Been out of the loop for a while, my last drives being those in a 2 year old PC.
Pioneer writer (DVR-109) and LG reader 8163
Pioneers are decent writers (good results on many -R medias in particular).
I would NOT recommend the LG DVD-ROM - not the best speed or compatibility with written media.
For DVD-ROM, I'd go with Liteon every time, especially as many have firmware hacks to put the speed up on written media... the 16x speed-hacked Liteon transfer test is a standars, but a 12x speed-hack is probably better for actual use (most drives read written media at 8x max) - I have a 12x speed-hacked combo as an external.
For DVD-RW, I'd be looking at Pioneer, Liteon, NEC (Optiarc), maybe LG if I was looking specifically for a "triple format" (+/- & RAM) as they have the most experience in the triple. Some are found in rebrands - eg. Asus tend to be rebranded Pioneers, but a rebrand drive can often be a lot later to get "official" firmware updates, so I'd rather have the "real" maker's name on the drive.
Benq are also worth a look, but my last recollection is that the current generation of Benqs are not the stand-outs that they used to be, same with Plextor, and I'd rule Plextor out instantly due to their harassment of the 3rd party scanning software community.
On the other hand, if it is just one disc in many, I'd put it down to a poor write, copy it to another media using a drive that can read it, and move on.