Reccomend a DVD Writer

themole

Thinking of buying a DVD writer.

Looking at komplett they seem to be pretty cheap these days.

Can anyone reccomend me one?

They all seem to be dual, 16x, +/-.
Anything else to know?

Black is preffered for asthetic reasons

Laguna

This is my one, does the job perfectly, what more can I ask for.

themole

ya.

Thats the one i was looking at myself.

Endurance Man

Buy the cheap one, they all do the same thing. I have installed hundreds of cheapo dvd writers and i cant think of a single failure, i reckon they are all the same

SeanW

I bought that one for my new rig as well. It's perfect.

themole

its settled.

I will buy that one.

Thanks for the info.

now i need to decide on a hd and external case.

ShiverinEskimo

If you can afford it i'd go for this one:

http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=317913

Sata interface, faster and as the review at the bottom says - allows you to get rid of obtrusive IDE cables..SATA ftw.

themole

hmmm,

think i will give that one a miss.

Better things i could spend €60 on

whats the speed advantage?
as in what kind of speed is required to write at 16x?

ShiverinEskimo

themole wrote:

whats the speed advantage?
as in what kind of speed is required to write at 16x?

An entire 4.7GB single layer disk in 12 minutes. Takes me ~18 minutes currently at 8x.. 33% faster. But its also just a better drive - the cheap drives tend to burn themselves out. I'm on my second burner in 2 years cos I burn a lot. I didn't have the cash for the one I recommended at the time I was upgrading and I regret it. IDE cables wreck my head - even before the speed advantages.

Endurance Man

Endurance Man wrote:

Buy the cheap one, they all do the same thing. I have installed hundreds of cheapo dvd writers and i cant think of a single failure, i reckon they are all the same

I ginxed myself so badly there , look what this new DVD writer just did to one of my cd's. Photo is crap on account of me not being able to hold the camera steady.

SeanW

That DVD burner is almost 3 times more expensive!

And while SATA cables are a lot less messy, using IDE doesn't automatically mean you have to settle for ugly-assed and messy IDE ribbons.

There are a number of neater options to replace ribbon cables:
From Komplett alone you can get one of these:
.
Or if you're into case modding, something like this.

And, for your floppy drive:

8T8

BenQ 1650 makes some of the best quality burns you can get with a drive.

Proper booktype support, best media code support, solidburn and over speeding media features & disc quality scanning.

zuma

8T8 wrote:

BenQ 1650 makes some of the best quality burns you can get with a drive.

Proper booktype support, best media code support, solidburn and over speeding media features & disc quality scanning.

Seconded!!!!

I got a 1640 when they were the newest and its a great little thing!!!!

~5minutes for a full 16X single layer DVD and its actually smaller than a lot of other drives....not as deep so good for those HTPC's.

This looks interesting:
DVDRAM
http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=318455
Lightscribe
http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=316659

Oh on my Benq1640 I still havent created a single coaster!

themole

ShiverinEskimo wrote:

An entire 4.7GB single layer disk in 12 minutes. Takes me ~18 minutes currently at 8x.. 33% faster. But its also just a better drive - the cheap drives tend to burn themselves out. I'm on my second burner in 2 years cos I burn a lot. I didn't have the cash for the one I recommended at the time I was upgrading and I regret it. IDE cables wreck my head - even before the speed advantages.

that seems well slow to me.

my 2.5x on my laptop burns a disc in about 25mins.

12mins at 16x??? i would expect better than that from an IDE version.

Am i wrong somehow?

themole

zuma wrote:

S
Lightscribe
http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=316659

Ohhhhh, that looks good.

Whats that lightscribe lark like?

that would be worth €9

awhir

what is lightscribe???

themole

it appers to be a means of burning an image onto the other side of the disc.

ShiverinEskimo

themole wrote:

that seems well slow to me.

my 2.5x on my laptop burns a disc in about 25mins.

12mins at 16x??? i would expect better than that from an IDE version.

Am i wrong somehow?

Its max 12 minutes. That drive was quoted as being able to burn a full disc in 6-12 mins depending on the disc, and the the activity on the comp.

Check this out - some guy tested it.

http://www.cluboc.net/reviews/drives/burners/plextor_px-712sa/index.htm

themole

that guy was testing a 12x writer.

the one on komplett is 16x write

8T8

In case you didn't know a DVD does not burn at 16x all the way instead it starts off at a certain point determined by the write strategy in the firmware usually for 16x media it can be around 6x in then climbs to 8x as it burns the data to the disc and then to 10x, 12x and so on it only actually burns at 16x near the very end of the disc, the fastest time you can generally get with burning at 16x is around 6 minutes give or take.

See this image as an example what your are looking at is the write speed of the drive at 16x with a Taiyo Yuden DVD-R. As you can see it only tops out at 16x near the very end the average write speed is actually around 11x.

Different factors can also affect the write speed for example poor quality media may cause a drive to lower the write speed on the fly even though you selected it to write at 12x or 16x it may drop it to 8x or 4x.

As for Lightscribe I will repeat what I said in another thread;

I had Lightscribe for quite a while I wouldn't say it's all it is cracked up to be but it does have it uses - some of the issues may have been resolved since I last used it but I don't think they have been.

Sepia tone discs only (think a dark shade of gold)

The discs are thumb print magnets and the image can be ruined with constant handling.

Slow time to create the image for some you need to do a pass with best or two passes for best to get the contrast otherwise it is too light. You can see some examples at this link.

Honestly I would forgo Lightscribe and buy a printer which prints to discs the image quality is far higher with none of the above problems.

themole

Would you still go with this drive:

Lightscribe
http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=316659

The light scribe thing is a bit of a gimmick i know but the drive looks good and its only €48

8T8

themole wrote:

Would you still go with this drive:

Lightscribe
http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=316659

The light scribe thing is a bit of a gimmick i know but the drive looks good and its only €48

Yeah the 1655 is just the 1650 with Lightscribe tacked on it's still a great DVD writer.

When you get the drive make sure you install the latest firmware and install BenQ's Q-Suite and under the Soldiburn tab change the supported disc setting to activated, as this will improve the quality of the burns.

astrofool

There's a bit today on optical + sata here:

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2770&p=4

basically, they'll all move over (have to) eventually, as Intel, nVidia, ATI drop parallel ports, but it could be a while yet.

8T8

Yeah the big PC makers have avoided SATA optical drives for a long time didn't help the first SATA spec had problems with optical drives and then issues with drivers in the OS and such. Which in turn made the optical drive makers avoid building them en mass.

I suspect from BenQ's wording that it wont be till Windows Vista comes out that we will start to see increased support for SATA optical drives.

Akula

I'd second the BenQ 1650 or 1655. Great drive from my experience.