which is better for reading disks?

[subferno]

In general, do DVD Writing drives read/play DVDs better than standard DVD Rom drives?

I have a Lite On SOHD 167T DVD drive (standard) that skips randomly when playing movies. I would like to replace it with my old Sony DVD DRU500 (writer), hoping that the skipping problem would go away.

Would rip speed and quality differ between these 2 kinds of DVD drives?

Thanks
Gary H

[setarip_old]

In general, do DVD Writing drives read/play DVDs better than standard DVD Rom drives?

Nope - There are both better and worse reading/playing DVD-ROMs and better and worse reading/playing DVD burners...

[Ollie W. Holmes]

In general, do DVD Writing drives read/play DVDs better than standard DVD Rom drives?

I have a Lite On SOHD 167T DVD drive (standard) that skips randomly when playing movies. I would like to replace it with my old Sony DVD DRU500 (writer), hoping that the skipping problem would go away.

Would rip speed and quality differ between these 2 kinds of DVD drives?

Thanks
Gary H

My workhorse Panasonic dvd-ram drives read faster and play better than the Lite On drive I have in my machine. I think the Sony is also faster (for ripping), but as far as playback is concerned, it is a hit or miss proposition. Each dvd drive has its peculiar way of responding to errors on the medium.

I had the latest copy of windvd and it still hung with certain discs no matter which drive it played on. What software player are you using? The error recovery on windvd or powerdvd is pretty poor compared to a good standalone Sony or Panasonic player. If this difference were due to Windows XP or the processor speed, I would not be surprised.

[subferno]

My workhorse Panasonic dvd-ram drives read faster and play better than the Lite On drive I have in my machine. I think the Sony is also faster (for ripping), but as far as playback is concerned, it is a hit or miss proposition. Each dvd drive has its peculiar way of responding to errors on the medium.

I had the latest copy of windvd and it still hung with certain discs no matter which drive it played on. What software player are you using? The error recovery on windvd or powerdvd is pretty poor compared to a good standalone Sony or Panasonic player. If this difference were due to Windows XP or the processor speed, I would not be surprised.

I have both PowerDVD and WinDVD. I just created a different thread with a little more information.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=100960

After switching out the LiteOn and putting in the Sony drive, I get a different problem which is explained in the link above.

[Qjimbo]

Yeah DVD writers have heavier reading/writing heads which makes them slower. However I doubt your skipping problem is caused by the drive. Wierdly that sort of thing can often be badly written spyware/adware running in the background taking up resources. A friend used to be able to tell when he ahd spyware on his computer because all his games would start skipping... unless by skipping you mean more than just the oaccaional pause in playback.

[CWR03]

Skipping in games has very little in common with skipping of DVD playback. DVD's skip because of read errors; if a game has a read error it would crash.

[subferno]

I doubt I have spyware. I dont download junk and I have several apps that scan for it weekly.

[Qjimbo]

Ah fair enough, well it was just a guess :p You might want to borrow someone elses DVD-Drive and test your PC with it before assuming it's the drive though unless you have something else to go on.

[subferno]

Well, I switched out my LiteON and installed my Sony and it works just fine except for the problem I am having in this link:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=100960

When I took my LiteOn out, something was rattling inside so I was thinking maybe something really was wrong with the drive.