Hi,

I use disk utility to burn my DVD's which allows me to select the burn speed.
When I put a disc in, it tells me the max speed at which I can burn. I select 8x but it still only burns at 2x!

I recently started using Taiyo Uden discs but the burns are still slower than what I selected. What is wrong?

Since I’ve gotten such an overwhelming response to this question, I decided to do some research of my own.

Apparently this is an issue that affects many of the Apple Super Drives.

What is happening is Apple wants to force you into buying “Apple” branded DVD media.

They program their drives to only allow apple discs to burn at 8x speeds. All other media is forced to burn at 2X.

Fortunately, I only burn my clients project at 2x anyway for safety but I don’t like not having the option to burn faster!

Ive never had a problem burning with my superdrive I usually burn at around 16x. But then again i dont have an intel mac. But as far as useing mac dvd's
i have never used one yet ive only used off brands work fine for me.

shawn

This seems to be a problem for the Imacs, Mac Mini's and MacbookPro line.

I've had similar issues with my G5 Imac. Some of my research suggested certain drives exhibited this issue, while other's thought the choice of blank media (rated for the correct speed) was the issue.

Apple branded DVD media seemed to fair better and there was one other brand that did well that I can't remember. It was a couple years ago when I was looking into this issue.

I also need to mention that I had to remove a couple posts from this thread because as you should know, DVINFO does not allow platform wars. That includes derogatory remarks about one OS or the other because it always escalates. Thanks for keeping the policy in mind.

-gb-

I have a rev 1 iMac G5, with a 4x SuperDrive, and it also typically burns at 2x. I had a spindle of DVD-Rs once that burned at 4x (I think they were Memorex, but I'm not positive), but Sony, Verbatim, and TY discs all burn at 2x. Its quite annoying -- I secretly hope the drive will just die so I can replace it with something faster that isn't "patched" with this "feature".

-Terence

Funny, I'm also seeing this on my dual 2.5ghz G5 PowerMac. I recently bought a different brand of blank DVD and now I can only burn at 2x whereas before I was getting 4x IIRC. So I think it's definitely related to the type of DVD media. But I don't burn very many DVD's on that machine, so I really haven't looked into the issue very closely.

I once heard that this kind of behavior was related to your Mac OS; I know that with my two home puters running 10.3.9 the Superdrives will only burn at 4X. At the studio I work at, where the G4s run up to date OS I seem to get more options

But here's a thought: I always burn at the slowest speed possible (except for data DVDs) For "movie" DVDs, burning at a slower speed can seem to help some playback issues.

I have one of the new 20" Intel Imac's that I brought back in August/September and have burned a number of DVD's using disk utility onto differently branded media and never had an issue with it burning at 8x except that i have had reported errors on the very occassional DVD, which I attributed to the inherit risks of burning at 8x. I keep fully up to date with all the OS upgrades, and I check that the disks I am buying have 8x speed listed on them (I have a feeling that different DVD-R media is rated for different speeds.)

I very much doubt it would be wholesale move by apple to block anything but their 'own' media, as Apple really isn't a media producer.

Let us know if anyone finds anything out on this.

We also have noticed that our iMac Intel model burns about 1/5th as fast as our Quad G5. It's REALLY slow. I thought it was a Toast problem, but maybe it is the computer or burner itself.

now I can only burn at 2x

Hmmm. Just burned 4 DVD's yesterday and I was getting 4x. But supposedly the media supports 16x....

For any Mac users who've had this same problem of DVDs not burning faster than 2x -- I just opened a new shipment of Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD-R valueline printable DVDs from SuperMediaStore, and they're burning at 4x (the max speed on my rev 1 iMac G5). This is in contrast to the previous spindle, same brand/part from SuperMediaStore, which would only burn at 2x. Its like a free upgrade! I'm glad I ordered 600, which should last me until next year.

-Terence

I use the exact same 8x TY media from the exact same outlet and I can still only burn 2x!

This is my third batch of the same item number from SuperMediaStore -- the first two were stuck at 2x but the new ones must be coded slightly different because they allow the higher speed. Hopefully this is a permanent change, and your next order will burn at the faster speed.

I'm on PC so I know zip about MACs.

Just having a look around the APPLE support site, I saw mentions to firmware upgrades. Can the recorder's firmware be updated?

Hope it helps.

Best regards,
Arnaldo