Burner will not recognize 16x dvd-rs

June 8, 2006 10:44 AM

Why will my burner not recognize my DVD-Rs as 16x?

I have a Pioneer DVD-R/DVD-RW burner that is supposed to handle 16x on either media. I had previously used 8X media and in Nero it would pop up as 8X and I could set it at 4X or 2X if I wanted. However I just bought some Taiyo Yuden 16X media and when burning it does not give me a speed option and defaults at 2X. Any ideas?

posted by weretable and the undead chairs to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: The firmware is not recognizing the disc rating: consider updating the firmware.
posted by Mr. Six at 11:02 AM on June 8, 2006

Response by poster: For some reason the obvious eluded me. That worked, thanks.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 11:17 AM on June 8, 2006

The cause of this is because the drive's firmware actually has a listing of what exact brand and type discs it can burn at what speeds. Every disc has a media code that essentially says who made it and by what manufacturing process. The code doesn't actually say what speed it can be burned at; it's up to the drive's firmware to determine that. Naturally this list of media codes is huge and can become outdated easily as new discs are brought to market. There's a whole scene of firmware hackers on sites like CD Freaks who add new media codes and change burn strategies to drives to get them to burn discs faster, though usually at the expense of reliability.
posted by zsazsa at 11:21 AM on June 8, 2006