Sony DVD-RW, no such thing as blank disc?

[JKirchartz]

I'm running ubuntu 9.10 and I'm having difficulty with my Sony DRU-540a & burning CDs.

No matter what, every disc I put in is unwritable. In Brassaro it says "There is No Recordable Disc Inserted" so I tried Nero & that also said there was no recordable disc.

I know these discs are blank, I just bought them yesterday. They're the same type of disc I used before switching permanently to ubuntu, so what could be the issue?

update, when trying to play an audio cd with VLC I get the following error:

Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'cdda:///dev/sr0'. Check the log for details.

I installed ubuntu with this drive, why can't ubuntu read it?

[JKirchartz]

the drive wont even mount