New dvd burner?

Mutant_Fruit

I've just noticed DVD writers have dropped hugely in price, for example this one is only ERU125.

I'm just wondering what peoples experiences are regarding DVD writers.

1) Which brands are reliable etc.
2) The amount of coasters that you'd make on average, 1 in 5 discs, 1 in 10, none?
3) Cost of media, and teh best place to get it
4) Which media type is most compatible with standalone dvd players.
5) What should i be looking for in a new DVD burner.

Any other info i should know, just write it.
Thanks

astrofool

top of the pile right now is the Plextor 708A

Mutant_Fruit

Hrmm... i remember reading something about dvd-burners being upgraded to do dual layer dvd's. Would i be better off waiting for that firmware to come out? And what burners will support it? Or is it just a lot of hot air?

And what puts the plex ahead of everything else? reading performance, writing performance? Ability to read copyprotected cd's?

unkel

The current phase is blu-laser using a lower wavelength thus enabling more data to be written to dvd (up to about 30GB per side or 60GB on two sides). This has been out in Japan for the last 8 months or so. Next phase is dual layer enabling up to 120GB for a two sided DVD

Very expensive still though and currently only really targetted at Japanese market for recording HDTV programs, not so much as PC peripheral

Col_Loki

I ahve the NEC Nd1100a , its €77 from komplett and i find it brilliant. Ive burnt around 30 dvd's and not one coaster. Ive burnt loads of cd's with it aswell and very little coasters.... very pleased.

The one you are thinkin about is able to burn + and - dvd's which is great if one does become extinct. I find Dvd+r to be the most compatible from what ive seen (feel free to correct me) .

Dvd+r's go from €2 for a good make like verbatim down to under a euro. Best places to buy media would be komplett and http://www.blankdiscshop.co.uk/ (if your ordering alot as delivery is a killer).

I personally took a chance on the NEC burner and im quite happy , pioneer are suppose to be brilliant..........

elexes

personaly id go for the one mentioned above by astrofool

its a x8 writer so you can do a dvd in about 10 mins . very nice imo

byte

I'm considering one myself. I have been looking at a site selling retail Pioneer A06 for UK£99.98 or OEM version for £83.48 though they're awaiting stock of both models at the moment.

BTW this is the site

chabsey

Originally posted by Mutant_Fruit
I've just noticed DVD writers have dropped hugely in price, for example this one is only ERU125.

I'm just wondering what peoples experiences are regarding DVD writers.

1) Which brands are reliable etc.
2) The amount of coasters that you'd make on average, 1 in 5 discs, 1 in 10, none?
3) Cost of media, and teh best place to get it
4) Which media type is most compatible with standalone dvd players.
5) What should i be looking for in a new DVD burner.

Any other info i should know, just write it.
Thanks

1) Which brands are reliable? - I have an LG4040B which I flashed with the latest firmware out of the box. Works like a dream and has only burned one coaster (DVD) and that was cause the DVD media in question had been physically damaged, nothing to do with the burner. It also burns just about any media, unlike the NEC ones which some people say are more fickle with cheaper media.

2) Amount of coaster? Like I said above, out of the 30+ DVDs I've burned I've only burned one coaster. But see below for more detail...

3) Cost of media...Peats used to sell Yellow Topped Datawrite DVDs which people claimed were cheap/crap. I bought a 25 spindle and every one of them burned at 4X perfectly. The discs seemed nice and solid too (you'd have to compare them to cheaper media to know what I mean). However, Peats then changed to a dire brand called QP which claim to burn at 4 X but will only burn at 2X and they have done weird things like throw errors at 100% of a burn....but the resultant discs still work perfectly. At 2 speed though it takes 30 mins to burn a DVD which is a pain.

4) Which media is most compatible? Well I've burned Datawrites at 4X, QPs at 2X and blank no-name no-brand discs at 4X and they've ALL worked in all players I've tried them in EXCEPT my original Wharfedale player which was over 2 years old. I bought a cheap 69 euros player from Powercity and it plays everything I've tried in it. I've also tried these discs in the following brands of player: DMTech, JVC, Sony, Mitsubishi, Scott and Phillips....all DVDs I've burned work in all those players.



5) What should I look for in a DVD burner? Dual compatability is great, don't want to be stuck with just +R as they're more expensive blanks and there's little difference really. I personally wouldn't bother with an 8 X speed burner now as the 8X discs are harder to get and more expensive....however, this will change and therefore maybe it's worth getting one now. 4X takes 15 mins to burn a full DVD. My burner also burns DVD-RAM which I'd never heard of before buying the burner but which I now love. It's essentially like DVD-RW but you just pop in the RAM disc and it opens a window into which you can copy and delete stuff just like a spare drive. It works at 3X which is fine for me and my burner came with a free RAM disc.


So there you have it. I'd recommend my burner, an LG4040b but others will say differently.

Hope this helps.

Stephen

What kind of speeds does it burn CD-R's at? I ask this because I will probably be replacing my CDRW drive with a DVD recorder in the near future. I quite like my 40x CDRW drive which does 700mb discs in about 3 and a half minutes, it would suck to go back to 15 mins/disc speeds

The reason I have to replace the CDRW is that all my IDE channels are full, and I'd like to keep my DVD-ROM drive for doing on-the-fly copies.

ando

Originally posted by COL_LOKI
I ahve the NEC Nd1100a , its €77 from komplett and i find it brilliant. Ive burnt around 30 dvd's and not one coaster. Ive burnt loads of cd's with it aswell and very little coasters.... very pleased.

I'm guessing coaster means failed burn?

