Plextor 716A DVD Burning Problem

i've got the most recent firmare 1.09 and have had firmwares 1.06 to present. all the same. so, when i first got this burner i tried memorex 16x media. the burner would slow down. you could hear the spinning of the burning process slow down around 75% complete. after burning i always test the DVD to make sure it completed in good shape. 3/4's way in the DVD would always crash pc. not a hard one. just like wmp would crash and freak out pc. like if i burn 4 movies all movies were fine except the 3rd movie 3/4's way thru it. now, if i use 8x memorex everything is sweet. all the time. is there a problem with firmware i'm unaware of? is my burner shit? Ahead Nero Burning ROM v6.6.0.18 Ultra Edition isn't good? pretty retarded buying a $100 16x dvd burner and the fucker can't burn @ 16x! i've also tried slowing the 16x burning down to 12x or even 8x and it doesn't matter. always fucks up. like i said though. 8x media works great! reason i got 16x media this time again was the store didn't have any 8x at the time and i needed some discs to burn at the time. so, i figured i'd give it another shot. bad call. what's the deal? thx.

Depends which media you've actually got. You can find the media code using Nero Infotool.

Some types seem to give fairly mixed results, others seem to generally give good results.

Check yours here

I found that Memorex isn't very good for DVDs. I think they are mostly CMC Magnetics media. Check with Nero Infotool and see: http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm