Reccomend a DVD Burner

[DB_Hunter]

I want to buy a DVD burner.... was wondering if any of you guys would like to enlighten me on which one I should get or just generally throw in your suggestions for which is the best buy.

[DB_Hunter]

Nice..... I was planning on buying the Lite-On 8x speed burner... though I just came across the Plextor one and that is going for over £143 without P&P. I don't think the Plextor name is worth it.

[hiroshi]

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Nec 1300-A</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Hey, that&#39;s the one i was talking about too. That means there&#39;s two ppl so far that appreciate that burner. Yeah sorry, i forgot to say it was duel, it does both DVD+ and DVD-

Sounds like the NEC is your best bet so far. It&#39;s got two ppl recommending it ^^
Of course though, the ultimate choice is yours =P

[DB_Hunter]

Yea but now I don&#39;t know what to do&#33;&#33;&#33; Shall I pay the extra and chance it with a faster burner? I mean, what would you go for?

Also, I have read that maybe new drives that support the 9GB+ DVD discs will be released in the future... so do you guys think they are worth buying? 4.7GB per disc is a lot of capacity as it is....

[KakashiSensei]

Hey just watch out with the 8x speed, its really new and there arent any media that supports it yet. Also in April there maybe a dual layer burner coming out.

[Koyuki]

Nec 2500A http://www.gotwoot.net/forum/html/emoticons/mf_dribble.gif

[DB_Hunter]

Hmm..... thanks for mentioning that. But then if 8x speed is not viable, then which 4x is the best value?

[hiroshi]

It&#39;s true about the new releases in the DVD market, but that&#39;s always going to be true. You could wait a month for the newest thing, but then an even better thing would just be released the following month. In a market as fast as the computer market, there is basically no real point in waiting. It moves too fast, so you may as well buy things as you need them rather than wait because something better will come out soon.

There arn&#39;t many Blank DVDs that are compatible with the 8 speed drives yet, no doubt that will change in time. As for the 9GB DVDs, if you&#39;re going to wait for them then you may as well wait for the BlueRay DVD Drives, which will bring over 20GBs worth of space to write to. As for the Duel Layers, i haven&#39;t heard much about those but if you think about it logically, a duel layer would probably mean write only and no re-writables. (Unless you mean the one which can be written on both sides, in which case it&#39;s been out for a while now and can be used with any DVD writer).

the NEC is a 4 speed DVD Writer, and is my recommendation =P
*Sticks to what he said earlier http://www.gotwoot.net/forum/html/emoticons/laugh.gif *

[JessiA]

I still say Sony because it&#39;s a DVD+ or-RW and +-R, (4x)

Plus, I heard my dad and boyfriend talkin&#39; about the *Ons yesterday, about how they&#39;re built just for the advertising. They both work/ed in the electronic retail buz... so.. http://www.gotwoot.net/forum/html/emoticons/rolleyes.gif (I think I like this smiley too much)

Plus, my boyfriend just got it for X-mas.... and Sony is a good brand, more known than Lite-On http://www.gotwoot.net/forum/html/emoticons/dry.gif

[KakashiSensei]

I have a Panasonic DVD-Ram/RW 2x and it does its job, Never had a prob with it sinice July. Stay away from Lesser known Brands. Most people dont every own more then 1 DVD burner so if they have a good experience with one then thats all the experience they have.

DVD-R is a good idea to get b/c it has (there was a test done) 99% compatibility with Stand Alone players and DVD+R is 98% its a small difference but with the price of Media anything small helps.

