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DVD Burner Comparison
mikemuch writes "While you're waiting for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, you may want to check out ExtremeTech's roundup of dual-layer DVD burners. Starting at about $43US, some of them are quite powerful, come with nice bundled software, and are pretty good deals, to boot."
And still no comments on whether or not the Linux support will be alright. Whether the burner is good or not doesnt matter to me until I know I can run it at home. Am I the only Linux user concerned? Considering Im posting on /., and other /.ers are reading, I imagine not. But I could have missed some major article or something concerning it. Would somebody shed some light for me?
Although the price of Dual Layer (DL) media has come down, it's still $2 - $4 a disk, vs $0.50 - $1.00 for comparable Single Layer disks. So, although you do need two disks, burning information to a single layer disk is still cheaper, about twice as much. I bought a DL burner quite awhile ago, but I'm still waiting for good news regarding media. IMHO, until the media comes down, Dual Layer just doesn't cut it.
Having done exactly what the parent was talking about, I can advise against using a capture card. I tried a Hauppauge 150 and an ATI TV Wonder Elite and couldn't get the colors to come out well at all. The image was also a lot softer that I would have liked. I borrowed a VHS->DVD unit from a friend (I'm sorry, this was 6 months ago, I don't remember the brand off-hand) and the results were far better than what my PC pulled off.
Well, that's nice. Too bad only one of those in signficant in the Optical drive mass market - Lite-On. HP drives are going to pretty much be in HP systems. Plextor offers the most expensive drives around and they're just not that interesting to people.
Maybe they should have included Sony, ToshibaSamsung, NEC, or some other companies that actually sell a shitload of drives on the retail market. Lite-On was a good call, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have an older version of that Pioneer, and I agree it does what it says it does. However,...
Why aren't reviewers taking DVD makers to task for being so behind the curve on everything else? S-ATA isn't exactly new. Apple has been releasing almost nothing but slot-loading drives for a while now (except for the PowerMac line).
And yet it's hard to find either a slot-loading DVD burner, or a S-ATA DVD burner -- and AFAICT impossible to find one that's both.
S-ATA is an improvement over (P-)ATA because it uses smaller cables, not because it's faster -- most people weren't hitting the speed limitations of ATA-133, anyway. And as soon as they start making a serious selection of S-ATA optical drives, we won't need old-fashioned P-ATA connectors on motherboards, which means they can get smaller.
Come on, guys, 12x? 16? We just don't care anymore. But let us put a slot-loading DVD burner on a really tiny motherboard, and now we're talking.