X60 problems reading DVDs

Hi,

Does anyone have trouble with their x60 reading DVDs soemtimes? I say sometimes, as not all DVDs cannot be read.. the one it just decided to not work with was Lord of War.. which is a DVD9 dual layer disc.. (don't know if this makes a difference or not)

anyway.. does anyone have a clue on how to go about solving this issue..

regards

chris

 

bump bump

 

The Teac optical drive in my old X60 was very well behaved. I think it had trouble with one DVD out of many, and that one had a damaged surface. My new X60plus has the TS-L632M burner and it is too early to pass judgement on its performance. However, I have just tried a selection of DVDs including some dual layer ones. It clicked and grunted before it managed to lock onto the first. The others gave no problem. Then I put the first one back in and this time there was no problem in reading it.

Two things for you to check: (i) That the problem DVD has a clean and unmarked surface; and (ii) that the optical drive is in DMA mode (Device Manager > Primary IDE Channel > Advanced settings). What model is your optical drive? (These, and hard disks, can change between different batches of what is otherwise the same computer).

Hope this helps,

John

 

hi,

i have checked the status of DMA and it is set to on, my model # is TS-L632D

also, the DVDs i have tried today and yesterday have both been brand new straight from sealed boxes..

maybe ill give samsung a call on tuesday..

 

well.. did what i probably should have done in the first place and update the firmware..

and magically i can read the DVDs now.. so all good

shame it took me so long to hunt down the application to actually update the drive with!!

 

Glad to hear that the problem is fixed. Which firmware version do you now have and where did you get it from?

John

 

I have a similar problem. Does anyone have playback issues when playing back DVD movies. I seem to get alot of lag when playing back movies. It seems that the only software I can play movies back properly is PowerDVD. Can someone please help with this!

 

i now have firmware version SC02



i got it using the samsung live update software avail at:

http://www.samsungodd.com/eng/

it just scanned my drives, and updated the firmware without any hassle, very impressed.. although the Korean to engrish translation in the app could be a bit better

first, make sure you have DMA mode turned on, then try an update as i mention above

what programs are you attempting to play back the DVDs in ?

 

I've tried wmp, vlc media player and samsung AVS now. The only program that plays DVD's correctly is PowerDVD. I even called samsung technical support, they said it was something to do with the order of priority in system processes. They said I needed to change this, in order to give it a more important priority in the task manager. I don't think the samsung representive gave me any useful advice.

But maybe I'll try the samsung update of this DVD drive. Maybe that will work, who knows.

 

Ok I've now upgraded the firmware to the same as BGM. It appears all my DVD playback issues have now been resolved. I always felt that there was something not quite right about the initial firmware of the DVD drive shipped in new X60 plus. I'm suprised not many people posted similar problems, since to me this was clear, but then again I guess maybe it's only a limited amount of people experiencing the same problem or the problem is just worse in my case.

Anyway overall I'm happy with this notebook aside from the initial problems stated. I strongly recommend that everyone upgrades firmware of DVD drive if they're experiencing the same problems as me. I'm not saying it's going to work but it worked for me and now everything seems to running very smoothly.

Anyway thanks to BGM for the post about where to download DVD firmware and John as I've been following alot of his useful information about the X60.

 

BGM, thanks for that link. It is one that I had previously failed to discover and the Samsung Update Plus software hadn't picked it up.

Ben Ada, thanks for pointing out that even the X60plus with the TS-L632M ODD needed updating. My computer is now up-to-date.

I'm not sure if this Samsung update applies to the TS-L series ODDs in other computers, but I will post the pink in the hardware forum.

John

 

Lord of War - A very good movie!

 

I've spent my day trying to burn a couple of data DVDs. This proved to be difficult. Maybe firmware SC02 for the TS-L532M fixes some reading problems, but further fixing is needed. I produced a few coasters but the real problem seems to be when Nero verifies what has been written. This starts off at a good speed but gets slower and, somewhere along the way, the interface drops into PIO mode. This change, with hindsight, is very noticeable as a major deterioration in the responsiveness of the computer.

