What DVD burner?

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Rubber Bullets

Guest
With a birthday coming up my other half has aid that she will buy me a DVD burner :)

This site seems to have some good offers. She is willing to spend up to about £180 and so the Sony on that page looks quite a good buy.

I would really like one that can handle both +R and -R as I want to maximise my chances of being compatible with all DVD players, and 4x burning would be nice. The Sony fulfills both these requirements.

OEM is fine as I have a newish version of Nero already, and have a proggy called DVDit to do the authoring.

Any other suggestions would be gratefully received.

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lovedaddy

Guest
I've got both sonys and pioneers at work.

Unless you KNOW that your going to use the + format, I'd honestly just stick with a - burner. The pioneer 105 burns 4x.
The burns work in stand alone DVD players, PS2s, Xboxs (and will also burn the mini DVDs that GCs use - tried them too).

You can get - media loads cheaper, with 4x being about 70p a disc at the moment (for the excellent datawrites - top for xbox and ps2 stuff)

Errr, thats about it really =)
 
R

Rubber Bullets

Guest
Thanks for the quick answer :)

TBH I really have no idea which format I'll use, but I guess it'll be the one that works best with my standalone DVD player at home. Basically I want to start putting my digital Video onto DVD, to play here mostly, but also for family members as they join the 20th century and get DVD players as well :rolleyes:

I just figure that when dual format burners are similar prices to single format I'd be daft to limit myself, even though as you say I'd almost certainly settle on one format or the other.

As for the Pioneer's, on that page I linked too the OEM 106 is cheaper than the retail A05, which is single format but comes with software I probably wouldn't use. It seems a better bet, and even leaves the girlfriend with a little left over to take me for dinner :)

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E

Embattle

Guest
The new Pioneer 106(A06) will do both +/- which is always an advantage although be warned that DVD burning is highly overrated.
 
N

nath

Guest
Be warned, embattle is totally wrong. DVD burning is fantastic. And yes, go for the Pioneer 106/A06 (only difference being 106 is OEM A06 is retail). I have the 105 and it's fab, I imagine the 106 is just as good with the added ability of burning + media. It's cheap too!
 
E

Embattle

Guest
Originally posted by nath
Be warned, embattle is totally wrong.
Click to expand...

Since I had one before many other people and found that I rarely used it, like many people I've talked to, I don't reckon I am wrong although this isn't the case for every single person.
 
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lovedaddy

Guest
Your wrong.

DVD burning is a god send. I must burn at least 3 DVDs of data a day, without it backing up would be a CDR nightmare.

Pioneer 106 sounds the way to go to me =)
 
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Embattle

Guest
Most people don't backup that much data(porn) every day, if even in a month, and as such your comment is wrong :p

BTW always keep up to date on firmware as this will improve compat/speed of the drive with DVD media.
 
S

Sibanac

Guest
I gotta side with Embattle.
Unless you gonne copy movies straight to dvd they are pretty useless.
If you want backup just get a firewire/usb2 HD
If you need some small data backup use a cd-r
 
L

lovedaddy

Guest
so why have I got over 2 terra of hhd storage, and probably the same on DVD already? (and no, not 1 byte is porn, I still use CDRs for that).
I use them to do weekly snapshots of projects at work, with 3 projects each on 3 platforms, it would be so costly to use any other medium.

I know boat loads of people that have dvdr now for various reasons. My mate backups whole series of manga (or whatever its called these days), on 1 disc.

Another mate uses dvd decryptor & burner to backup blockbuster video for us (nice to have the dvd minus the extras in his collection.)

20 mins, 4 and a half gigs of data backed up and archived for only 70p. Quality stuff.
 
E

Embattle

Guest
Originally posted by lovedaddy
so why have I got over 2 terra of hhd storage, and probably the same on DVD already? (and no, not 1 byte is porn, I still use CDRs for that).
I use them to do weekly snapshots of projects at work, with 3 projects each on 3 platforms, it would be so costly to use any other medium.

I know boat loads of people that have dvdr now for various reasons. My mate backups whole series of manga (or whatever its called these days), on 1 disc.

Another mate uses dvd decryptor & burner to backup blockbuster video for us (nice to have the dvd minus the extras in his collection.)

20 mins, 4 and a half gigs of data backed up and archived for only 70p. Quality stuff.
Click to expand...

You do not make up the majority of people who buy DVD-R/RW drives. Yours is work based where it is valid...although most companies still use Tapes etc.

There is still a number of compatibility problems with copying/creating copy's of movies and trying to play them back on ordinary DVD players....tends to be depend on DVD media used.

Again DVD-R/RW drives are slightly overrated and often under used by most who buy them.
 
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lovedaddy

Guest
Originally posted by Embattle
You do not make up the majority of people who buy DVD-R/RW drives. Yours is work based where it is valid...although most companies still use Tapes etc.

There is still a number of compatibility problems with copying/creating copy's of movies and trying to play them back on ordinary DVD players....tends to be depend on DVD media used.

Again DVD-R/RW drives are slightly overrated and often under used by most who buy them.
Click to expand...

