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Technology

What DVD Writer Would You Recommend? 30

Posted by Cliff from the obsoleting-plain-CDRs dept.
Artemis Entreri asks: "I've decided that the next paycheck is going to buy me a DVD burner. The storage capacity is sexy, and the ability to make backups of movies and PS2 games is irresistible. I've done some research, but not enough to really reassure me. Between the three technologies (DVD+RW, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM), and the various companies making burners, I'm not sure what to get. Any ideas on which format is going to prevail? Anybody know which burners are the ones-to-get?"
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What DVD Writer Would You Recommend? More

What DVD Writer Would You Recommend?

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  • Pioneer A03 (Score:3, Informative)

    by cymru1 ( 300568 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @06:45PM (#2549358)
    The pioneer-A03 is very nice, not too extortionate and can burn dvd's that are readable in standalone players

  • no to RAM (Score:3, Informative)

    by heliocentric ( 74613 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @08:08PM (#2549486) Homepage Journal
    I have a DVD-RAM drive, and although it's great for my needs (storing mpegs from a survelance camera) the media is locked in what are basically fat 5.25" floppy disk like jackets - read: won't go well in your PS2, etc... Drive works great and the media prices sure have come down, but I don't think this product's feature set intersects your needs.
  • Have they worked out ways to make direct copies of all DVD's yet?

    Eg, can I get a DVD burner that is able to burn disks up to the maxiumum size DVD's that I can buy, and are playable in normal DVD drives/players?

    If now, how far is that away?
    • [If now, how far is that away?]

      Recursion error. Please repost with correct question for correct answer. ;-)
    • stupid keyboard ;-)
    • If you mean dual layer (19G) disks, no.

      And honestly, I don't think it will happen anytime in the near future. The way layering works is naturally suited to a 'pressed write, focusable laser read', but not to the process of writing a disk at home.

      Pressed DVD's are basically produced as 2 disk surfaces, which are then fixed together.

      Reading dual-layer disks is fundamentally different to writing them. An analogy would be to take 2 sheets of tracing paper, if you punch holes in them with a pencil, then put them together, looking through the sheets you can see both layers. Now try to put them together first, and punch holes in the 'bottom' layer using a pencil, it can't be done without punching a hole in the top layer, no matter how fancy a pencil you use. Writing dual-layer DVD's will likely prove to be a similar problem.

      If there IS ever a solution, it will likely involve a different way of approaching the problem than using a plain DVD compatible disk. Something akin to how MO disks work - ie the writing process is a combination of a magnetic field AND a laser. Even then, its going to be a tough problem to solve, IMO.

  • How about region coding?
    Are new dvd-burners cursed with this "feature" or could we finally, after paying USD5-600 watch/record whatever we want?

  • DVD+RW (Score:1, Interesting)

    by ArsonPerBuilding ( 319673 )
    From what I understand, DVD+RW is the most versatile format. It can read all dvd formats, including(to my knowledge) dvd-ram. It can burn CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD+RW(need an extra 4.7 gigs?). They tend to be a bit expensive though, and not widely avalible.

    • NOPE!!! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Llama Keeper ( 7984 )
      DVD-RW doesn't necesarily mean that the drive reads DVD-RAM. There are two drives that handle DVD-R and DVD-RAM, the MAtsishita I posted about is decent the other one is Bloody Crap.

      LLAMA

  • Pirates know Best (Score:5, Informative)

    by TheDarkRogue ( 245521 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @09:33PM (#2549622)
    Again, i'm not one to advertise, but GameCopyWorld and their daughter sites are imo the best for information on stuff like this. They are the ones that lead me to my decision on which CDRW to buy and I have been nothing but happy with it. You can find a link to a DVD Comparison of theirs Here [cdmediaworld.com] which gives a comparison between them and different drives and such. They will also give you links and info on DVD Backup software that you can use.
    • sure wish I could look at that site. it keeps crashing netscape (immediately) upon clicking on that site. I have java and script both disabled AND I use an adblocker.

