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

[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 *

[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.. (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

[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 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; 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 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 and Tweak News.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 .

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 .

[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 &#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.

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?