bitsetting important?

[halcyon026]

What is bitsetting? I mainly want to make backups of DVDs and was thinking of getting the liteon ldw-411s, Im told this drive doesnt do bitsetting. If bitsetting is at all better Id rather get the best drive I can that has it. Is a firmware update able to add bitsetting?

which drive to get that is -R, +R and has bitsetting, only the best price doesnt matter. 4x is fine, i just want great quality and compatability.

[myckee]

When you burn a dvd the type of dvd is encoded on the disc..whether it is dvd-r, +r or rom. Bitsetting allows you to spoof the type of disk it is. The reason why some people want this is because their very old dvd players can't play +R media. When you change the bitsetting to read dvd-rom, it fools the old drive into thinking this is a pressed cd and it will play.

This isn't an important feature although there will be some that swear up and down that it is the greatest thing since round wheels. If you have a recent stand alone dvd player, you have nothing to worry about. There are a few players that MAY not read +r but very few.

The only drives that are currently capable of this are Ricoh drives and their clones.

[garryheather]

Don't forget "great quality and compatibility" usually comes down to the media you use more than the writer - a recorder / firmware from brand A may record a specific blank better than brand B, but the difference is negligable if they adopt the correct write strategy.

The same can not be said for media, which can be extremely variable to say the least. Even the best recorder in the world will only appear to perform so well with crap media.

[racer-x]

If all you're doing is backing up your DVDs, then as long as the disks you make are playable on your DVD player, You don't have to worry about bitsetting capabilties.

However if you are creating DVDs with your video and are planning to distribute, then I would get a Ricoh 5125 or 5140 and burn +R disks as DVD-ROM. This is what I do, and I haven't found a player yet that won't play my disks.