For really Help on this go to http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdwriters ('http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdwriters') there are good reviews on DVD Writers, they are great. They also have good Programs to fit Dual layer dvd&#39;s to single layer DVD recordables

[KakashiSensei]

If anyone needs any help or what programs to use, or access to good programs PM me. I have them all &quot;shareware versions&quot; http://www.gotwoot.net/forum/html/emoticons/wink.gif I have been doing this for 6 months now. Its also a good idea to get into the Newsgroups as they have a DVDR group and DVD Anime group which is wicked

[hiroshi]

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> still say Sony because it&#39;s a DVD+ or-RW and +-R, (4x)

Plus, I heard my dad and boyfriend talkin&#39; about the *Ons yesterday, about how they&#39;re built just for the advertising. They both work/ed in the electronic retail buz... so.. (I think I like this smiley too much)

Plus, my boyfriend just got it for X-mas.... and Sony is a good brand, more known than Lite-On </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Well we&#39;ve already said NEC do both DVD+ and DVD- and seeing as it&#39;s a Re-Writer of course it will do both +/-RW and +/-R. Also because Sony is such a high brand, it&#39;s double the price just because of the company you&#39;re buying it from. It&#39;s basically the same as the NEC so i&#39;m not saying it&#39;s no good or anything or the NEC is any better, but seeng as it does the same as the NEC you may as well get the NEC which is cheaper because the name isn&#39;t very well recognised. Lite-On is good, but again for some reason the NEC appears to be cheaper.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Stay away from Lesser known Brands.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

I totally disagree. There are decent brands out there that are just as good as the big brand names. For instance, do you go and buy your hardware from say a big brand company like Dixons, or something, or from some website which dosn&#39;t have shops on a highstreet as such. (EG: Ebuyer, Dabs, etc)

Hell, i buy what&#39;s know as &quot;Kick&quot; from Tesco&#39;s which is Tesco&#39;s own brand, as it&#39;s only 99p and comes in Litre bottles, but tastes exactly the same as RedBull but is tons and tons cheaper.

If you find a good brand other than a Major brand, then you&#39;re doing better than those which simply buy from big brand names.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>DVD-R is a good idea to get b/c it has (there was a test done) 99% compatibility with Stand Alone players and DVD+R is 98% its a small difference but with the price of Media anything small helps.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

This may be true (i really don&#39;t know), but DVD+ has a lot more functions and allows you to burn twice as much onto a DVD. You should check Here ('http://www.dvdplusrw.org/') for the differences between the two types, and for a compatibility list on which players can play DVD+ type burns.

[DB_Hunter]

Thanks for the continued stream of info guys appreciate it. Been reading around on VCD Help.com ('http://www.vcdhelp.com') and Tweak News.net ('http://www.tweaknews.net'). Will check out the sites mentioned earlier though.

Hiroshi I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that the Computer market moves very fast... kinda knocked my head back to it&#39;s senses. I was actually going into a stupid loop and thinking OK if I wait for 8x Media to come out a faster drive would be out then that would be the thing to have etc.

Too bad I can&#39;t start a poll in this topic for which writer to get http://www.gotwoot.net/forum/html/emoticons/sad.gif .

Off to read those reviews.

Edit: Hey KakashiSensei we are talking about the same site I didn&#39;t realise... I&#39;m just used to remembering it by it&#39;s old name http://www.gotwoot.net/forum/html/emoticons/smile.gif .

[KakashiSensei]

yeah thats the site that started it all for me. Way back when I encoded a bunch of That 70&#39;s Show that I Vid capped to VCD. What fun that was.

[zzz]

I just ordered the LG GSA-4040B.

Write
- CD-RW: 12x, 8x, 4x
- CD-R: 24x, 16x, 8x, 4x
- DVD+RW: 2.4x
- DVD+R: 4x, 2.4x
- DVD-RW: 2x, 1x
- DVD-R: 4x, 2x
- DVD-RAM: 3x, 2x

It gets really great reviews. I hope its good.

[DB_Hunter]

How much for?

Edit: It seems as though it will be decided by the price now if I get the NEC or the Sony... it&#39;s getting too close to call spec-wise... though having a Sony would be nice. It seems as though I&#39;m going to have to go to Tottenham Court Road again and see what the shop keepers will do in terms of lowering the price.

