SuperDrive Options for Combo Drive PowerBooks?

inblosam asks: "I have a 800 Mhz PowerBook G4 Titanium. It has a combo drive so I can read/write CDs and read DVDs. I would REALLY like to make DVDs, but what is the best route? I know of one solution that will give me the upgrade for $400 so that is an option. But if they can get a hold of a superdrive and install it, why can't I? Where are they buying these or how do I find out how to get one for myself? Cheaper would be better, naturally. Is installing them a big factor? I also saw another DVD upgrade for the PowerBook, but it doesn't mention running iDVD, which would be one of the requirements for me actually upgrading. Otherwise I would just buy an external DVD burner."

Comments

ebay all the way

[AntiGenX]

A quick search of Ebay will get you the parts you need...

iDVD compatible

[morcheeba]

Headline from your linked website: MCE 2X DVD-R/RW with DVD-RAM Internal Upgrade for PowerBook G4 Burn DVDs (at 2X) and CDs anywhere you can take your PowerBook... (And, it's compatible with iDVD!)

I'm hoping they just updated the website to include that!

Re:iDVD compatible

[Descartes]

That's the whole point. The original poster doesn't want to buy that one.

Read the post again.

External..

[DamienMcKenna]

Get an external Firewire bay and a $150 4G DVD-RAM drive and burn DVDs to your heart's content. Of course it'll be an external drive vs a nice built-in one, but it'll be much more affordable than what Apple will offer. And as a bonus you'll get the most compatible DVD standard (DVD-R) _and_ the most reliable backup standard in one shot (DVD-RAM).

Re:External..

[coolgeek]

Have you actually tried this? I remember some flack a bit ago about Apple pouncing a vendor for providing an iDVD driver for said vendors' DVD drive... Several posts on also indicate compatibility issues with iDVD and third-party drives. For most of my needs, simply burning data will suffice...If you've found the magic firewire DVD burner with iDVD support, please speak up.

Re:External..

[elmegil]

iDVD does not work with anything other than a Superdrive according to all the Apple literature I've been able to find. That violates a key constraint as requested.

OWC is selling them new

[blkmagic]

Actually, you can buy them at OWC brand new. http://www.macsales.com. $380 for Gigabit models and $400 for earlier.

Reason Why iDVD doesn't work w/ External DVD-RW

[webguru4god]

I read in a recent MacWorld issue, in an article about upgrading your Mac, that iDVD is locked down so that you can only use it with DVD-R/RW drives that are installed on the internal IDE bus. This makes it easy to upgrade a desktop Mac to have a DVD-R/RW drive that works w/ iDVD, all you have to do is buy an internal drive.

I personally have no idea where to get a Superdrive for a laptop, as I bet that Apple's Superdrive is only available through one OEM, because of it's compact size and engineering w/ the Powerbook line. If anyone does find where to buy a Superdrive that you can install yourself, I'd be interested to know also!

Re:Reason Why iDVD doesn't work w/ External DVD-RW

[Tombstone-f]

Go to xlr8yourmac.com to check if a drive is compatible.

Re:Reason Why iDVD doesn't work w/ External DVD-RW

[illumin8]

I'm sorry, but IMO this is a ploy by Apple to sell more hardware. I have an external Firewire/USB 2.0 (Oxford 1911 chipset) Pioneer DVR-A105 on my PC and it works great. I can use any DVD burning application in exactly the same manner as I would if it were an internal drive.

Also, in tests I've run, the CPU utilization using an external burner is much lower due to the fact that when you're using an internal burner, your IDE bus uses CPU cycles to handle reads/writes. When you're using Firewire, those writes are passed off to the Oxford chipset and offloaded from your main CPU.

Burning a DVD using RecordNowMAX with an internal drive uses about 7-10% of my CPU on an Athlon XP 1700, where using the external burner my CPU useage averaged only 2-3%, just barely above idle.

Not to mention another advantage of an external burner: It's not tied to one computer. I don't need to spend an extra $200 for every computer in my house. Want to burn a DVD or backup some data off of the computer in the next room, no problem. Have a friend that wants to burn a DVD but doesn't have a burner? Just bring it over to his house one day.

All of these advantages mean that an external burner is far better than an internal one. The fact that Apple put a limitation in iDVD that doesn't allow burning with any external burners just means they want to force you to buy more hardware from them. I don't like limitations like that. Anyone know of a way to hack iDVD to allow external burners?

Re:Reason Why iDVD doesn't work w/ External DVD-RW

[laird]

While the limitation could help sell new machines with built in SuperDrives, which I am sure that Apple doesn't mind, my understanding is that the limitation comes from Apple's license for the MPEG2 encoder in iDVD -- they only pay the license fee (and it's apparently considerable) for every Mac with a built in SuperDrive, so they can't (legally) let you use iDVD with any other Mac. Well, I suppose that they could let you use iDVD, but not to actually encode anything in MPEG2, so that's not too useful...

A third party figured out how to get iDVD to work with third party DVD-R drives, and Apple had to stop them (bummer). I think that xlr8yourmac.com has more details.

At least one manufacturer is selling DVD-R drives as an after-market upgrade, with their own bundled DVD authoring software. My mom just ordered one (MSI's drive, pre-installed in an iBook) -- I look forward to trying the software.

It doesn't look too difficult

[dafz1]

As mentioned before, Other World Computing does have a DVD-R (1X) drive for $380 that is compatible with iDVD. To me, that's a little pricey, considering you could have an external enclosure with 4X write for $100 less.

That said, I found a page that briefly describes installing the drive, which looks to be pretty easy(if you think putting the bottom of a tiBook's case back on is easy). Here's the link(for some reason I can't get rid of the white space between the o and d in Module...just copy and paste and make the correction):

http://www.powerbooktech.com/knowledge,name-DVD- Mo dule,type-Titanium.htm

Good luck.

