Comment 47 for bug 581925

So the drive is MMC... If you don't mind that you might run into accidental breakage (be warned) install udev package from my ppa https://launchpad.net/~jonie/+archive/ppa and paste the output of /lib/udev/cdrom_id --debug /dev/sr1 having a blank cd inside (if it goes well the system should detect the disc and display a dialog message after insertion). If it still doesn't work you can always downgrade the package to original version using synaptic. Please report your results.
Note: my package doesn't contain any fixes for any other problem than DVD+RW detection and old first gen MMC drives (before ca. 2000).