about the need of media tables

Afaik so far all DVD+R/Ws can be written at 2.4x speed, correct? But when it comes to DVD-R/Ws things are much more complicated. At least in the case of Pioneer the recorder's firmware says what writing speed is permissible. So if a new manufacturer comes to the market and makes a product capable of being written on at more than 1x speed it requires that Pioneer includes the drive in their media table which means a firmware upgrade for drive owners. As I imagine it this is completely different with CD-Rs. I've never done any firmware upgrade on my CD burners, yet I can easily burn media which haven't been on the market by the time the burner was released (a good example is the Plex 12x10x burner - the first 10x RW blanks came out several months after the drive's release and so far I have never had any problem with any type of RW brand, if it said 10x on the package I could burn it at 10x speed). So, it appears as if with CD-R/Ws the writing speed is determined by some flag already present on the CD, not by the manufacturer ID. Is this assumption correct? If yes, why is it different with DVD-R/Ws? So that Pioneer can extort money from disc manufacturers to get their product approved for higher writing speed? (another version would be that Pioneer can guarantee that every media advertised to burn at 2/4x really can be burned at this speed but that doesn't make much sense since especially online retailers aren't really sticking to the guidelines and have been selling products capable of 4x writing even when the standard wasn't set, and selling products advertised as 2x capable even if they weren't).

This is what I know about the subject. While checking with a disc manufacturer (Optodisc) why they advertise 1X and 2X speed on the same disc, the anwser was that for the Pioneer they had to have a "code". I assume this is the power calibration settings for this particular disc. So I believe the technology for complete automatic power calibration is not yet available. I hope this will improuve as writing speed increses

I think it's only a compatibility issue for Pioneer. We all know that it's not so easy to burn a readable DVD. Technology on DVD-R is at the beginning, a bit like CDR a few years ago. Do you remember that burner has to be on SCSI to be efficient ? adn that media was crap when cheap, advertised 4X but only working well on 2X ? Pioneer knows about that and probably decided to limit burn speed, and only allow on tested (by them) media. I do not think it's to get extra money from manufacturer. Manufacturers have probably to pay something but it's surely not a lot of money compare to DVD-R R&D, factory investment and so on. I even thnik that pioneer let all media burned @X1 because it would have involve too much legal issue to only allow a few brand of DVD-R. If you look @ which DVD-R are allowed to burn @X2 : Pioneer, apple... then later Ritek. Exactly what we found as working DVD-R @X2. I believe it's just a way to protect them from claims from users, trying to burn @X2 on crap media, and later targeting Pioneer as doing bad hardware. And if you think about it, it's quite OK. People like us have a hacked 2X4all firm as we know (most of the time) what we are doing, and a basic user that don't know about this forum can just use any DVD-R and burn. I guess that in a few years, when all media will be OK, you won't find such limitations anymore.

well.. there's at least one 2x certified media type that's crap (discs either have problems on the standalone or can't be read by a DVD-ROM to begin with) so the compatibility claim is off the table. Plus, in the CD-R age I never had any such issues, I started out with a 4x Yamaha burner which burned every disc I ever got at 4x speed before it died (or at least the guy whom I sold it to claimed so), same goes for my 12x and 24x Plex. I even managed to burn media advertised for 4x at 12x using the 12x Plex (when it came out there were no 12x certified media to be gotten).