If you have room for only one drive, it has to be the Samsung SH-S203B... it does pretty much everything I need it to do except jitter scan... See this thread.

(in reply to Dimitris32)

Would samsung be equally good though for medium-quality media (single-layered)?  (Because you mentioned above that the Pioneer would give better quality burns in this scenario). 

Also, you mention that the Sammy would be good for burning at 16x, while the LG at 12x and below?  What do you mean by this?  Also, from what I read, here in the UK you don't get 16x media, just 8-12x, so would there be a benefit in having a drive that writes well at 16x?  And if so, would the resulting quality in burns between LG and Samsung be comparable, even if each of the drives burn at their preferred/optimal speeds?  (And do these two actually 'prefer' high, as opposed to medium quality media?) 

Bear in mind that I already have an old 32x Lite-On CD burner in my system, so I'll be using this for burning CDs  - or should I not?  Would the CD burning quality of these newer DVD burners be better than the Lite-On's?

(in reply to SithTracy)

I'm not one to buy and gamble with lower quality media.  That said, I have had some given to me... I got horrible scan results on the Samsung and LG, but my Plextor PX-755SA and Pioneer DVR-212D faired pretty well with acceptable results.  Now, it was DVD+R media (CMC if I recall)... the DVR-212D does not set the booktype to DVD-ROM so some older stand-alone's won't play back the discs anyway.  DVD-R media would be fine in these cases.  The Pioneer does well with -R media.  It comes to your approach.  If you buy the capable Pioneer drive, start buying -R media.

The type of media available to you should be the driving factor in your drive purchase.  I don't mean to confuse you, but there is no one drive that performs well with all brands and qualities of media.

(in reply to Dimitris32)