Looking at the 3520a

[BBock727]

I know there are many posts but I havnt really found what i am looking for!

It seems that the NEC 3520a is the best drive out right now for the price. Currently i have a Pioneer A06, which has done me fine, but I would really like to move away from 4x burns as they take way too long.

Do you think the NEC 3520a is the best way to go? Also, are there plans for any new speed drives to come out in the reasonable future? I heard about an NEC 4### but i dont know how long till that comes out, nor do i know anything about the initial pricing of NEC Drives. Or would now be a good time to buy?


Basically, Im asking is the NEC 3520a the drive to get right now, and is right now a good time to upgrade my burner?

[SaSi]

I've orignally used the SONY DRU500 and suffered the media incompatibility problems that came with it.

Then I tried the LiteOn 812 , Samsung TSS552, and the NEC 3500A.

I still keep the Samsung and now have a NEC3520.

I mostly use TayoYuden media as well as some TDK +R

The drive records every +R and -R disk I have put in and the TY (rated at 8x) are succesfully recorded at 16x (nominal) resulting in a burn time of just below 7 minutes.

I must point out that I always record archive material at 4x and do a verify (never fails now but the SONY gave me "safe" habbits).

Recording at 6x gave me trouble both times I tried, so I discarded this rating.

Recording at 16x is tricky. The PC must be fast enough and the disks as well. No more authoting, converting and MPEG encoding at the same time as burning. Also, I have noticed that 16x recorded media - although succesfully verified and OK on the stand alone Denon DVD player, failed to playback on my laptop at random intervals. Ripping the DVD on the laptop was succesful - but a lot of retries were shown.

Bottom line: DVDRW drives are dead cheep now. Burning at 16x is typically as fast as it gets with current DVD specs. Dual layer burning at 4x is good and fast and I don't expect it to become any faster anytime soon. I also know I won't be burning any DL disks anytime soon as they cost 10 times as much as two single layer +Rs in bulk.

So, go get it.