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DVD Burner Round-up
Julio writes "Gone are the days of storage floppies and zip drives... CD-RW drives do an excellent job in making cheap backups and just about every new computer is equipped with one. As computers and software evolve, so will media. DVD burner drives are already optional equipment on many computers, and will probably become a standard within the next year. Are you ready for a DVD burner? TechSpot has posted a round-up of flagship DVD recorders from Plextor, Panasonic and Pioneer."
That's all thats gets me.. The best DVD burner out there is the Sony DVD+-RW 4x..
-- not until all the standards crap settles down and I know what I get wont be useless 2 months later.
/. week to like Sony, right?
That is why I picked up the Sony DRU500XUL which reads and burns DVD +/- R-RW. No matter what the standard settles on, I can already do it.
This is the
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
Same Here.
Pretty much waiting for three things to happen.
1) A Standard emerges that most if not all DVD Writers Adopt.
2) Price Drops Below $100 to get more mainstream.
3) Write speed gets faster. Particually the Write Speed of CD-R's.
By the time that happens, most likely BluRay would be out for some insane price, But at least it looks like it will have a more defined standard and be 27 GB per disk.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Not only that, but the prices are coming down quickly, and the capacities are increasing almost as fast--you can get 2GB keychains now.
USB keychain drives are in that silly pricing phase right now where you can pay more for a 32MB model than a 128MB model if you're not careful (the local Walmart had a 128MB model last week for $40.00). High-capacity IDE hard drives went through the same thing.
I think keychain USB drives are going to be a real sleeper hit.
My neighbor picked up one of these and has loved it. The noise output isn't too bad, either. But one thing I'm surprised at is the lack of a review of the Sony DRU* drives. CD Freaks forum members praise this drive over and over, especially since it burns both +R[W] and -R[W] discs. The price isn't too outrageous anymore for a solid drive that burns most any type of media. We burn hundreds of DVDs each week here at the office with little or no problem on our Sony.
In the UK a multiformat reader (a pioneer 106) is now the same price as a -R/RW only (a pioneer 105).
Last month a 105 was £200+. Two weeks later the 106 was £200 and the 105 was £100. Now the 106 is £100. (Ish, £130 inc vat - under $200 US.) Media is down to 50p a disk for -R.
For the people bitching about speed, the 106 is a 4x writer (except for DVD-R/RW) which is around 6 _megabits_/second - 4.5gb every 15 mins. You can burn off a 50gb backup in 2.5 hrs!
But in the end, it matters little what you buy, as all new players will be able to read both. It's not like VHS vs Beta, where the things were different sizes, if consolidation happens it will be because of pressure on media prices (2x DVD-RW is cheaper to manufacture than 1x DVD-R and 1x DVD+R) and not because of anything else. After all, do you know anyone who uses CDRWs reguarly? Nope, me either, so the problems with not being able to exchange DVDRW disks will be minimal - and go away entirley as most people will get dual format drives anyway.
Beep beep.
If you shop around for media, you can find blanks pretty cheap. I think the ones I'm using now cost 1.26 a piece, which is much cheaper than hard drives.
As for movies, I bought my dvd player and burner around the same to time to ensure compatibility. I also have found that ALL of my friends home DVD players can play movies that I have recorded. And I think it would be fair to say, that most of the players have been purchased within the last two years. Of course, your experiences may vary, I have just had great luck with dvd-r/rw.
G
I wish there was a fscking blue pill
The latest in pioneer's venerable DVR-A0x series, the DVR-A06 also does +R/W as well as -R/W.
A quick jaunt around the folks who know the most about media duplication (PS2 and Xbox sceners) tells me this is the machine to own. -R for all your PS2/Xbox "legitimate backups" and +R for all your cheap archiving.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
DVD+R and DVD+RW formats are supported by Philips, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Ricoh, Yamaha and others.
DVD+R is a recordable DVD format similar to CD-R. A DVD+R can only record data once and then the data becomes permanent on the disc. The disc can not be recorded onto a second time.
DVD+RW is a re-recordable format similar to CD-RW. The data on a DVD+RW disc can be erased and recorded over numerous times without damaging the medium.
DVDs created by a +R/+RW device can be read by most commercial DVD-ROM players.
DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM formats are supported by Panasonic, Toshiba, Apple Computer, Hitachi, NEC, Pioneer, Samsung and Sharp. These formats are also supported by the DVD Forum.
