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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."
-- not until all the standards crap settles down and I know what I get wont be useless 2 months later.
I don't even waste a lot of timing reading up on them. Just waiting on the market to decide what will be dominant.
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It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
The real reason zips are going away is the key-chain size USB storage device. Why carry around a 100meg disc and have to have a drive installed on both ends (or have to carry the drive itself around) when you can simply stick this pen-sized piece of plastic into the back of a USB port (one of the reasons new models have additional USB ports up front), and boom!, instant 32-256 meg filesystems.
The only significant delay was Windows 98 first edition and Win95, neither of which supported filesystems on USB devices. 98SE and beyond did, so once the majority of windows boxes moved on to 2K and XP, there was nothing stopping them.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
It's interesting to have that much backup space avail for a non-server computer. I got a Powerbook last December with the Super-drive and the only thing I can find to use it for is mostly cd-r. Dvd-r is nice to have, but I don't have much use for it. Maybe someone who d/l's movies or something can do it, but...
Otoh, for making movies and stuff, this is very useful via the whole iMovie (or PC equiv) thing. But where this would really come in handy is on a server of some sort where you have big amounts of data. But even then, you need to back up more than 4 or 5 gigs worth usually, so..
But for the end user, I guess it's nicer to have more than less. Who knows, I might start needing to back up more than 665MB soon..
I could settle this would standards mess with $200. As soon as I buy a -R drive +R would become the standard, and if I bought a +R drive -R would become the standard. My refusal to buy a DVD writer is the only thing keeping the industry from standardizing.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
I'm not sure how to say this without sounding like some Mac freak (which I am now :), but I've been doing DVD burning for years now.
:). The network and firewire is just faster. Plain and simple.
You've seen the chart (read the story), right? Yeah -- slow as heck it seems sometimes. The first time I really started using the burner it was on the Mac. Slow enough that I also got a Firewire card for one of the office PC's and confirmed it was, well, SLOW. 99% of my data is sitting on RAID-1 or 5 subsystems and backed up daily (thankfully
For corporate backups the data flows from hard drive to hard drive. Sits on RAID-5 servers going to a portable drive where it is dumped onto RAID-1 subsystems in multiple locations.
DVD is good for archiving movies/home videos in native format (so any DVD player can view them). Decent quality will give you 2 hours per DVD. Many more if you do something like I do and put them in MP4 format (~3 movies per DVD then).
A roaming laptop is great for a quick plug in to watch a archived movie as such. Otherwise any DVD player is good. The problem is it's only 4.7G worth which can easily be eaten up when users have 60-80G hard drives.
1-2G hard drives were the norm once CD-RW became the "norm" and you could do a lot of damage with 600 or 700M CD's. DVD's are barely usable (today) for backup needs and the speed still stinks for all flavors (+/-RW or RAM).
BLUE LASER with +20G is worth waiting a bit longer for, IMHO. That's large enough to be useful for movies (easily) and backing up data in chunks as needed. SPEED will be key or else it'll take too damn long. 4x at a minimum to start.
With blue laser coming along, what, next year (somewhat mainstream realistically)? I'm thinking the industry waited too long and bickered among themselves for too long (+, - or RAM) that the listed technology will be surpassed and old hat. It is for me at least...
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
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.
One of the reviewed drives, the Pioneer A05, is the "golden standard" for creating DVDs that will play back easily on set top boxes.
Yes, they don't handle the +R/W standard, but I seriously doubt that -R/W is going away anytime soon. By the time it does, dual drives will be goinng for under $75, so the risk is small.
You can find them for under $150 now, and they work pretty well with cheap media. Although many folks caution against Princo's, I've yet to create a coaster or something that won't play back correctly on a set top with the newer 4x "purple" media. You can get them for just over $1 each in small bulk, too, and they Just Work.
Since the A05 is so popular, you can find all kinds of intriguing hacked firmware and the like that enable new abilities...there's even a rumor going around that the newer, dual media A06 is really an A05 with different firmware. Wouldn't hold my breath, but you never know...
1. "Roundup", hardly. Three drives does not a roundup make :(
2. "Expensive". The difference in price from highest to lowest is $45, not too shabby and hardly worth the difference once you take in other considerations (like how many toasters cheap drive a produces). I have fond memories of creating shelves of cd toasters on our $3000 Ricoh 2x CDR when the cd blanks were $25 a piece on this one project. Ouch, thank god we weren't paying for those things, I bet we wen't through over $10K worth of blanks.
3. No checking of valid DVD video. He mentions people wanting to backup their DVD's, but then never tests to make sure any DVD backups actually play in most dvd players. I know for me this is critically important and I would want to see the results of such a test.
I think keychain USB drives are going to be a real sleeper hit.
I would consider one as soon as most of the BIOS makers allow us to boot off of them.
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
Most new drives are dual-format burners, so it's a moot point anyway. Pioneer has just released their A06 which burns both formats.