Yes, use them at work, but I've also got 1 in the house (the 105 pioneer). We use tapes too, but when you want relatively high storage, quick access and things like bootable media, dvdr has no other.

Problems with duplicating films 9/10 is down to user error. I've got a Sony 700 series dvd player, known for being really picky with media. So long as you use something of good quality, like Datawrite, and not dross like Bulkpaq (which will work until you get to the outer edge of the disc), your laughing. My mate has over 200 DVD films now, none of which have been a problem in any player we have tried them on.

Add to that xbox games, ps2 games, and development GC games (on mini dvd), whats not to like about DVDR now the drives and media are both relatively cheap!
 
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Jonty

Guest
Have you both quite finished your war of words? :p hehe. Looking over what both of you have said, there's clearly no right and wrong. Embattle is undoubtedly right that, for most users, a DVD burner will rarely be used to its fullest potential, and as such it looks like a costly extravagance next to a CD burner. Still, for those users who are constantly shifting huge amounts of data, like lovedaddy (and I mean huge!), then obviously a DVD burner really comes into its own. It's all down to how schadenfreude thinks he'll be using it. Okay? :(

As for drives and such, personally I'd be tempted to go for a rewritable drive if you're still keen on getting a DVD burner. I know recordable only drives are cheaper, as is the media, but, to me at least, being able to rewrite to disks can really have its advantages, and you'll still be able to write to recordable disks too. As you rightly highlight, there are a lot of different standards out there, and no one standard looks set to take complete control any time soon. So, to avoid problems in the future, you really want to get a drive which supports a wide variety of standards, that way you're safe whatever happens to the market.

I don't want to advise on specific drives, since I'm not au fait with what's hot and what's not. For what it's worth, the Pioneer 106 drives seems fairly cheap and supports a wide range of standards, although like most other drives, the speeds it can reach aren't blistering, but neither is any drive, as yet . . .

Pioneer DVR-106 4x DVD±RW

  • DVD-R @ 4x, 2x & 1x
  • DVD-RW @ 2x & 1x
  • DVD+R @ 4x & 2.4x
  • DVD+RW @ 2.4x
  • CD-R @ 16X, 12x, 8x & 4x
  • CD-RW @ 10x, 8x & 4x
Click to expand...
Anyway, there's my two pennies worth :p Overclockers UK, eBuyer, Komplett and many other online stores have fairly wide ranges of these drives available.

Good luck :)

P.S. You have the same birthday as my brother :D
 
R

Rubber Bullets

Guest
Well thanks for those answers, especially Jonty for cutting to the chase :)

To be fair to Embattle it may be the case that I would 'underuse' a DVD burner, but this is personal definition only. There are a number of things in my computer related inventory definately in this category, but I am fortunate to have more money than sense (not that much of either). In this case it isn't even my money :D

There is no way that I'd ever need to back up the kind of amount that LD does, but it on the other hand the time before last I did a format and install everything I needed to back up fitted on about 4 CDs. Now the contents of 'My Documents' total over 32GB, thats a lot of CDs, quite a lot of it is crap, of course but there's still a lot of backing up needed there.

The other reason for getting a DVD burner is to create my own DVD's from home shot video etc. with proper menu's and such. I can burn and play VCD's but my player doesn't really like them that much, and the quality isn't as good.

Anyway thanks again and I think the Pioneer 106 gets the nod.

Oh and Jonty remind me to start a 'HB Jonty's Brother' thread won't you? :p

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Jonty

Guest
I don't think I really did much. Anyway, good luck with whatever you decide to get. Be sure to post again with your thoughts once you've started using it, it would be interesting to know how you get on :D

Kind Regards
 
G

GDW

Guest
Originally posted by lovedaddy


Another mate uses dvd decryptor & burner to backup blockbuster video for us (nice to have the dvd minus the extras in his collection.)
Click to expand...

Hmmm sounds dodgy
 
R

Rubber Bullets

Guest
Thanks Emb,

Pioneer 106 has been ordered though I won't be able to use it for a couple of weeks yet :)

The firmware has already been downloaded.

s
 
S

Sawtooth

Guest
I bought an NEC multispin DVD burner. It came with Nero and seems fair enough. I think its 5X writer which doesnt seem that fast to me but I think its early days for this as others seemed to be slower 2X. Anyway it had a good review so I went for it. Burned my usual Downloads file onto one disc, 2.5 GB.
I seem to acculmulate that in about a week.
 
J

Jonty

Guest
The Pioneer 106 drive is also available from Overclockers UK for £138.06 inc. VAT exc. delivery, or from eBuyer for £138.43 inv. VAT exc. delivery (both OEM packages). Is it good, kameleon?

Kind Regards
 
R

Rubber Bullets

Guest
Glad you like it Kam, looking forward to mine.

Shame you didn't use the link at the top of this post though.

£135.65 inc p&p

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D

danger

Guest
Does anyone know of a DVD burner that can burn +/- media and read RAM media? I haven't been able to find one so far which is annoying because I really need one that can read DVD-RAM :p
 
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