Pioneer A03 or the Panasonic DF-311 DVD-R burners

[jfebus]

Hi All,
I would like to buy either the new Pioneer A03 or the Panasonic DF-311 DVD-R burners. Which one is the BEST for creating DVD-R disks with pure DVD compliant video streams. There is a price differential and as far as I can see that this is due to the Pioneer being able to burn CDRs.

regards,

[jakecb]

I HAVE THE PIONEER AND FROM WHAT I READ THE PIONEER WILL ALSO BURN DVD-RW AS WELL AS CDR-R AND DVD-R AND THE PANASONIC WILL NOT.

[alkieman]

The Pioneer drive can burn to both DVD-R and DVD-RW as well as CD-R and CD-RW.

DVD-RW is rewriteable whereas DVD-R is write once. DVD-R and DVD-RW are both compatible with most existing DVD players, especially if your player is less than 2 years old.

The Panasonic drive can also write to DVD-R but for it's rewriteable format it used DVD-RAM cartridges. DVD-RAM cartridges can not be read by any stand alone DVD Video player yet. Panasonic are due to launch DVD-RAM recorders in the US and Europe soon but no existing DVD Video layers can play DVD-RAM discs. At the moment DVD-RAM is primarily a computer based format.

If you want a cheaper way of producing DVD-R discs then the Panasonic would do fine as it's about a fifth cheaper than the Pioneer drive.

If you can afford it however, go for the Pioneer as it's more compatible with other media and players.