Some DVD-/+RW's are "smart" in the way that the firmware recognizes media codes and only burns them at what the manufacturer believes them as safe (as in you buy shitty dvd-r's but the manufacturer of the discs rate them at 4x, the drive may only burn them at 2x if that is what the manufacturer has set.) So its important to keep the firmware uptodate so incase new media codes appear you can run them to the best of your drives ability.

Its basically to limit complaints to the manufacturer of the drive about burning coasters, when the real fault is with shit quality discs that are rated higher than they technically should be (speaking of smart buy, i burned some cdr's from them... disappointing to say the least. They were the 1st batch of CD-Rs I've had peel on me where the metallic layer on the cd just flakes off).

Additionally some drives are setup to also read similar codes on CD-R/W's and limit their burn speed, but that normally happens upon detecting the disc (nero will only let you burn the disc up to a certain speed.) The only time I've seen the burn speed drop after you selected one, is using shit quality DVD-Rs (my friend bought them to burn himself some stuff on my drive) and my Toshiba at the time didn't like it. Have a LiteOn 1633S flashed to a 1653S now and I love it, especially with the firmware editor.

_ _ - - = = Pr3tty F1y = = - - _ _