Matsushita vs Pioneer DVD-RW drives

Looks like Toshiba is putting both of these in Satellites. Anyone know which is any better (if it's better)? I noticed the Pioneer sounds like a beast at times but the door isn't a flimsy as the Matsushita. I have had a few of these notebooks and just noticed the latest one is a Pioneer drive (maybe they are starting to replace the Mats?)

 

I don't know much about Pioneer, but I sure know I don't like Matshita. I agree, it is very flimsy. But more importantly, there's no hope of ever getting rpc1 firmware for it. No one buying a (desktop) DVD drive would even consider getting it. So that's a vote for Pioneer from the anything-but-Matshita camp.

Malia

 

What does that firmware do? I also notice the pioneer is alot faster responsive to opened right after hitting the button.

 

I'm finding this quite ironic that Toshiba is replacing their Mat. drives with Pioneer ones because Pioneer (so far) has commited to only producing Blu-Ray disc players and not any HD-DVD ones.

 

Firmware is like software, but for the hardware, if that makes sense. It controls *how* the hardware does things. So if your drive makes a lot of coasters, chances are, it's because it came with bad firmware. Some people have taken on improving their drives' firmware and releasing it out into the wild. For free. Unfortunately, it's very hard to work with Matshita drives, partly because Matshita doesn't release its firmware (hence there's no point from which to start, nothing that can be modified) - and if you put in the wrong firmware, you can turn your DVD burner into only a CD burner, for instance. So, Matshita drives are not developer-friendly and difficult (expensive) to work with, so since most people who decide to develop new firmware do it at their own personal expense, they choose not to bother with Matshita.

Rpc1 firmware is firmware that does not restrict how many times you can change your drive's region, so you can play foreign region DVDs. It's no longer legal to produce optical drives where you can do that (because then, distributors can make less profit if a movie comes out on DVD in one country while it's still in theatres in the other). Now, all drives come with what's called rpc2 firmware. Now, you can only change your drive's region like 5 times. But with rpc1 firmware, you can change it an unlimited number of times. Therein lies its advantage.

Malia

P.S. There's software that allows you to play foreign region DVDs without flashing your firmware. AnyDVD is a popular choice, but there are others. However, none of it works with Matshita drives because Matshita goes beyond the requirements set by the law and scrambles the data on the disk.

 

Wow, looks like i'm pretty happy that I lucked out with the Pioneer instead of Matshita!

 

How do you find out which one you have? I just got a new P100, but it doesn't say under "Properties" for the drive.

 

Right-click on My Computer and go into Manage. Look in Device Manager and expand the branch for DVD/CD-ROM drives. It will probably say there.

By the way, my A100 has a Matshita, and it works great. I live in the US and only need to play DVDs for this region. Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-841S according to Device Manager.

 

Matshita sometimes is hard to read low quality DVD blank, whereas my NEC 6650 in Inspiron 6000 does ver well

 

The Matshita / Matsushita UJ-841s is horrible... it won't even let me burn Memorex cds (yes, I know not the greatest brand...) but my dell e1405 could burn anything... what crap, I did not expect this from Toshiba.

 

I agree!
And matsushita is very noisy, while the pioneer from my old DV1000 run very smooth.
Pioneer should be a better choice.

 

Yeah, I left toshiba for this very reason...but you know, Lenovo put these same drives in...even in their Thinkpads! My ASUS has an LG and it's been flawless so far.

 

definitely the better choice...and yes, very noisy! I've been happy with my LG drive.

 

ALOT of the Matsushita drives suck balls. Some are good. In my experience, Toshiba almost exclusively uses them.

In my HP DV6000, I have a Mat UJ-850 and it works great, a stark contrast from the UJ-811, 820, etc, but I only use high quality media.

From what I have read, the NEC drives that dell uses are the best notebook drives. As far as Pioneer goes, I havn't heard much about them. They arn't very popular drives, except for a few firmware hacking circles which require the use of Pioneer drives.

 

Stay away from matshita at all cost. You are better off using a pioneer drive.

As for RPC1 firmware for matshita, you can forget it malia. Matshita firmwares are the toughest to crack. They are heavily encrypted. Not surprising since they were the among those who introduced CSS and region lock

 

i will NEVER buy a notebook with a matshita drive ever again.

 

The problem is: most times we don't know the parts manufacturer (specially optical drive) until buy the notebook

Regards.

 

I think Toshiba moving to anything from Matsushita is good! My Satellite Pro has an LG drive in it, not sure whether that's a typical Toshiba thing or not...?

 

it's not typical...it's mostly matsh1ta, but sometimes pioneer. Consider yourself lucky because the LG drives are good in my experience.

 

my a100 has pioneer drive but it doesnt burn onto black maxell cd-r's (the black cds), so it really doesnt matter. mats was also a bit quieter and also didnt shoot out of the laptop as the pioneer does when ejected.

 

Trust me, you are much better off with the Pioneer.

 

got the mat 846s and it burns anything that i throw at it