Which brings up nicely the next issue: What&#39;s the cost of your drive of choice (try to quote it from a UK online/street retailer if you can please)?

[JessiA]

Sony DRW-510A. *nods* Best Buy recently had a sale on &#39;em.

[DB_Hunter]

Finally a response http://www.gotwoot.net/forum/html/emoticons/mf_gap.gif &#33;

What about the Lite On 8x DVD rewriter (The one that can do 8x+R, 4x+RW. 4x-R, 2x-RW)?

[hiroshi]

The UK Market is probably significantly different to that of the US Market, thus my opinion probably won&#39;t matter that much.

For me, the best buy was the NEC DVD-Rewriter.
It was one of the best quality ones out there but at the same time was the cheapest one. It was 4x speed write, x2 speed ReWrite, and 40x read i think.
My version was black to match the case, but i think it comes in other colours too.

I got mine from ebuyer, but they have a US version of their site also Here ('http://www.ebuyer.com').

This is the same quality as the Sony one mentioned really, but far far cheaper. Mainly because when you buy the Sony product, although Sony is a good make and everything, the brand itself doubles the price. NEC isn&#39;t that well known, thus is far cheaper because you&#39;re not paying for the brand name. But i&#39;ve had mine for quite a while yet and used it too, and can safely say, that you can Trust the NEC Brand.

[DB_Hunter]

Does the speed of the hard disk matter? I mean, 8x burner&#39;s transfer at about 10Meg&#39;s per second..... can a 5400 rpm disk keep up with that?

[SuntUrioN]

The only DVD burners I would suggest are the:

Lite-On LDW-411S
Lite-On LDW-811S
Nec 1300-A

These are top of the line DUAL DVD burners and aren&#39;t really expensive.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Does the speed of the hard disk matter? I mean, 8x burner&#39;s transfer at about 10Meg&#39;s per second..... can a 5400 rpm disk keep up with that? </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

All dvd burners use technology similar to SMART-BURN to avoid Buffer Under Run errors.

[hiroshi]

hm... I&#39;m not entirely sure, but i think the RAM types are suppose to be the ones which burn DVDs that will work on absolutly any DVD Player possible. Basically, you know when companies release their DVD&#39;s and they play on any DVD Player in your country? Well the RAM is like a Universal DVD. It plays on anything (which will play DVDs of course), but of course isn&#39;t limited to your country.

hm... let me see.... how many times did i just repeat myself in that paragraph? lol XP

As for the price of my DVD choice.
Grab it for £76.38 + VAT at Here ('http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=48121').

Actually i&#39;m quite shocked at the price. It&#39;s still cheaper than the Sony one on that site, but it was only about £40 when i bought mine, which was the reason i suggested it so strongly =/

or if you manage to read this within the next 2 days. You can buy it Here ('http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2777080923&category=3754') for £56.50 (Current Bidding Price)(£6.50 P&amp;P).

meh.... this is weird.... i guess i was lucky with mine http://www.gotwoot.net/forum/html/emoticons/blink.gif

Edit: It basically does a special format, so you don&#39;t need to bother screwing around with those different UDF Format types...........

But i don&#39;t trust my information enough on this.... so i would simply say to wait for someone else to say what it is, or look it up. ^^&#39;

[zzz]

LG one I bought for 160 Canadian.

[DB_Hunter]

Guys this may seem surprising to you lot since these drives havn&#39;t been mentioned but it seems that Pioneer drives are getting some good reviews too... you lot might want to check em out next time your looking for a new drive.

Also, is it worth getting a RAM drive? What is it&#39;s main purpose primarily?

[samsonlonghair]

My understaning is that DVDRAM is only for data storage. You probably wouldn&#39;t want the headaches that come along with trying to get a DVDRAM to play on a home DVD player.

Hiroshi, as far a the countries go, reigon encoding is done when you actually burn the disk. You can set any disk to burn at reigon 0 to be played on any DVD player.

