Is it just me or is it impossible to burn a .iso to an optical disc?

I have tried with dd, various iso writers on various distributions but these either grey out or do not list the target device, and with multiple pieces of hardware. I am always met with an error that the media is read-only when the disc drive is read and write. I also tried /dev/sr0 and its alias /dev/cdrom but nothing different happened.

An internet search tells me that special software like wodim, growisofs, or Brasero could be needed. Why and is this just me?

If dd did work I imagine that I could use bs= to bring down the write speed and improve accuracy.