I have one of these LG Hitachi drives in an xbox..compared to my other two xboxes which one has a thompson and the other the first "good" sammy drive. I tell ya this much..this LG hitachi loads my dvd-r backups quicker then my fast sammy drive or at the very least in equal speed.
I've only used dvd-r,dvd+r and dvd-rw..all work great in this LG..and i've used about 5 diffrent brands of -r,+r,-rw each. Nice drive..though too bad it wont read cd-r but thats ok..there are other ways to get your music on hd via pc.
and agreed about the drive, though i do have like 2 dvd-rs that my sammy will read and this wont,
but other than that, no complaints.