[KakashiSensei]

I have conflicting reports about that, the RAM disks were just DATA disks that a re writable. But i will test that out on Monday and burn one to find out. Thanks for the info Hiroshi I appreciate that and report back then http://www.gotwoot.net/forum/html/emoticons/laugh.gif

[Krbadass]

Any dvd burner works, theres no real best one that ive seen as of yet.

[hiroshi]

Meh, yeah sorry. That&#39;s why i did the edit about the UDF type.
Besides, i already said i don&#39;t trust my information on that specific thing enough =P

[eimaj]

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (zzz @ Dec 28 2003, 07:06 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> I just ordered the LG GSA-4040B.

Write
- CD-RW: 12x, 8x, 4x
- CD-R: 24x, 16x, 8x, 4x
- DVD+RW: 2.4x
- DVD+R: 4x, 2.4x
- DVD-RW: 2x, 1x
- DVD-R: 4x, 2x
- DVD-RAM: 3x, 2x

It gets really great reviews. I hope its good. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
I would say LG - 404
Cheapest price - works great for me.
Burns everything fine -- works with Nero 5.5 (latest update)

Now its just a matter of time to see how long it works.

[DB_Hunter]

*Cue drums*

























I have finally bought a DVD burner&#33; Primarily hiroshi&#39;s enthusiasim and the fact it was cheap http://www.gotwoot.net/forum/html/emoticons/rolleyes.gif made me buy the NEC 1300A burner. I&#39;m testing it out right now... its acting strange that the discs I&#39;m using are doing about 2.4x on a speed test, are said to be burning at 4x (the speed which I thought they were when I bought them) but are taking about 42 minutes to burn&#33;&#33;&#33; Any ideas on what is going on???

I have a P3 500MHz comp with 128MB RAM on which I am using it currently.. my new computer should arrive on tuesday.

[DDBen]

Thats what I&#39;m running. Atleast in the US its no shipping or tax in most states and costs &#036;203 at www.newegg.com

Plextor Black 8X DVD-RW/+RW Drive, Model PX-708A/SW-BL, Retail

Specifications:
Model: PX-708A/SW-B
Write Speed: 40X CD-R, 24X CD-RW, 8X DVD+R, 4X DVD-R, 4X DVD+RW, 2X DVD-RW
Read Speed: 40X CD-ROM/CD-R, 12X DVD-ROM
Interface: Internal IDE
Buffer: 2 MB
OS Support: Windows XP/ ME/ 2000/ 98SE
Features: Lossless linking technology, Buffer Underrun Proof technology
Remark: Retail Pack (see pictures for details)

[hiroshi]

Sorry i&#39;ve been gone for so long =P

That&#39;s pretty weird http://www.gotwoot.net/forum/html/emoticons/blink.gif
Mine burns in like 10 - 15mins. You have to buy special DVDs which state on the back that they are compatible with 4x speed DVD Writers. Because some blank DVDs (unknown reason to me), don&#39;t burn very well at high speeds.

Also, what program are you using? If the program is caching the information onto your Harddrive instead of burning it straight to your DVD, then the two major things you need is a lot of RAM, and a lot of processing power. Because it stores some of the information you&#39;re going to burn into your RAM if you have the program set to cache before it burns.

Because DVDs are considerabally bigger than normal CDs, the information you&#39;re likely to write to the DVDs are also likely to be in bigger chunks. When the program caches information, it can&#39;t simple cache a part of a stream of data in which it&#39;s going to put onto the DVD, it caches chunks of information instead. Because the files you are burning are considerabally larger, you&#39;re going to need a lot more RAM to store those much larger chunks of information. Also, the more RAM that is taken up by cache, the slower your computer will be able send the stream to the DVD in the first place.

I would seriously consider upgrading your RAM =P
This will result in not only faster burns in a cache mode, but also a greater stability of your burns because you&#39;re using cache mode.

If you do not upgrade your RAM, you should burn On the Fly (Direct to DVD) instead, but it will result in less stability and more chance of a failed burn.

