ok just to give this thread a bump and a recap for people who read stright to the end
If you are trying to play a wave 4 game in a Hitachi 1.51 and you are 100% sure that you burnt it wright but wave 3 and under still play when you burn them it
could be you have a
bad dvd driveOr if you have a Benq 1.6 and the activate.iso dvd don't work and you are 100% sure that you burnt it on the first layer of a DVD-DL and wave 3 and under still play you
could have a
bad dvd driveThe 2 drives in question have been:
Re-flashed to be original then back to ixtreme (which was re downloaded)
spoofed to be in different xbox 360's (did not work in other xbox's)
laser's cleaned and pots adjusted
And had:
different media tested verbatim and memorex
different burning software used Clone CD and imgburn
different burners used lg a samsung and a liteon
known working drive put in the xbox's to see if it worked to boot wave 4 (worked)
all media burnt worked in the other 3 xbox 360's

that is a lot of the same 2 backups laying around
P.S. I will have both drives tested when 1.61 is out and post what happens
and i have ordered new benq's to replace the 2 dvd drives that don't work with wave 4