External

[jdub712]

Get an external one. Superdrives don't support DVD-RWs. Plus when are you really gonna need to suddenly burn a dvd on the road? It takes so long at 1x. I have a 12in powerbook w/superdrive and I use my external burner quite a bit more.

Re:External

[Oculus Habent]

Desktop Superdrives do support DVD-RW, but Apple's software doesn't. I recall a bit in Macworld about replacing a DVD-R with an RW after iDVD first recognized the media - though it may not work with the later versions of iDVD.

This may or may not hold true for the laptop Superdrives.

Re:External

[Anonymous Coward]

SuperDrives support DVD-RWs just fine, thanks.

Apple doesn't officially support DVD-RW use in Superdrives, but the media recognition and use is not disabled.

Th effect of Apple not supporting it means iDVD and other Apple software doesn't support DVD-RW. No matter which drive you use.

You're free to burn data DVD-RWs with Toast, etc. just fine, which is pretty much all I do with it anyway.

That said, the MCE drive is probably a better bet. I agree that 2X is much faster. But if you're looking to save money, 1x does work.

You have to get an internal drive

[Jeremiah Blatz]

I was going to moderate, but I didn't see the right answer. So here's the skinny.

You can use pretty much any DVD writer you want, however, it has to be internal. That's it. iDVD checks for a DVD writer, then checks to see if it's on the internal bus. If both of these are true, you're good to go.

Re:check the source first

[elmegil]

Did you even pay attention to what that "list" link pointed to? It's a list of DVD players that are compatable with iDVD written media. "The following table lists players that we have specifically tested for playability." Not a damn thing about compatable writers.

firmware?

[johnpaul191]

i thought there was some issue with the drive's firmware? in that people swapping the exact same model drive bought through a 3rd party would not function with iDVD...... but maybe the new iDVD fixes that as another post mentioned. i know the older versions of backup.app were not functional with external CD-Burners.... i thinkt hey finally tweaked that, but it had been an issue

Hey kid, the first one's free

[clem.dickey]

You might consider DVD Studio Pro, which supports a number of external DVD-R drives. It is not free. In fact it is $500. But it provides a bunch of features that iDVD does not, including 16:9 format and higher (greater than 90 minute per DVD) compression. If you want any of its features, or think you might, you may end up buying it later anyway.

Be warned that the current version, 1.5, is not particularly bug-free. Version 2.0, available "in August" might be better.

External + iDVD replacement

[h3]

I've been mulling over this issue myself lately. I know you mentioned iDVD as a requirement, but is that specifically iDVD, or "something easy and cheap compared to DVD Studio Pro"?

For me, it's the latter, and I don't need to burn on the road, so I've been thinking about getting something like LaCie's external unit, which comes with CaptyDVD bundled for a total of $299. I think the mechanism in the linked product is the new A06, but I could be wrong.

I've never used CaptyDVD and I haven't been able to find any substantive reviews on it, so maybe it's a dog. Or maybe it's great. Undoubtedly, it's not as powerful as DSP, but I would guess it holds it's own against iDVD as far as features go (and probably doesn't have some of the built-in limitations iDVD does).

Maybe you'll take the plunge and let us know ;)

-h3

Re:OWC

[blkmagic]

The big advantage to buying from OWC, it looks like, is that you can turn around and sell your combo drive on ebay. The others look like they keep your existing drive. The advantage to the MCE drive, though, is that you get 2X DVD writing. I have a need for speed - I'd go with the MCE, and it's less expensive to boot (though don't know if that price includes installation and shipping, so may be a wash).

Possible internal drives

[Giffut]

These are the most common ones, as Apple itself is using these brands quite often.

Matshita/Panasonic UJ-811 (tray loading) / UJ-815 (slot loading). Thats very much the mechanism MCE uses, as this drive is 2xDVD-R/RW/RAM; retails for around US$299 (tray) to US$350 (slot).

Toshiba SD-R6112 (2xDVD-R/RW). Retails for around US$250 and is a great value.

If you buy them, like, at http://www.esbuy.com/ or similar, they cost as much as an external one (the drive itself and the friewire enclosure).

Its too sad, but here in Europe you dont get the Matshita UJ-811/815 drives. And theyre cute, 2xDVD-R/RW and DVD-RAM internal, puuuh.

G.

How 'bout this?

[Aqua OS X]

How 'bout this?

http://www.formac.com/p_bin/?cid=solutions_drive s_ devideon_soft

Re:A better question would have been

[sh00z]

Anyone know a way to add a internal dvd burner to a ibook?

Don't know if this is bait, but I'll bite: In addition to all of the above caveats about using an internal burner, there's one more important one: iDVD won't run on a G3 either. I have a G3, and use the Formac Devideon external drive. It costs more than the LaCie external mentioned above, but the DVD authoring software has one HUGE feature that CaptyDVD doesn't: the ability to save your file, quit, and resume coding later. This is important when you realize that it'll take 60 hours to encode a 2-hour DVD on a G3, and you actually want to use your computer for something else.

check MCE again

[Anonymous Coward]

...but it doesn't mention running iDVD...

Check that MCE page again. I just looked, and it specifically says that their upgrade is compatible with iDVD as well as a bunch of other stuff. It also seems to indicate that there's some other DVD-burning software included.

I guess the guys over at MCE read Slashdot, and probably changed their page in response to this article? You'd think they'd post, though...

Just break it

[jonjohnson]

I sent in my 12" powerbook a few weeks ago with a broken combo drive. I got it back on the 3rd day and looked at the slip... "Replaced Superdrive"

Sure enough, I now can burn dvds.