New Low Cost DVD Burners Hit The Streets

SpinnerBait writes "DVD burners, until recently, have been a bit too pricey for the average consumer that just wants to backup large amounts of data or rescue a failing DVD movie disc. However, OEMs like AOpen have finally broken the $100 price point, as this article and performance analysis at HotHardware reports. Performance, for this sub $100 DVD burner was respectable as well, burning almost an entire DVD's worth of data in about 15 minutes. Not too shabby at all... just in time for the holidays."

Comments

Expensive Media

[errittus]

I'm waiing for the media price to come down. The prices i've seen on the burner is competitive, but the DVD-R media is still alittle pricey for me.

Re:Expensive Media

[Anonymous Coward]

1 DVD-R = 7 CD-R's

Lowest CD-R price: $0.25 * 7 = $1.75

Lowest DVD-R price: $0.85 * 1 = $0.85

Why on earth would you backup using CD-R?

Re:Nice...

[avalys]

Since DVD is a digital format, the quality of the picture isn't influenced by the quality of the burner.

Re:floppy

[tgd]

I'm sure you can find guys out there still using slide rules, too.

Doesn't mean it makes any sense. :)

Not sure this is a good idea

[bedouin]

Especially if they're anything like cheap CD-ROM drives. All my moderately priced drives are still working and some are 5 years old or more. Yet the $30 52x drives usually never made it past one year . . .

OK, but are they real or the fake mail in rebates?

[Anonymous Coward]

Waiting six months to a year or never to get my money back is just retarded. I hate how goobers proclaim how cheap something and they're talking about scam rebates.

but how well do they work?

[Monkelectric]

I've owned *quite a few* CD burners in my life (6+), and the one thing I've found to be true is you are always screwing yourself if you buy the cheapie model. What good is a CD Burner if it chunks 20% of your discs?

I decided I woudln't buy a DVD writer until plextor came out with a dual format burner (I've never had one of their CD writers mess up a single CD -- ever), and low and behold they did.

Re:Only Does '+' Formats

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I'd only play the waiting game for so long.

If you wait for what's next, and it comes around, then you'll hear people saying to wait for what's next. There will always be newer and better but if one just waits then you'll also be putting off using the thing.

The '+' format seems to do well enough although I've preferred to keep the dash format available too because it is in the "real" DVD standard. The '+' format is kind of a bastard offshoot and only served to pad Sony & HP's profits at the expense of market confusion.

Re:That's why they're cheap

[dpilot]

And once the dual layer drives are out, it'll be time to wait for shorter-wavelength burning, or some other must-have feature.

Computing and electronics is always a game of 'enough for now, at a price I can handle.'

How about a bare drive?

[pair-a-noyd]

I have no use on earth for all the "bundled" and "value added" crap they throw in with the drive, if they think the software is so freaking valuable, how about they keep it and sell me the drive for a bigger discount?

And why does the DVD software come on CDR's???

Re:How about a bare drive?

[Liselle]

And why does the DVD software come on CDR's???

Presumably because near everyone has a CD drive these days, and perhaps there is some troubleshooting software on the CD should your DVD writer not work perfectly.

Doesn't anyone worry about reliability?

[KC7GR]

The belief that 'You Gets What You Pays For' is one to live by. I have to wonder how long one of these $100 or sub-$100 burners will last.

The entire attitude of "Just toss it when it fails and get a new one" is a poor excuse. That sort of mindset is exactly why there's such a huge problem with solid waste (much of it old electronics) in the world.

While I like a bargain as much as the proverbial 'Next Guy,' I also expect equipment I buy to last a bare minimum of five years, more if the price is above a couple of hundred. I don't mind paying a bit more for stuff that's better built.

Re:That's why they're cheap

[pair-a-noyd]

Yes. Don't jump on the bandwagon the day stuff hits the streets, wait until it hits the streets. As in the curb. People are throwing away old systems like mad now.
I just picked up a CLEAN (non smoker) PII 400 with a CDR & a CDRW & a ZIP. 8 gigs, plus loaded with win98 and and a few games. All I had to do was pick up up from a trash pile and wipe the dust off of it. The power supply was dead. It works GREAT now. Yeah, slow but, it was all but free. $15 for a new ATX power supply and I have a PC that people would have once KILLED to have.

Guess what? Load it up with Linux and you've got a damn nice server for next to nothing.

I've got dozens and dozens up more dozens of old PC's this way. Just drive and and scan the rubish heaps, see something, stop and grab it. It's FREE..

Now, when will people start throwing P4's out??

Just FYI

[bogie]

Just FYI there really are no "OFF" brands in the cdr/dvdr world. There are only a couple of major drive producers the two largest being Acer/Aopen and Lite-on. So the "OFF" brands like cendyne, buslink, etc are all pretty much either Acer or Lite-on drives. So if Compusa is selling a "Megapower 4xDVDR" realize that Megapower never had the R&D budget to design and make a high precision part like a DVDR. That's why they all buy them from Acer and Lite-on.

So next time your shopping keep in mind the only two things that matter are 1) who REALLY made this drive and 2) how much does it cost?

Re:So what?

[Nogami_Saeko]

I have a dual-format burner and have tested both -R and +R format discs in a variety of set-top and computer DVD drives.

The +R disc didn't play in any of the set-top players I own (ranging from 1-4 years old).

The -R played in 3 of the 4 initially, and 4 of 4 once the last machine had a firmware update.

The results were a little better in DVD-ROM drives, but -R still has a sizeable edge. Naturally this will change with newer players, but if you need compatibility with older players, then -R is definately the way to go.

That said, I do a lot of professional, and industrial DVD authoring, and I need to have the best compatibility (aside from authoring-mode blanks) for stuff I send to clients to preview.

Re:Ok, so they're around $100

[benzapp]

People don't use SCSI cdroms for the speed, they use them for the bus mastering. There is no way you can run 8 DVD writers in a single machine using SATA or IDE. That is no problem with SCSI. You can get external cases with 16 drivebays, which you connect via external SCSI cable. People have them filled with CDRs or DVD writers. Imagine being able to copy a DVD to 8 drives all at the same time. Pretty cool eh?

Re:Only Does '+' Formats

[DarkEdgeX]

nod, but the 8x drives out right now don't do +/- both at 8x, they just DVD+R at 8x and DVD-R at 4x.

I'm pretty sure Pioneer's DVR-A07/107 will be the first DVD-R writer that can burn at 8x. (If I'm wrong, and I'd be happy if I was, please someone post model numbers and such).

You can read about the DVR-A07 here--

http://www.pioneer-eur.com/eur/company_news_pressr elease.jsp?category=news_121103_DVRA07