DVD-R 1X with manufacturer info RITEK G03), which were burning nice on A104 at 2X. Liteon burner just did not find media in the drive!
Verbatim 2X brand (MCC 00RG200) and another Fujifilm (which appeared to to be TAIYO YUDEN) worked fine on burning speed 2X in simulation mode - I did not do real burn.
Well, I did real burn on 4x with Intenso DVD-R, which was RITEK G04, and it was OK (playing well on Philips DVD player).

Second, it did not burn any of CD-RW and DVD-RW I used before! It burns, but media is not readable (lot of C2 and non-recoverable errors ). The same media used on the same PC, the same burning SW (Nero 5.5.X), the same burning speed, but on my old Plextor drive works fine - perfect readability, Nero CD Speed tool reports 0 C2 errors.

The same problem is with DVD-RW (I used Verbatim DVD-RW with manufacturer code MCC 01RW11N9) and results are similar - it burns at speed 1x (at 2.4X I got "Write error" from Nero. Nero reports it as allowed speed, but burning fails), but DVD is not readable afterwards.
BTW, from shop it came with Firmware FS02, I met all the listed problems, than I upgraded to FS0F, but problems stays.

So, my overall impression is that drive is not good for cheep DVD-R and definetly not for CD/DVD-RW. Let us just hope, that Liteon will fix some issues in next firmwares.

Screw

(in reply to erthis)

quote:

---

Originally posted by vmsrules

I used the "CD Bremse" from http://www.cd-bremse.de/ to force 1x
writing with the Fujifilm 4x DVD-R's and got a disk that will play
on my stand-alone players. I have been using Nero 6.

The program is in German, but easy to figure out.

---

Hi vmsrules,

Could you please let me know exactly what you did to allow 1x burning? I tried to do what you suggested, but the option for 1x DVD writing was not enabled for my Ritek G04s

(in reply to erthis)

This drive works very well for me. I have used cheap media with it and burned budget DVD-R's at 4x without problems.

(in reply to erthis)

Well I found several infos that LDW-411S produced on Sep 2003 has problems with CD burning. May be this is also my case, since my burner has this "unlucky" production date. So my suggestion - reporting your experience with this drive give production date (it is printed on drive's label).

Screw

(in reply to erthis)

My drive was manufactured in October. I have read elsewhere that the latest firmware has solved most of the burning issues people have described.

(in reply to erthis)

Holy sweet jesuus! No wonder I have had problems with mine!

Im on firmware 02, and since then there has been 04,05,06,07,E,F and Now G. Lots of fixes! LOTS!!!!!

vFSOG for LiteOn LDW-411S is the latest, to bad the link is either dead or down... and it wont show up on either liteon sites. But from my understanding... you cant judge this drive until you have propperly upgraded to G. Thank god for that.

I'm a teac and plextor man myself... since they have made up my last 12 optical drives. Picked up a 411 for 90 bux and I wont really complain until the support is gone. I burned 2 regular cdr discs using alcohol and made 2 unreadable discs... ,Hmmmmm... at the same time my teac 552e has seen over 1000 discs in writing and still works like the day i upgraded her to fw 1.09(which happened to solve every problem It had before with the older fw 1.05.) Isnt that allways the story with drives that are released to early, but have nothing wrong with them.

SO I can say from people I have talked to, and the support seen for the drive, don't worry, it's just a late bloomer.

(in reply to erthis)

Yep it looks like Liteon has done what it is famous for Released a product before it was ready then let the Customers find the Faults then try and fix them by releasing loads of Firmware !!!

(in reply to erthis)

It's not much different from the Pioneer A05 actually... and I suspect we will see similar situations come up as various companies scramble to be the first to release a Dual Layer DVD burner. That's why you should always wait for CDRinfo to review the drive!

(in reply to erthis)

Yes, this is "very" typical for LiteOn. They release drives sort of like "beta software" and let the users complain, and then they fix the problem, not much on the R&D front.

(in reply to erthis)

yeah, don't rush out and buy LiteON's first dual layer burner... now matter *HOW* cheap it is!

(in reply to erthis)

funny... 3 sites removed the FS0G firmware fore 411.... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm =/ [?]

I don't think G had any major improvements over F. I wonder what was wrong with the G?

(in reply to erthis)

the new G firmware was generally good, except that for some reason it made the drive perform REALLY poorly when burning DVD+RW media. It was pulled VERY quickly by LiteON when this was discovered. It is expected that a new firmware will be released soon with the advantages of the new firmware, without the disadvantages.

(in reply to erthis)