DVD writing speed (1x!) on a Samsung TS-H552U

[Crispin Flowerday <gnome@flowerday.cx>]

Hi,

I recently purchased a Samsung TS-H552U, which in the specs claims to be
a 16x writer, however both (the ubuntu version of) cdrecord and dvd
+rw-mediainfo claim is 8x, but thats not my main problem.

The problem is that it actually only seems to record at 1x, dvd
+rw-mediainfo (on a blank disk) reports:

$ dvd+rw-mediainfo /dev/hdc
INQUIRY:                [TSSTcorp][CD/DVDW TS-H552U][US03]
GET [CURRENT] CONFIGURATION:
 Mounted Media:         1Bh, DVD+R
 Current Write Speed:   8.0x1385=11080KB/s
 Write Speed #0:        8.0x1385=11080KB/s
 Write Speed #1:        6.0x1385=8310KB/s
 Write Speed #2:        4.0x1385=5540KB/s
 Write Speed #3:        2.0x1385=2770KB/s
 Speed Descriptor#0:    00/2295103 R@8.0x1385=11080KB/s W@8.0x1385=11080KB/s
 Speed Descriptor#1:    00/2295103 R@8.0x1385=11080KB/s W@6.0x1385=8310KB/s
 Speed Descriptor#2:    00/2295103 R@8.0x1385=11080KB/s W@4.0x1385=5540KB/s
 Speed Descriptor#3:    00/2295103 R@8.0x1385=11080KB/s W@2.4x1385=3324KB/s
READ DVD STRUCTURE[#0h]:
 Media Book Type:       A1h, DVD+R book [revision 1]
 Media ID:              MCC/003
 Legacy lead-out at:    2295104*2KB=4700372992
READ DISC INFORMATION:
 Disc status:           blank
 Number of Sessions:    1
 State of Last Session: empty
 Number of Tracks:      1
READ TRACK INFORMATION[#1]:
 Track State:           blank
 Track Start Address:   0*2KB
 Next Writable Address: 0*2KB
 Free Blocks:           2295104*2KB
 Track Size:            2295104*2KB
 ROM Compatibility LBA: 265696
READ CAPACITY:          1*2048=2048

And when writing (I used nautilus-cd-burner to write the disk):

launching command: growisofs -dvd-compat -use-the-force-luke=tty -Z /dev/hdc=/tmp/image.iso.Q11JAK
growisofs stdout: Executing 'builtin_dd if=/tmp/image.iso.Q11JAK of=/dev/hdc obs=32k seek=0'
growisofs stderr: /dev/hdc: "Current Write Speed" is 8.2x1385KBps.
growisofs stdout:          0/1988837376 ( 0.0%) @0x, remaining ??:??
growisofs stdout:          0/1988837376 ( 0.0%) @0x, remaining ??:??
growisofs stdout:          0/1988837376 ( 0.0%) @0x, remaining ??:??
growisofs stdout:          0/1988837376 ( 0.0%) @0x, remaining ??:??
growisofs stdout:     393216/1988837376 ( 0.0%) @0.1x, remaining 1685:37
growisofs stdout:    4423680/1988837376 ( 0.2%) @0.9x, remaining 171:57
growisofs stdout:   12320768/1988837376 ( 0.6%) @1.7x, remaining 69:30
growisofs stdout:   18907136/1988837376 ( 1.0%) @1.4x, remaining 52:05
growisofs stdout:   24641536/1988837376 ( 1.2%) @1.2x, remaining 43:50
growisofs stdout:   32669696/1988837376 ( 1.6%) @1.7x, remaining 35:55
growisofs stdout:   38010880/1988837376 ( 1.9%) @1.1x, remaining 34:12
growisofs stdout:   38010880/1988837376 ( 1.9%) @0.0x, remaining 36:46
growisofs stdout:   38436864/1988837376 ( 1.9%) @0.1x, remaining 38:54
growisofs stdout:   41549824/1988837376 ( 2.1%) @0.7x, remaining 39:03

It continues varying between @0.7 and @1.2 through the entire disk record

Does anyone have any idea how to get the thing writing at 8x ?

Cheers

Crispin