Sony DRU-500A Review

An anonymous reader writes "Just found a nice review of the Sony DRU-500A" This looks to be damn solid DVD burner. It's amazing how much prices on these things have come down. It might be time for me to make my epic film starring CowboyNeal, Samzenpus and Hemos in a moving story about Love, Friendship, and Growing Up in the Face of Adversity. I probably should write a script or something before I start filming. Or not.

Comments

conclusion

[thopo]

forgot to add the conclusion, here we go:

Sony DRU-500A - Conclusion

Sony has done a nice job with this drive. As you could see, there are good results with the drive. The software that came with the drive works, but i would suggest an other recording program. RecordNow is way to limited.
The bad side of the drive are the DVD read speeds. 2x DVD.... you will hate this if you try to rip a movie. If you just want to watch a DVD, than the 2x is enough. This low speed makes the drive very quit. However, i prefer faster reading speeds. Maybe Sony will come with a firmware upgrade. Till that time, i won't replace your DVD-Rom by this recorder and make sure you have an additional DVD-Rom when you need some DVD read speed.

The other dark side is not really the drive itself, but the availability of high-speed DVD media. I have only 1 brand which supports 2x at the moment, and haven't seen (or tested) any 4x certified media yet.

The CDR recording speed is good. At this point, the Sony is the fastest DVD recorder on the market with CDR speeds. The good-old Pioneer A04 records only at 8x, and the new A05 only at 16x. With it's 24x, the Sony wins this point.

For this moment, I can suggest this drive. It is almost the same price as the Pioneer A04, which has not such results, and is slower. Also does the Pioneer not support DVD+R/DVD+RW.
Maybe the new NEC combo drive will beat this Sony, but that will take some time, since that drive is delayed till somewhere in December or so.

Addictions
Concerning the media there are many questions and problems. Most media will work at only 1x (DVD-R). Older Verbatim 2x DVD-R discs are known to have problems with the Sony drive: See verbatim.com.
On the VCDHelp.com forum is a thread with some user experiences with various media.
Meanwhile, Pioneer has released it's A05 drive. This one records DVD-R at 4x. The drive seems to be available in Japan now. (see Akiba). The drive has a price of 29800 Yen. (about $240).

With this drive, Pioneer has also released 4x media (picture). This media is priced about 800 Yen, which equals to about 6,59 EUR. ($6,45). This price is found on a forum, so i don't know it for sure.
Let's hope the 4x media will become mainstream now, so I can test it with the Sony drive!

For all of you who already own this drive: At Sonic Japan you can register for a free upgrade to Sonic MyDVD as soon as it's available.