I have a Panasonic LF-D521 burner. I picked up a 5-pack of TDK DVD-RWs from CompUSA. A notice on the package says that using these in players not designed for 4x media may cause problems with the media, burner, or both. I looked in the 521 manual and it says that it is designed to burn 1x media. I've already opened the 5-pack and removed one DVD-RW from the package (but haven't used it in the burner). I'm not sure if CompUSA will take the 5-pak back.
Is the TDK warning just to minimize their liability or is there a significant chance that the RWs will damage my hardware?
Me too I have the LF-D521 burner, and I scrapped many 4X Verbatim DVD-R with Nero 6.0 !!! As you know, the DVD-R 1X or 2X medias are not easy to find and I think they will disappear in the next few months....
But I just burned a 4X Sony DVD-R 4.7 GB (yellow pocket) at 2X with CloneDVD 2.2 and it's working very well. In fact, I can watch the DVD-R with my home DVD reader too !!
From their website, we can see that Panasonic is not making any firmware update for this burner, so I recommand you to buy CloneDVD because the included firmware for burning is recent and it's working very well with all the medias I have tried.
Hardware: Pentium4 at 2.4 GHz.
O.S.: Windows 2000, SP4 (french version).
I don't think momitte answered the question, while he did offer valuable information. Ibeck, can you confirm whether the DVD-RW worked for you or not? I also am debating whether or not to use the DVDs, in my Matshita UJ-815 (it's 1x rw speed).
I lost my nerve and took the TDKs back to CompUSA. They cheerfully refunded my money. I got some cheaper store-brand 1x and they work fine in the 521. They may be a litle more fragile, though. I used a CompUSA rw a dozen times or so and then stuck it into my briefcase unprotected. Bad practice, I know, but I've gotten away with it for years with more robust CC/DVDs. The CompUSA got a few scuffs and then refused to work.
