your DVD-ROM drive picks?!

[shadoe_phantom]

• Benq
• Asus
• Samsung
• Light-On
• Pioneer
• other?

Curious as to what my next DVD-ROM drive should be (16x40x or 48x).
I have a Sony 16x, Lite-On 12x, Toshiba 6x & 10x. Toshiba and sony I know work pretty well with audio extractions, but not the lite-on. Also the tosh & sony read scratched up & dirty CDs well, litey is so so. The litey reads and rips faster than the others though.
Anyhow, what I am looking for is input from everyone on what they feel is their best/fav choice and why. Naturally I would want a well rounded one that can read crappy media and music CDs as well as DVDs.
Also ones that are either RPC-1 (region free) or can be easily patched (firmware page has most).
I am curious to see peoples responses =).
Thanks for doing my little experiment.

[bertieg]

SP I use the litey 163 at the moment. I'm only doing dvd ripping so it works fine for that it rips faster and better than the others I had.Samsung and Pioneer.

[shadoe_phantom]

gravy! Thanks bertieg.

Ya the Litey I have kicks ass at ripping, but am selling my other stuff off (will only have 2 PCs left), so I will keep this current one with Plextor CDRW & Sony DVD-ROM.

The litey is probs my first choice, but if I buy also a litey CDRW for the new rig, than I won't be able to do music too well with that machine. So I guess it all depends on CDRW & DVD-ROM I go with. 1 will affect the other lol.
For sure though, when it comes to DVDs, litey is king. Am curious about the other brands though. Samsung SD-616 T/Q look promising... same with the Asus E616 (though I have heard they are similar drives).
Will see what the others have to say =)

[mag046]

Running these currently...

Lite-On LTR-40125S
Lite-On LTD-166S
Yamaha CRW-FZ1E

Reads/Writes anything I have ever tried with them...The 166S is really nice, havent had a single problem with it.