WHATS THE BEST DVD-R READER

For PC or are you talking about a standalone DVD Player? For PC the Lite-On recieves the highest marks for the Price.

i've got a £30 liteon in my pc and it works fine..never failed to read anything yet!

using the liteon 166 and its a fine reader,there a review here m8
http://cdrom-guide.pricegrabber.com/rating_getprodrev.php/product_id=647943/id_type=M/ut=514d772fcff64acc

have heard good reports about the pionner 120
regards jay

Another vote for the Liteon 166.I have 4 of them.

Yet another vote for the 166. You can check out the test results of most DVD-ROM drives here btw:- http://www.cdspeed2000.com/go.php3?link=dvdresults.php3

Moving this to the Consumers forum for you.........

I have a Liteon 166 and for the £ it's fine, however it can't hold a candle to my Panasonic drive (Shows up in XP as Matshita 8587) that literally reads almost anything including DVD-RAM. Knocks spots off the Liteon for speed too.
I also believe Samsungs to be very reliable.

Well,I for one have had nothing but bad luck with Panasonic drives.It could be they have 1 good product.I will believe it is a great drive when I can find it rated in the reviews better than the Liteon.

Obviously opinions differ but I find the Liteon I have is very fussy. Latest firmware and everything. My panasonic is ages old now (touches wood and dont tempt fate) and it gets hammered every day, I mean serious use for both CD and DVD, I've got old gen 1 bulk-crap that the Liteon wont even egister let alone read, but the Matshita (Panny) whips straight into them. Genuinely Is I lost it I'd be lost.

If you flashed the firmware,that could explain your troubles!I seldom see the need to flash a dvd ROM drive.It more often then not causes problems. At work we have over 1000 systems,half with dvd drives.I would say there might be 5 Matsushita drives,and 400 Liteons.These run 24 hours a day.I can't recall the last time I had to replace a Liteon.We have recieved bad drives in new Gateway systems,but none were Liteons!

Well If I only had a average opinion of Liteon (not bad dont get me wrong) when I first got it prior to fw upgrade it was a complete pile of $@!t. It would not touch a thing. The 163 I had previous was also verging on very average. All told I've only had the 2 so It's not like I'm an expert, just my penny's worth

Well,I just replaced a brand new Pioneer 120 with a Liteon 166.The Pioneer like most(if not all) Matsus.can not read + media.That may not seem like a big deal,but + media drives are very prevelant.And yes,you may have had a bad drive.A bad drive is not uncommon for any manufacturer.I even had a bad Plextor scsi drive.Right now the Toshiba 1712(hacked) is a real good drive!

I have the 165 Liteon DVD-Rom drive and it's also very good.
Same drive as the 166 but with a few cosmetic differences.
Very fast and reliable, have yet to get a disc that didn't read.

I had a 163 Liteon before and found it to be very fussy on the media it could read.