Thank you for the information - some additional comments regarding my DVDRW.

The trouble with my drive started a couple of days ago when it had trouble
reading a commercial video DVD. This has happened before on some DVDs so I
did not pay much attention to it. Last night it started the "choppy audio"
problem, and this happened with three different commercial video DVDs. Not
likely that it was a compatibility problem. The only thing I have not ruled
out is the possibility of a corrupted driver, although I did try to
uninstall and re-install the device driver with no change.

I am assigning the failure during firmware update as being caused by failing
hardware. However, I am not completely certain of that and was seeking input
if others have experience "choppy audio" type of failure. In any case, I
suspect that having failed an update of firmware, and thus killed the
interface, I now need a new drive. The old drive is probably now beyond
recovery. Sad fate.

Regarding a replacement - I assume Lightscribe requires special media. Is
this a worthwhile thing?

Last item - I am considering an NEC ND-4570A that NewEgg currently has for
$39 plus $5 shipping. Seems almost as good for specs as the Sony DRU820A,
but almost half the price. Also, how important is DVD-RAM support?

Peter
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-----Original Message-----
>Three questions that I have for the list:
>
>1. Has anyone else experienced a failure where the audio is choppy and 
>video running slow?

This can certainly be caused by a bad burner, but is usually caused by media
compatibility, or sometimes just a particularly poor blank. One way you can
avoid this, and increase compatibility with other stand alone readers, is
to, simply, drop the burn speed. This is true of CDs, and DVDs.

Rode

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