vinnie97, they did get it right but I think you just got a dud drive like some people do with other stuff these days.
Ian, I have the Asus DVD-E616P3 OEM drive with the firmware it came with and am trying to flash to the latest. I put in a request at the Firmware Page for an OEM-to-retail flasher and then I'll be able to flash to the latest firmware. It seems to work fine so far for CD-Rs and it played a "Matrix: Revolutions" fine in PowerDVD5. I've been using EAC to rip music off some bad CD-Rs and sometimes it rips a song that my Lite-On DVD SOHD 16P9S did not; I haven't tried it the other way 'round yet though.