It's all about the media.
It's about knowing which media your appliances work best with.
I know my dvd player doesn't work well with dvd-r, and my ps2 doesn't work well (at all, really) with dvd+r.
I've used liteon, plextor, ricoh, sony, and lg burners over the years, and they all worked about the same. My plextor 52x plus drive was the best burner i've ever owned, hands down, but that was a cd only drive.
I'm currently using samsung 18x drives, and they're working great for me.
Liteon 16x drives would be my 2nd choice, but they're really noisy. These samsungs are whisper quiet.