      I'm sure there's good info on that site, but I tried twice (once from a freshly run netscape) and its just not viewable with ns 4.77, linux version ;-(

  • Burning DVD's is something I've been looking at as an alternative to CD's, but the one thing that has kept me away is the price of blanks. At ~$20 per disk that I've seen locally, they're not far off the same price/G as hard disks. Anyone seen better prices on this?

  • GO with the Pioneer or Panasonic (Matsushita) (Score:4, Informative)

    by Llama Keeper ( 7984 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @11:15PM (#2549769) Homepage
    I consult for a video production company that has 2 DVD-R(W) drives. We test drove 5 different drives and settled on 2. We have a Pioneer DVR-103 (thats the "superdrive" thats in the new Apples) and a Matsushita LF-D310.

    We use the drives for a couple of different things, permament archiving of Data, outputting video when it won't fit on a CD, and we have one in house production that we sell on DVD which we burn in house (1-2 copies a month).

    I like the Pioneer because it burns at 2 speed, and reads and writes DVD-RW. It however is finicky about firmware versions, and doens't like to do more than 3 or 4 multiple copies.

    The Matsushita accepts DVD-RAM and DVD-R (Both formats) and I really like that feature. It however only burns and 1 speed and I always have to do a test burn. I would recomend the Pioneer over the Matsushita for the average person, because DVD-RAM media is so expensive.

    Shop around when looking for DVD-R media, if you buy in bulk (more than 10 units) you can often get media for $6 a piece. E-mail me if you need a link to buy the media.
  • an article in ZDNET states that Hitachi is coming out with a multi-format DVD player/recorder. Read it at
    http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20011105/tc/hita ch i_develops_versatile_dvd_drive_1.html
  • I wanted to get a DVD-R drive, primarily for archiving television shows for my kids. I tried out a couple of drives that are intended for PCs. The software that came with the drives was incredibly limited, with poor user interfaces, and lots of bugs.

    For example, none of the drives came with software that would do simple cutting of video footage imported from a camera. They all wanted the final media to be on the camera. If you need video editing, they want you to pay at least $100 extra.

    Also, the ability to make menus, etc. totally, totally sucked (or was non-existant).

    And, the QUE Firewire DVD-R/RAM drive kept giving me hardware crashes under XP.

    I ended up returning each drive, and ultimately got a Dual Processor Mac G4 with superdrive. Everything I need to do can be done easily. iDVD2 is outstanding. Sure, I can squeeze more video on if I invest in DVD Studio, but it's incredibly easy to make discs that look great with that package (all under OSX... I don't think I could have standed a mac if it had to use the old Mac OS).

    The bottom line here is that, while PC solutions are perfectly fine for archiving data, anyone who would like to make DVDs that play in DVD players should avoid PC solutions until the PC software advances a heck of a lot... the Mac solutions are infinitely better (another example: you can easily import from camcorders over the firewire port). I have to say that it was worth the extra cost, even though I had to buy a brand new machine.

  • Go with the Pioneer (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I ended up with a Pioneer drive because I bought a Macintosh G4/733 at a local store on closeout that came with it (for less than a new Quicksilver 733 w/o, but that's another story).

    I like it because it works. The DVD-Rs work in all but one DVD video player I tried (an old Toshiba from 1998) and all the PCs I tried. It also does DVD-RWs (though NOT with Apple's software, and they definately don't advertise this), though those don't work in nearly as many players (they all work fine in my main Pioneer DVD video player though).
    If you get a DVD-R drive, get the blank's from Apple. They're selling 5-packs for $30 (including ground shipping!) This is a total steal. The local store (same one that sold me the G4) wants $16 for each blank!

    I've copied 1 commercial DVD that I own just to see if it would work, and it came out fine. I've made numerious UDF data disks which are great, and also taken footage from my Mini-DV cam, trying different MPEG2 encodings, and all of them played great (though it looks really crappy at 6mbps).

    - Turbo

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