10 minutes to burn and then an hour to verify is not acceptable! I have filed a complaint via the Samsung email system.

And to get out of PIO means deleting the secondary IDE channel in Device Manager then rebooting. Easy when you know how, not a nuisance nonetheless. My previous X60 had a Teac burner which was very well-behaved in comparison. Maybe I'll have to work out how to do a transplant since the old X60 is still in the household.

John

 

I have to agree that the DVD drive within the X60 is currently not at its best. Totally agree that further fixing is needed. The DVD player in my PC works far better, but then again DVD players within PC's are always more robust than the ones that come in notebooks.

Something else that I did not mention before about this DVD drive was, when it automatically changed my DVD player to region 1 without my knowledge. This meant that I had to use another change to change this back, although the region was set to "not selected" initially. Even though I'm pretty sure I never put a DVD from region 1 into the drive, the DVD drive should have some sort of mechanism to alert the user if the DVD region were about to be set. But it didn't although when I had it did when I changed to the correct region.

User notification should always be compulsory since most DVD drives only allow you to change regions up to 5 times before it finally locks.

Anyway I have now installed AnyDVD to prevent any more unwanted changes from happening and to keep my DVD player region free.

 

I have been exploring the burning performance of the TS-L632M during the past week. The result is not very favourable. I was using Nero 7 and verifying the DVDs. Sometimes everything went fine and fast, sometimes there were burning errors, sometimes there were errors during verification which somtimes resulted in the interface fropping into PIO mode.

I started off with Ritek G05 media ( DVD Identifier gives the codes) and have just been through 6 brand new Memorex 16X +R (media code Ricoh R03). They all seemed to burn OK and four verified fine, but two had problems during verification. During one of these the interface dropped into PIO mode. This latest expercise used Nero 6 to try to eliminate Nero from further enquiries.

I have also had variable results with CMC MAG E01 and CMC MAG AE1.

It seems that burning DVDs at 8X is a bit of a lottery. 4X seems OK.

I have been in correspondence with a support person for the Samsung optical drives who accepts that there is a problem and has offered to replace the burner (which, unfortunately, seems to be well integrated into the X60). I have given him the task of finding a stack of the same Memorex DVDs. If he can burn and verify 10 without any difficulty then ithe evidence points to my burner being defective. If, on the other hand, he also hits a problem then the firmware (which contains details of how to burn each media type) will be under suspicion.

And I've worked out how to get out of PIO mode without rebooting. Shut Nero, uninstall the secondary IDE channel in Device Manager and then go to Control Panel and use Add New Hardware. The secondary IDE channel is then detected and reinstalled in UDMA mode.

John

 

ooo, action in my thread.. and no email to notify me

skim reading the previous posts, i am in agreement that the DVD recorder isn't at its best.. i was burning an ISO the other week and i went through 4!!! DVDs, that i coastered..

in the end, after much buggering around with settings, i gave up and just burnt the discs at 1x, this seemed seemed to fix it..

luckily i don't burn many CDs or DVDs or this might prove to be really really annoying

just a tip!

p.s. is there a way of making the drive firmware region free, or do i have to run software all the time? ta!

 

also, some new firmware is out for this drive i have just discovered..

don't know how long it has been avail

 

The SC03 firmware is newly published. The details are here. Let us hope that it improves media compatibility.

This post gives me an opportunity to give an update about the troublesome TS-L632M in my X60plus. After several weeks of testing and correspondence with someone in the Samsung ODD support, we reached the conclusion that the drive was defective. I didn't want to send the computer way for an unknown period so I sent only the bare ODD (it is held in by one screw under the keyboard) to the Samsung ODD service agents. Unfortunately, no LightScribe drives were available so I have the SN-S082D as a substitute. It seems to be more reliable than the TS-L632M. I had thought that the SN series came out of a different factory but the label says "Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology". The drive is dated November 2006 but the firmware is SS03, so it seems that they have been slow in publishing this firmware.

My Q35 has the TS-L632D. This was at SC02 but I have just updated it to SC03.

I suggest you visit rpc1 about region free issues. One option is to buy the new Liteon external ODD then take the drive out of the external housing and put it into your computer. I've done that previously in order to upgrade an ODD.