But as with all things, it's not always the technically superior product that's the standard, it's whatever is cheapest and easiest for people to get their hands on.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
" As soon as I buy a -R drive +R would become the standard, and if I bought a +R drive -R would become the standard."
Great, he bought a combo drive. We all need to switch to DVD-RAM now.
Ok, I admit, I didn't read the article. Why? Because I looked at the drives they're reviewing and knew it was pointless.
First off, they're reviewing the previous generation of DVD burners. The new Pioneer A06 is a multi-format drive, capable of burning everything but DVD-RAM (which is a dead standard - it required usage of caddies and was incompatible with stand alone DVD players). The Plextor and Panasonic are so-so drives at best. They didn't review the Sony, which is considered the other "best" drive (Pioneer and Sony have been the only two major players until recently), which is also multi-format.
There are a ton of new companies on the DVD burner front too -- LiteOn, NEC, Mitsumi, etc. which I suspect OEM either the Sony or Pioneer drives (no, I haven't looked into it enough to know for sure).
If you want a real resource for DVD burner comparisons, don't even bother with Techspot. Their "review" is about 6 months out of date. Instead go to DVDR Help, which is pretty much the place for anything you could want to know about DVD players, burners, software, etc.
Format wars are essentially over too... most new (and even most 2-3 year old) players can read any of the formats except DVD-RAM. The new burners can write any format you choose, and are at or under $200 now (pricing from NewEgg). Buying a single format burner is just silly.
Honestly though, unless you're burning home videos then you're probably still better off with a CD-RW drive. At under $50 it's hard to go wrong, and there's a lot more computers with CD drives than DVD drives. On the other hand, more games are starting to come out on DVD now (HL2 will be, as well as CD and via Steam), so you may want a DVD drive in your computer (although DVD-ROMs are only $30-40, so CD-RW + DVD-ROM is less than half the price and gives you 2 drives).
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!!!!
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
Chris Finke
18165 County Road 50
Hamburg, MN 55339 USA
Keep up the great work!
Seriously, my MP3 collection is about 15 GB, and that is just the stuff I have taken the time to rip. My CD collection would easily be 10 times that, if I ever get around to digitizing them.
Granted, putting 15 GB on DVDs would be time consuming, but compared to CDRs, it is phenominal. I am kind of holding out for the blue lasers though.
What could you use a DVD+-R for? How about imaging your system for instant restores? Hard to do with CDRs. Disk drives are getting bigger, and we are finding ways to fill them.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
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/
I don't see much point in buying that 20G drive, when the 200 Petabyte drives will be out in 2025.
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.
As soon as I buy a -R drive +R would become the standard, and if I bought a +R drive -R would become the standard.
Just buy one of those 10 or 15-bay external drive towers. Then, you'd have room for each DVD standard as it emerges while keeping all the old DVD drives around for legacy support. You should also get a PCI expansion enclosure, so you can be sure to have enough SCSI controllers to handle all the external drive towers you will eventually get.
With six PCI slots plus a built-in host adapter, you could, in theory, support 7x15=105--yes, that's 105--DVD standards before needing more PCI slots and SCSI controllers.
I'd say you would need only $15,000 to guarantee 100% compatibility with all the DVD discs you might come across. At such an affordable price point, why are you hesitating?!?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Who is going to be the standard is irrelevant. -R has a better support on existing devices, cheaper media and all devices (existing and future) are going to be able to read it.
Where's the risk on buying a DVD-R ?
Even if +R wins the battle in the end, who cares? All your DVD-Rs are not going to the trash can: You can still read them on every device. And you're going to find blank media for some time anyways.
Now if you want to buy the more expensive and less compatible standard, go ahead...
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Ok, I'll try and explain it once more.
Let's take the analogy of VHS vs. Betamax. People that went with the (now dead) Betamax format are screwed now because all their tape are as good as dead. In this case going eith the technically superior format was a mistake.
How come the DVD format war doesn't apply here?
You CAN read a DVD-R on a DVD+R drive. You CAN read a DVD+R on a DVD-R drive.
Now let's say you buy a DVD-R (because it's technically superior). All DVD players (ROM, boxes, Video etc...) will ALWAYS support your format. In fact you can read your DVD-R in most DVD players that were release before the DVD-R discs even existed.
So when DVD-R is going to die (if that ever happens), all your DVD-R that you have burned in the meantime (music, movies, data, etc...) are still going to play in ALL the players out there.
That's the main difference between DVD and VCR analogy. When Betamax died, you couldn't watch your videotapes anywhere because you needed a BETAMAX VCR to read them.
In the case of DVD-R or DVD+R, you don't need a DVD+R or DVD-R drive to read them, you need a DVD Drive. And they are not likely to die soon.
But why bother. I already explained that in your parent post. You probably didn't read through it anyways. So you're not likely to read through this one either...
Write boring code, not shiny code!