DVD-R is a recordable DVD format similar to CD-R and DVD+R. A DVD-R can only record data once and then the data becomes permanent on the disc. The disc can not be recorded onto a second time. There also are two additional standards for DVD-R disks: DVD-RG for general use, and DVD-RA for authoring, which is used for mastering DVD video or data and is not typically available to the general public.
DVD-RW is a re-recordable format similar to CD-RW or DVD+RW. The data on a DVD-RW disc can be erased and recorded over numerous times without damaging the medium.
DVDs created by a -R/-RW device can be read by most commercial DVD-ROM players.
DVD-RAM discs can be recorded and erased repeatedly but are only compatible with devices manufactured by the companies that support the DVD-RAM format. DVD-RAM discs are typically housed in cartridges.
Pioneers DVR-A06 (106 for the OEM crowd) does both too. And is cheaper. And judging by the fanaticism of pioneer owners, probably better. This is what I'd buy if I had the cash.
Pioneer makes great DVD gear in general. I love their slot loading DVD drives.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If possible, I would wait until that hits the marked: Plextor PX-708A
Huh CPU overhead?
It's an ATAPI device, it'll use no more overhead than your hard drive. If it's using any real CPU time, you want to make sure it's using DMA.
Go to your control panel, system properties, devices, select your drive, properties, and check "Enable DMA"
2k/XP - go to the IDE controller and set same for appropriate device.
Of course, if you're encoding/decoding mp3/mpeg/mpeg2 on the fly, that'll use cpu time - but it has nothing to do with the drive.
For you simultaneos burning, put each drive by itself on its own ide channel. Buy an addon card with two ide channels just to run the drives. Or go SCSI if you feel like spending a lot of money.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
DVD-RAM may be crap, but if you REALLY want it all you've got to wait for the Iomega Super DVD All Format 4X
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Actually, I think Zip disks (and superDisks etc) are going away/gone already because they were too much of a middle step. They were bigger than floppies, but smaller than CDs, and yet the price of 100MB disks never dropped below about $10US each. This meant that they were not disposable the way $0.50 floppies are, and yet don't have the capacity of a CD.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
I guess if your looking burn DVD video, then yes go buy a DVD burner, but if it is for storage, just buy another hard drive. You can pick up an external USB 2.0 drive enclosure for $25 if you're looking to take stuff on the road.
Just wait a couple years for this
Amazing...
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Dvd-r is nice to have, but I don't have much use for it.
:)
One application I've noticed is that it could be handy to rip a bunch of CDs to a hard disk, compress each image with bzip2 or gzip, and, then, rip a buttload of compressed CD images onto DVD. On the DVD, they are useless, but copying and decompressing them back onto the hard disk allows mounting via a loopback filesystem.
I really like loopback filesystems. They allow accessing a CD-ROM at 10,000RPM Ultra320 SCSI niceness
Oh, and other systems besides Linux have them (Solaris, for example)...it seems that needs to be said, unfortunately.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Actually, all the XBox DVD-drives that have been used so far (Which is Thomson, Philips and Samsung) read +R(W) just fine. There's no need for a dual standard burner for that particular purpose.
True, but you're missing the big picture. Rewritable DVD's are needed/wanted for the archival purposes, such as the old tape drives. Companies (and people) make periodic or incrimental backups. This gives them a better record of their data, and they can look back at OLD data if ever needed.
Sure, firewire and usb 2.0 drives are out and at a reasonable price, but you can't do incrimental backups unless you keep buying more and more drives (which will keep costing you a few hundred a pop). With a DVD burner, you can make periodic backups of (let's say, a database), and it will cost you like a couple of dollars a backup dollars a backup. On top of that, hard drives can be hit by magnets, dropped, get wet, etc. Optical is a much more prefered method of archiving.
The databases around here are our lifeblood, and we're constantly backing them up. We're not just replacing the previous backup, but keeping them in case we find that something was deleted a while ago.
Information is a precious resource in corporations.
BZZZZT. Verbatim manufactures their own media, so its of known good quality. This is the brand the previous poster was referring to being sold at Sams's Club too. Good stuff.
-=Mongr=-
Everything is standardized.
Any DVD-R drive will work with DVD-R aware software under Linux.
Same with DVD+R - FYI, all DVD-R recording software under Linux is based on cdrecord in some manner, while DVD+R requires some oddball program called "growisofs".