John

 

Hi all,

Ive just had this laptop about 2 weeks. I've just started burning some DVDs and CDs and the performance is terible so I went looking aorund and found this thread.

Whenver I burn any media (tried quite a few) the whole computer slows down..I cant even move the mouse or cursors smoothly! Now I'm sure this cant be right. The firmware is SCO2..liveupdate for samsung picks up no new firmware available, though I notice someone is talking about SC03 for this drive (its the TS-L632MSC02).

It also takes over an hour to burn a DVD, its like the bad old days again of wating an hour to burn a CD and not being able to breathe near the computer whilst it was burning.

Ive sent an email to the support section on samsungs site but it would be handy if you could put me in touch with the person you spoke to who confirmed that there were problems with this drive.

PS mine also seems to flop between PIO and DMA as far as I can tell (what IDE channel should it be on..?).

Thanks all
Rolf

 

I think you have hit exactly the same problem as I had with the TS-L632M. My ODD was replaced and the new one has SC02 firmware and has given no problems..

Something has caused the ODD interface to go into PIO mode. With me it was timeouts during verification of burning, because the burning was poor on some media. Microsoft are part of the problem, as explained here.

Follow this instruction to get out of PIO mode:

PIO mode cripples the computer's performance because all the data goes through the CPU whereas DMA means Direct Memory Access wherein the interface works directly with the memory and the CPU can get on with other tasks.

If you can't get the Live Update to work, contact Samsung ODD support (not the computer support) through their electronic messaging system.

Let us know how you get on.

John

 

I have contacted them...liveupdate (what an overblown piece of nonsens just for updating firmware..is it possible to just download the firmware and get a small app to update the drive..I couldnt find it anywhere, also the site doesnt work in firefox properly..doh!) said my drive was not supported even though its only showing SC02.

Do you have an email address for the man you contacted in the support area..? Ive left a message but I always doubt they get anywhere fast.

Thanks
Rolf

 

That update site works fine for me in FF although it says it is designed for IE.

I've just updated my other post because I checked and I am still at SC02 with the replacement ODD.

I've sent you a PM with my contact (it wouldn't be prudent to put it here where the spam address spiders would pick it up). However, I got the initial contact through the messaging system for the Samsung ODD support. And I did a DIY ODD replacement so I didn't lose the computer for a week.

What media are you having problems with? Use DVD Identifier. I had problems with Ritek G05 which is recognised to be good quality media. That triggered the replacement process.

John

 

Not sure if anybody has noticed or received this update but the Samsung X60plus has received an update to it's optical DVD drive. This relates to the
TSST TS-623M DVD-Supermulti drive. This update arrived via the Samsung Update Plus software today and has now been upgraded from firmware SC02 to SC03.

Will keep you posted how the new firmware stacks up. So far so good it appears to be more stable from previous versions.

 

Thanks for this info. It appears that the new firmware was issued on 7th September but it mave taken a little time to work through the live update system.

John

 

Yea John, it doesn't surprise me that Samsung took forever to get it out there. That's so typical of them. Maybe one day in my lifetime we'll see proper drivers for the ATI X1700 along with Powerplay working correctly.

I have made a new thread regarding this update located here
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2554996#post2554996

Check out the screenshoot I made.

 

I have Vista Enterprise on my X60plus system, with the SC03 firmware in the DVD drive (but the problem was the same with SC01 and SC02).

Reading and writing are OK, but I can't play a DVD with PowerDVD 7.0 (with the Vista compatibility patch). The video will show for a moment; then it freezes for anything up to 30 seconds (and the image often reverts to the PowerDVD spash screen) and then it all starts again.

The "drive reverting to PIO" issue doesn't seem applicable to Vista (and Device Manager shows the channel is in UDMA mode); and upping the process priority to HIGH makes no diference.

I've seen hints in other forums that Microsoft's generic SATA drivers are very poor.

I seem to be able to play MPEG files back with various applications fine, so the problem has to lie in the DVD data side somewhere.

Anyone got any thoughts for this one?