My dvd -r burn at 16x ... I had some problems with some games , but thats only because I'm to lazy to look them up to see which ones work and which dont. Go to radio shack to buy your dvds they usually have somehting on sale. I got mine at $15 for 50 disks. As for burning you have to use -R disks. Img burn is a free program , I read somewhere that nero can change the flag type as well. I have burned almost 200 dvds in the past 2 months. About 80% of them work. In the past 2 months I have downloaded almost 2tb of games. As for bricking I have not had that problem yet the closest thing i had happen was the disk didnt work ie I would get a green screen and would have to hold down the power button to shut it off. I have been getting a lot of UK games to play on this .