well, im using philips dvd-r. it works with 1x or 2x speed (takes about 20min 4 me. nice quality too. although, theres always a 50/50 chance that the disc gets into a error. for ex, when i want to burn a video file, the first disc gets into a error. then the second, it works fine. do you know why this is happening?
Try some better media such as Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden. Phillips are poorly manufactured discs. Also, this is a laptop drive isn't it? So, your laser may be weakening slightly, as they do, especially in laptops. How old is it?