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DVD Burner Round-up

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the making-movies-on-location dept.

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."

3 of 389 comments (clear)

  1. Better than tape by yroJJory · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I gave up using tape for backups because it was too costly and time-consuming. For my audio engineering work, DVD-R is fantastic. I recently did a project that archived neatly onto 6 DVDs. That cost me a grand total of $20 for media and about the same amount of time to archive as did my Ecrix VXA1. However, the archives are infinitely more accessible, as I can open the disc on any machine with a DVD-ROM, regardless of having a VXA drive around. And, the files are instantly accessible, without having to restore from tape.

    DVD-RW is fantastic!

    --
    Jory
  2. Useless review by ErMaC · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This set of reviews is absolutely useless. They don't do into covering the two most important things in any DVD-Burner: Player compatability and DVD-blank compatability.

    All +/-R crud aside (and most of the newer drives like the Sony DRU500 and Pioneer A06 do dual format anyway), the biggest issue for someone who's going to buy a DVD burner is whether the discs they burn will play in their set top player, and other people's. This article doesn't even consider that fact.

    Other posters will touch on this I'm sure - DVD's aren't the ideal backup solution. They're alright, but really what DVD is good for is storing video. I think the number of people buying DVD burners to use for backup is a whole lot smaller than the audience who actually want to make DVDs they can play on their television, or bring to their friend's house.

    Finally, all these drives are OLD news. The A05 has already been superceded by the A06 from Pioneer, the review doesn't mention a Sony drive at all, and Plextor has just announced their new 8x DVD+R/4x DVD-R burner that will come out sometime in the next month. Perhaps if this review was posted maybe 4 months ago it would be relevant.

    I could recommend a bunch of sites with relevant reviews, but I'd rather not get them slashdotted. Check the almighty google for reviews, hopefully ones which aren't practically devoid of useful information like this one.

    --
    "I want to get more into theory, because everything works in theory." -John Cash
  3. Fragile Media by poptones · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I still have a TDK CD here that was burned for me nearly a decade ago. It's a gold disc with the blue tint, it's covered with little scratches, but for the most part it's still usable (although the data - like a win95 install, office95, etc isn't).

    Since then I've owned three different burners myself and exchanged discs with many people, and the one consistent "feature" seems to be you never know exactly when (or why) a disc will just "go bad." I've had discs that worked one week suddenly refuse to respond the next week even when trying to pull the data off with something like isobuster. I've lost I don't know how many thousands of files like this (no, not just porn) and it's not just discs from my own drives; I can watch one of four discs of the scifi channel's "Dune" series because the other three, which I got from a friend, simply refuse to play. Why? I don't know; there's no shmutz on the disc, and I can't find a single hole.

    And that's the other thing: what happened to EFM and redundancy and storing nonconsecutive bits on the disc? A single tiny pinhole should NOT be making an entire file (or, if it's big enough, an entire disc) unreadable. The TDK I got a decade ago can still be read through many scratches. I can only assume it's because of the increased speed we all record at - which tells me that these DVDs - already an incredibly fragile format even in "store bought" form - are going to be even less reliable than CDR. No way in hell will I ever again trust my data to a CD "backup" alone - much less a DVD.

    So far as I can see all these are good for is making DVDs - and who cares about those old fashion things any more? Sure, it's alright for bringing home a box of bits from the store - but if you're going to trade with a friend it's just as easy to stick a hard drive in a box. And the data transfer is faster, and the media, ultimately, far more reliable.