Here is the official scoop regarding the 1X to 2X firmware and our true 2X drives and what the difference is.
When Matsushita first spec'd out the slim-line slot-loading DVD-R drives, the DVD-R specification was 2X. During production sampling the yield of 2X mechanisms was extremely low. Also, during real-world testing of the 2X mechanisms it was found that their reliability was very low due to high heat issues and Matsushita could not warranty these drives for the full one year. This is why they shipped these with 1X firmware. They are 2X capable with the correct firmware but the design and many components had to be changed in order to be reliable at this specification. We have already tried to get warranty repairs done by Matsushita on drives that had the hacked firmware and Matsushita sent them back saying they were disqualified due to non-factory firmware. My only caution to owners of 1X drives who have used the firmware hack to bring them to 2X is that these drives, while originally designed to operate at 2X, have components that do not do well, heat-wise, at the 2X speed: Use precaution, don't write too many 2X DVDs at a time and use as much cooling as possible.
Our 2X drives are the revised design and ship from Matsushita to us with 2X firmware and are fully reliable at this specification. In addition, these drives have DVD-RAM capability implemented in them which, as users will find out very quickly since we bundle a 9.4GB DVD-RAM disc with every drive, is an amazing technology that allows the disc to be used as a virtual hard drive on the desktop and you can drag and drop files to it and they are written to the disc on the fly. Think of it as a huge 9.4GB floppy or zip disk. The convenience is amazing. Also, Retrospect compatibility is automatic since Retrospect is compatible with all DVD-RAM devices.
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