I got the black model for $197 total about a month ago--man, those prices are dropping fast... This optorite drive is indeed made by Sanyo. My 4 yr-old oem sanyo 12x cd burner is still burning away (of course I yanked it out and replaced it with this optorite). Sanyo was the first inovator of burn-proof technology and I don't see why hd-burn will not take a similar path in acceptance. Anyway, this is a great drive so far. I've made about 20 or so dvd backups with Fuji 4X dvd-r media. Can't seem to get my samsung 348b cdrw/dvd combo to read 4x media however...but my standalone Toshiba sd5700 dvd player plays it fine. I've burned a few tdk 48X cds using Nero HDBURN and it works great. DVDXcopy seems to like my optorite just fine. The newer DVDxcopy xpress version (3.0) now works with the optorite burner as well. Anyone know what the new firmware upgrade (2.11) does?