Jeez, 77 quid.. thats amazing, Ireland sucks for prices. The cheapest DVD burner I seen today in Blanchardstown was E200... Ripoff

astrofool

CD-R's at 40x and CD-RW's at 24x(maximum available), munch

Stephen

Which drive? The plextor or LG? DVD-RAM sounds dead handy for making backup CD's and the like.

chabsey

Originally posted by Stephen
What kind of speeds does it burn CD-R's at? I ask this because I will probably be replacing my CDRW drive with a DVD recorder in the near future. I quite like my 40x CDRW drive which does 700mb discs in about 3 and a half minutes, it would suck to go back to 15 mins/disc speeds

The reason I have to replace the CDRW is that all my IDE channels are full, and I'd like to keep my DVD-ROM drive for doing on-the-fly copies.

The Lg4040 burns CD-Rs at 24 speed (6 mins for full CD) and CD-RWs at 16 speed. I've found that burning faster than 24 speed tends to lead to higher rate of coasters but maybe that was just other drives I've used.


DVD RAM is very handy, whenever I've downloaded a large patch or bit of software and I don't want to delete it right away just in case, I just copy it quickly onto the RAM disc and deal with it later. It keeps my desktop clean and the harddrive less cluttered. As far as I can tell you also don't need any specific software to copy to the RAM disc, just pop it in and it opens in a new window (on XP anyway).

ando

Originally posted by chabsey
DVD RAM is very handy

what the hell is it? Is it a special dvd disk that you put into the drive and record to it, extremely fast? or is just like typical burning??

Mixie

Originally posted by ando
what the hell is it? Is it a special dvd disk that you put into the drive and record to it, extremely fast? or is just like typical burning??

DVD-RAM is one of the competing recordable DVD standards. DVD-RAM is not compliant with regular standalone DVD-Video players, nor is it compliant with any DVD-ROM drives. Normally used as a slow hard-drive replacement, I imagine the standard will die out pretty soon as the more compatible DVD-/+R/RW standards are increasing in popularity.

chabsey

Originally posted by Mixie
DVD-RAM is one of the competing recordable DVD standards. DVD-RAM is not compliant with regular standalone DVD-Video players, nor is it compliant with any DVD-ROM drives. Normally used as a slow hard-drive replacement, I imagine the standard will die out pretty soon as the more compatible DVD-/+R/RW standards are increasing in popularity.

Quite true on most points and I'd agree that it doesn't get as much attention as the other two formats (I'd never really understood what it was until I tried it). However, I never considered it as a replacement for DVD-RW and the fact that it came with my drive was a happy coincidence and an added extra.

However, you're wrong about no stand-alones supporting it, some do (Panasonic)and some stand-alone recorders also use it.

These seem to be the advantages of DVD-RAM over DVD-RW

1) You can write and delete individual files while DVD-RW seems to require entire writes and rewrites (not tested this myself though)

2) You can just drag and drop files without the need for software or leaving sessions open etc as is the case with DVD-RW...essentially like a hard drive rather than like a CD.


3) A really cool feature, double sided-ness! You can get 9.4 gig discs and they'll work in the player you own now, so it's essentially like having two DVD-RWs. Not sure why this isn't done with DVD-rws but it doesn't seem to be the case....but could be wrong.


Basically I would not buy an Lg4040b drive just for the DVD-RAM element but it is really handy for just dropping data on to. Don't expect it to work in stand alones but it might and what the hell, it comes free with the drive!

Mixie

I ddin't say no stand-alones support it, but that regular ones wouldn't. I'm not knocking the format, in fact I love the capacity of it and it's 'hard-drive' usage.

Mutant_Fruit

thanks for the replys, its been helpful alright

But back to my slightly older question, are there some drives coming out soon that will burn dual layer discs? Here;s some quotes from doom9

The DVD+ system is one step closer to dual layer recording: Philips has released the dual layer specifications to the DVD+RW alliance (the promoters of the DVD+ format) for review. The final specs are expected in January 2004.

The first dual layer DVD burners are not that far off after all. BenQ's DW820A is based on the 8x dw800a model but adds 2.4x DVD+R9 recording. BenQ is also still looking into the possibility of upgrading the existing DW800A burner to burn dual layer media.

hcvti

Go for the LG 4040b or the pioneer 106 is a close second, if you are to use cheap media I would probably go with the pioneer as it has had good compatibility reports.

omathuna

I just bought the NEC 1300 from Komplett last week.
It seems to be fine. I have not done any speed tests yet but I have converted an analog home Video to DVD using the drive and written it to a Lidl DVD-R.
It works great in my standalone player.

I must try doing a one to one copy of a DVD to test its speed. If your interested I will let you know how I got on.

Finally the drive was €121 when i got it now it seems to be down to €107.

whosurpaddy

i would also reccommend the LG 4040b. ive burned almost 200 dvd discs since christmass on this drive without one failure. also burned about 20 cds, 5 cd-rw's and a dvd-rw in a pear tree id reccommend getting the datawrite yellow media peats do (works perfectly with this drive) but if your gonna get a couple of spindles get it from svp

havent tried out the dvd-ram feature yet (i got the oem version without the disc) but ill be getting a dvd-ram disc in my next shipment so will look forward to that. this drive is pretty much the only burner which will do +- and ram.

savemejebus

I think that the Pioneer A07/107 is coming out soon and that is supposed to have dual layer compatibility, however i have heart a rumour that you can take the firmware from this drive and use it on the A06/106 to turn it into a dual layer recorder

John R

The Pioneer 107 is out now, svp have it. No dual layer, just double speed (8x) of the 106 and afaik you can get the same speeds out of the 106 by updating the firmware.