Both DVD-R and DVD+R work under Linux. The software for -R seems more mature though.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Well, I got a DVD drive rcently (a Nec 1300) and it writes both - and +. So I had the same problem.
:)
Here is a quick roundup of my DVD writing adventure.
The +RW tools (growisofs and friends) are very easy to use and work out of the box without any complicated thingies. The program has been called "oddball" by another poster. It is oddball and has the problem of having another interface than CDRecord so most GUI clients do not work with it. XCDRoast for instance does not. However, you could make an ISO with XCDRoast and hand-burn it with growisofs if you want.
The cdrecord-prodvd and dvdrecord, the tools for -RW, uses basically the same command line as cdrecord so the GUI clients are easy to use with it. XCDRoast can use cdrecord-prodvd.
However, however, however. The cdrecord-prodvd recording tool for -R/W is commercial. It does allow you to record full length DVD's but only at 1x speed. At 4x speed it limits you to 1 Gig. Its readdvd feature works very well though. And the demo license that allows this will run out soon. Its not open source either.
There is another GNU cdrecord-prodvd clone called dvdrecord but I could not get it to work properly on Suse 8.2. I have to admit that it could have been the discs though. The NEC is sentive to cheap crap DVD-R's (never buy Princo, even if the salesman who sells you the drive tells you so
With -RW you have to blank the disk first, just like CDRW. This did not work with one tool but did with the other but the other tool could record and the one did not. It was a mess. +RW does not need blanking. Pop in the disc and record. Use it again? Pop it in and record again.
In my experience, growisofs, the tool for +rw is easier to use and just works. Nowadays it also can record -RW media but AFAIK it cannot blank a -RW disk.
And it has another sweet feature: There is a kernel driver where you can simply mount your +RW disk as a harddisk and use it as a random-access device.
Of course, DVD-RAM could do this since 5 years ago but the disks are expensive and do not read on normal desktop players. This is an issue for me, because my desktop player can play an ISO full of MP3's and it works with a DVD so I can stuff 50 CD's worth of MP3's on a single disk. Also, few burners handle it, although this is changing.
DVD-RAM is recommended for backups in any case. -RW and +RW both have a maximum amount of times you can write to the disk. RAM does not, you write and rewirte forever. It was designed from the start as a true random-access system.
The maximum write time is a problem with random-access disks because every time you READ a file the Linux fs updates the filesystem to indicate the access time! Do that 1000 times and your +RW disk is wasted. RAM disks on the other hand are designed to be rewirtten pretty much forever.
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Some other helpful sites:
Unofficial DVD+RW site
linux dvd+rw info and tools
Some choice quotes from linux info page:
-- not until all the standards crap settles down and I know what I get wont be useless 2 months later.
That is why I picked up the Sony DRU500XUL which reads and burns DVD +/- R-RW. No matter what the standard settles on, I can already do it.
You could have picked up the NEC version of the same for $200 less... that Sony brand is expensive!
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The Pioneer is max 4x burning speed with DVD-R recordables.
The Panasonic is max 2x burning speed with DVD-R recordables.
So the panasonic already lost even before the shootout was started. All of these drives do either only + or - burning but not both. So if i was looking for a new DVD burner today i would leave these drives inside the shop.
I would opt for the NEC 1100A or the Pioneer DVR-A06 as they burn both + and - media. It seems however that Plextor also will bring a dual-burn (+ and - burn capabilities) drive shortly.
So if your looking for a DVD burner which should last for some time, don't buy any drive from the report. If you want a cheap reliable drive and don't mind the burning format , take either the Pioneer DVR-A05 or the Plextor PX-504A.
Robert
DVD -R is cheaper due to it's earlier market entry. The media companies are just plain better at making DVD-R/W media right now.
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However, comprehensive studies have revealed that DVD+R and DVD-R have similar levels of incompatibility in legacy players.
http://www.infoxpress.com/reviewtracker/reprint
Pioneer has thrown in the towell and now produces +R combo drives. I would strongly suggest that new buyers get the +/- combo drives or +R drives. The +R drives are faster and starting and stopping multi-write sessions and this is probably the reason for Pioneer's aqcuiesence.
Use -R for backups and movie distribution. It's cheaper and the multi-write abilities of +R are irrelevant for "all-at-once" writing.
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