Are that many bugs present in all cdrom drives?

Hell, yes. They're all broken to one degree or another. The one we used in the Central was chosen because:

1. We could actually source a whole load of them in large enough quantities.
2. It had fewer bugs than most of the other drives we looked at.
3. The bugs it did have were easier to work around.

We chose a specific drive -- rather than attempt to support a whole bunch of different ones -- because we didn't have time to write code for and test on more than the one drive.