The NEC DVD Drive does have a decent cache already on the Burner, which increases your stability of on the fly burns considerabally... but...

You really need to upgrade your RAM and Processor =P

Brief:
RAM handles - Main cache, also helps with regulation of stream.
Processor handles - Main regulator for stream.

If RAM is too small:
Not enough space for a Cache of large amounts of information. Results on high dependancy on your processor to give out information at very high rates.

If Processor too slow:
Not fast enough to keep up with Burner. Results in high dependancy on cache to smooth the stream.

Conclusion:
Not really sure of the best setting. But for DVD Burns, i don&#39;t think i would use anything slower than 1GHz with 512MBs of RAM.

*ahem*... but again. What program do you use anyway? =P

Edit:
Upgrade RAM to: Increase stability and allow cache burns.
Upgrade Processor to: Increase speed of burn, but only during &#39;on the fly&#39;
Upgrade Both to: Increase speed, and stability and allow cache burns.

[DB_Hunter]

Lol thanks for all that info.

I&#39;m using Nero ver 6.

As for the computer specs you suggested, on tuesday my new base unit arrives, and when I stick in the stuff I&#39;m getting/have for it from other sources, it will have the following spec:

Pentium 4 2.8GHz CPU
640MB DDR 333MHz RAM
128MB ATI Radeon 9200 series Graphics card.
40GB HDD.
80GB HDD.
48xCD-Rewriter/16xDVD Player Combo drive.
NEC 1300A DVD Burner.
No floppy drive (damn Dell http://www.gotwoot.net/forum/html/emoticons/mf_jumpon.gif ).

[DDBen]

hmm thats not much ram if you are burning DVD&#39;s I&#39;d recommend getting a bit more also all media CD&#39;s or DVD&#39;s has max speed written on them so if its a 2.4X speed DVD it won&#39;t burn at 4X correctly. However as a note Plextor DVD burner will burn 4X dvd&#39;s at 8X correctly in 8 minutes a DVD.

[DB_Hunter]

OK just to let you guys know the burner isn&#39;t at fault... I just used it in my new computer to burn Naruto Eps 1-25 and the special ( total of 4.19GB) and Nero popped the finished box at 14 minutes and 6 seconds. I used the same kind of disc too. Must have been my old computer then.

[hiroshi]

Yep. Not enough RAM and processing power on your old compie ^^&#39;

[p3psi]

finally buying a burner, just realized i could get a burner for the same price as a 120 gig hard drive i was goning to buy http://www.gotwoot.net/forum/html/emoticons/mf_laughbounce.gif

NEC 1300A burner ?

3 people said this was a great burner? im about to buy it, if it blows up my computer im gonna write a letter to the mods and have them write a hateful spite-filled post to you guys and how you F*&#036;#ed up my computer so much that i couldnt even use my computer to yell at you guys.

edit:

they have like 5 diffrent 1300a verisons at newegg? whats the diff?
And i notice this one? 4x CLV DVD+R, 2.4x CLV DVD+RW, 4x CLV DVD-R, 2x CLV DVD-RW, 16x CLV CD-R, 10x CLV CD-RW
what does the clv mean, and is it better than the slightly more expensive ones?
im talking about the 105-97 dollar ones, not those 140. Unless i should get the &#036;140 dollar ones?

[hiroshi]

I looked at those 4 drives.
There isn&#39;t really much difference. Some have Software included with them, and the top one dosn&#39;t have any software as far as i can tell, but it&#39;s the OEM version instead of a retailers version. This means it&#39;s straight from the manufacturer. This is sometimes better, and i try to keep most of my stuff OEM myself, but in this case i don&#39;t know, and it&#39;s entirely up to you anyway.

Don&#39;t know what the CLV means, but i don&#39;t think it&#39;s necessary to know. It&#39;s probably just a standard thing, but perhaps other people who read this post will know.

What &#036;140 ones?