Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sony DRU-500A Review

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the burn-this-beotch dept.

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.

14 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. DVD-burners == zip drives by SexyKellyOsbourne · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unlike CD burners, DVD drives will never catch on, much like zip drives never did.

    DVDs were created to be obsolete, and within a few years, when Blu-Ray technologies are creating 30GB+ disks, a DVD burner will be one of those devices that will make someone say "You bought an expensive computer 4 years ago, and that device was overpriced crap", much like we view zip drives today.

    Compared to what capacity we truly need for video and storage, DVDs are weak, and their burners and discs are too expensive, incompatible, and slow to be of any practical use in the near future.

    CDs at least are dirt cheap -- almost free with rebates -- and I got my 32x burner used for $15. There are never any compatibility problems, and they're a universal format for both audio and video.

    1. Re:DVD-burners == zip drives by umStefa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree with you statement that DVD burner's will be olbsolete in a couple of years but disagree that DVD burner's will never catch on. This is because most people (especially computer geeks) only expect their hardware to last a few years.

      DVD burner's will be used extensivly for the next few years when the will be replaced by something better. Just like CD's are now being replaced by DVD's

      --
      Technology is most abused by the very people it was created to help
    2. Re:DVD-burners == zip drives by Issue9mm · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I don't agree. I have a DVD-burner that I use for nightly / weekly backups. The amount of data that I back up routinely surpasses the capacity of a CD-ROM drive. Yes, another hard drive might serve my needs better, but I wanted something I could take offsite in the event of a hard drive failure.

      Plus, it's handy to take my videos of the daughter and move them to DVD, allowing me to send them to my father across the country.

      -9mm-

    3. Re:DVD-burners == zip drives by Snafoo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Weird... you just took me back to grade 9. I remember advising a friend that he not buy a computer with a CD drive on the advice of MacWorld, which claimed that CD-ROM was a technology which had already peaked; with production overhead ostensibly too high, sizes too small, read-speeds too slow and writing impossible, the technology was surely just a way-station on the road to magneto-optical floppies.

      The weird bit is that every point MW made was correct -- and in a world devoid of network effects, the market for CDROMs would've wasted away. But we all know how that one went...

      --
      - undoware.ca
  2. Skip to the end and avoid 8 clicks/page loads... by wherley · · Score: 5, Informative
    Conclusion of review here. Highlights:
    • "Sony has done a nice job with this 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"
    • "For this moment, I can suggest this drive."
  3. Crashproof? by den_erpel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was actually waiting for this drive, but mainly because of this story and others about Sony's dirty tricks with DRM, I'm waiting for another drive.
    I don't care about copying CDs or DVDs, but I do care when my system hangs when I want to listen to a CD/see a DVD while (in between) working...

    Is anyone aware of drives like this from other vendors?

    --
    Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
  4. Sony DRU-500A Review by Dunark · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't Sony one of the big content producers that has their knickers in a knot over piracy? I wonder what kind of content protection features this drive might have that Sony isn't anxious to advertise.

    1. Re:Sony DRU-500A Review by ender81b · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Probably none, it would be suicide. Listen, big companies like Sony have these divisions - music, hardware, whatever. 10-1 odds that each division has no idea/say in what the other does. I would imagine that there would be an epic fight for the music/whatever division to include some sort of DRM on a burner like this. Why? Because it would (most likely) attract alot of negative attention and possibly cause the drive to not sell well. Therefore, the hardware division isn't going to allow for DRM without alot of pressure or the big guys upstairs telling themt too.

      Also, it would be curious to see which division of Sony makes the most money - the media or the hardware. If I where a betting man I would say the hardware, ergo they have more say.

      Shrug, just my .02 cents.

  5. I have one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Very nice drive, will burn a 4GB DVD+R disc in about 20 minutes, using about 5% CPU time on my Win2K Athlon 1700.

    Some problems:

    - the promised packet writing software (DLA) is not yet available.

    - the included burning software will not burn an ISO image

    - Using DVD-R media, I burned 3 coasters in a row. DVD+R has been 100% perfect so far.

    I would say this is a state of the art drive that is well ahead of the software available to run it. Expect many more of these types of drives that support both DVD-R and DVD+R.

    For $350, as a backup device alone, this thing is amazing.

  6. I have one. by NetJunkie · · Score: 5, Informative

    I like it. I originally ordered one from Dell but they pushed my shipping date WAY back so I grabbed one at CompUSA three weeks ago. It works well and I've had no problems. I'm only using 1x media right now, except for the included DVD+RW disc.

    The only issue right now is software support. Most apps don't support this drive, yet, but they should have updates out any day. Definately a good drive to cover all your bases.

    I've used the discs in my notebook, XBox, and DVD player.

  7. Sony == no go by BESTouff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A certain Andre H. (who, at times, is the official Linux IDE maintainer) told recently not to use Sony drives because they have certain firmware "properties" which make them unsuitable to copy copy-protected material. It may seem funny or irrelevant to you, but this means they play dirty tricks with your data.

  8. Another review source by Boone^ · · Score: 5, Informative

    is here from CDRLabs.com

  9. Re:Burning times by bedessen · · Score: 5, Informative
    What is 1x speed for a DVD-writer. Is it the same as a CD-writer (150KB/s). If so... it's still a looong time to burn a 4000MB DVD:
    Did you even read the article? The theoretical rate for DVD 1x is 1380 KB/s, so 2x is 2760 KB/s and 2.5x is 3450 KB/s.

    In his testing, he burned:

    4.26 GB DVD-R at 1x in 59:13 (1257 KB/s)
    4.21 GB DVD-R at 2x in 29:31 (2492 KB/s)
    4.21 GB DVD+R at 2.5x in 27:58 (2631 KB/s)
    4.25 GB DVD+RW at 2.5x in 22:10 (3351 KB/s)

    So, the effective rates are somewhat less than the theoretical (probably because of extra time to write the TOC or close the disk) but they come fairly close. In any case, it's nowhere near 3 hours.

    Remember, this is a max speed (probably calculated on the outer ring?), chances are that your DVD is going to take longer to burn than optimal estimates.
    That only applies when accessing a drive using CAV, the burning here is done with CLV, so the rate is constant throughout the whole disk.

  10. Re:number 1? by Chasing+Amy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > how often do you really need to burn like 8 cds for one project anyway?

    Look at the audience you're speaking to. :-) Many /. users have multiple 80-120GB hard drives, RAID arrays, etc.--and that's on our *home* computers, not just at the office...

    And I tell you, once you start downloading SVCDs and MP3s and games (God Bless USENET!), that hard drive space goes quickly. Sure, you could have 500 CD-Rs lying around--but that's inconvenient as hell. Better would be to have it on 60 DVDs, and even better would be to have it on hard drive arrays *backed up* to DVDs.

    Not to mention home video recordings--what better way to store them long-term than on high-quality DVDs? Even DV tape is capable of degrading over time, especially with repeated viewings, because it's a tape-based format--whereas the optical DVD format is both more durable (esp. if you make multiple back-ups) and will definitely be long-lasting in terms of format readability since it has been adopted by the movie industry. I have wedding and birth film on DV just waiting for me to be able to afford a DVD-R/W recorder so I can transfer it to DVD and make copies to distribute to friends and family.

    Let's face it--the time has come for the recordable DVD to go mainstream. Even set-top DVD recorders are available at Best Buy and Circuit City in the $800 range now, whereas they were $2000 and hard to find last year. In a couple more years they'll be replacing the VCR in most middle-income households, and only the low-income will still be using VCRs instead of DVDRs.

    --

    Chasing Amy
    (We all chase Amy...)
    "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus