What burner should I buy ?

[aneng]

Hi, My old NEC ND3520A has started giving me trouble and I think it needs replacing. Having used this drive for the past five years, I am no longer au-fait with the current state of affairs regarding which drive to get - i.e. to be able to make, ahem.. backups... of various discs, and maximum compatibility with blank media etc.

What's the current ideal drive to get these days ?

Cheers !

[lordsmurf]

A similar question was asked (and answered) in this thread: What is the BEST DVD-RW DVR optical drive for a home PC today?

To recap it, look at Samsung or Sony Optiarc drives. Pioneer and LiteOn are second choices.
The Samsung is at least as good as that NEC you had.

[drak23]

Hey guys - haven't been on this site in a while. I need a new DVD burner and I would like to have blu-ray playback capability also. This seems to be the only available model I've found (in about 15 minutes of googling):

LG Electronics CH08LS10
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136162

But the thread LordSmurf references does not recommend the LG's generally. Any advice?

Regards,

[budz]

Hi, My old NEC ND3520A has started giving me trouble and I think it needs replacing. Having used this drive for the past five years, I am no longer au-fait with the current state of affairs regarding which drive to get - i.e. to be able to make, ahem.. backups... of various discs, and maximum compatibility with blank media etc.

What's the current ideal drive to get these days ?

Cheers !

SONY OPTIARC, $25/00 with free shipping.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118030

[redwudz]

drak23, Asus also has one at NewEgg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135203 I don't recall who makes Asus drives though.

[drak23]

Thanks for the link Redwudz, I missed that one. I'm leaning toward the Asus based on LG's bad rep, but the LG is apparently both a blu-ray burner AND DVD burner, which is tempting...

[aneng]

A similar question was asked (and answered) in this thread: What is the BEST DVD-RW DVR optical drive for a home PC today?

To recap it, look at Samsung or Sony Optiarc drives. Pioneer and LiteOn are second choices.
The Samsung is at least as good as that NEC you had.

Many thanks for the replies guys.

When you say 'The Samsung' - is that any Samsung drive ? ..or should I be looking for a specific model ?

I can get a Samsung SH-S222A quite cheaply - would this do ? To be honest, all I ever burn is DVD RW's to play movies on my DVD player and the occasional backup of an Xbox game.

[samijubal]

The Samsung is at least as good as that NEC you had.

Wrong. Samsung is nowhere near as good as the NEC 3500 and 3520. My NEC 3500 still to this day works better than any other drive I've used and it's burned many, many more discs than any of my other drives. I've seen little hiccups in Samsung discs that I almost never saw in NEC discs. My Samsung lasted less than 2 months before it died.

[lordsmurf]

@aneng, yes Samsung SH-S222A is great.

@Sami, you have a lot of problems with good equipment. I'm not wrong at all, your luck just sucks. (Maybe you're a smoker, thereby killing your gear with tobacco tar?) Sorry you can't get anything to work for you, but Samsung has made well-respected quality burners since about 2007. There are not any known flaws to the equipment.

[T-Fish]

NEC used to be good, but now they're sony, so forget that lol.
the worst drive i ever had was a lite-on. it was the loudest and
died the fastest and yes i do smoke :P
im happy with my current LG drive and would get another one if
it dies.

drives i've had in the last 12 years:
plextor, philips, sony, nec, asus, lite-on (a great one and a terrible one) and LG.
the old NEC (2005) and the LG were the best, together with the lite-on but that
was only a cdrw and its from 2003 (burnt over a thousand cds and still going strong).

[samijubal]

@aneng, yes Samsung SH-S222A is great.

@Sami, you have a lot of problems with good equipment. I'm not wrong at all, your luck just sucks. (Maybe you're a smoker, thereby killing your gear with tobacco tar?) Sorry you can't get anything to work for you, but Samsung has made well-respected quality burners since about 2007. There are not any known flaws to the equipment.

That's just pure B/S. Go to any site and look at Samsuck burner reviews, you can start with Newegg. Premature failure is fairly common. I knew that going into buying one but the price was right and selection is very limited these days. I hoped to get lucky, it didn't happen. I don't smoke and even if I did it wouldn't kill a burner in a month and a half of little use.

To the OP, have you tried cleaning the lens and spindle on your NEC? You can't buy a drive anywhere near as good as the one you have.

[budz]

TO OP: Go to myce.com which is the former CDFREAKS.COM website and check out the DVD Burner forums. There you'll see the SONY/NEC collaboration which is named OPTIARC is the best dvd burner at this time. I've had SAMSUNG drives but IMHO they will fail over a period of time. As for LG drives they are fine to use. In the last few months I've replaced friends/relatives with LG drives. The only thing is LG has their read speeds locked but there is hacked firmware that can be used to make read speeds faster. Example is MEDIA CODE SPEED EDIT. Don't knock LG drives because the one's I have bought and used are still working after more than 2 years. But I am a DVD Burner whore so I have lots to choose from. I currently have a LG H62L drive that still works like a charm. In my experience I've had the LG drives be able to read back discs that were scratched. IMHO I'd buy the SONY OPTIARC drive instead of the SAMSUNG drive. BTW I do own SAMSUNG drives as well but not the latest models.

[redwudz]

Thanks for the link Redwudz, I missed that one. I'm leaning toward the Asus based on LG's bad rep, but the LG is apparently both a blu-ray burner AND DVD burner, which is tempting...

drak23, That LG drive is not a BD burner, just a DVD burner and a BD reader.

BTW, I have Samsung and Optiarc burners and no problems with any of them.

[drak23]

Doh! Redwudz, you are correct! I dug up the specs on the LG web site. Thats what I get for reading reviews on Amazon, someone must have confused the "lightscribe" feature with BD burning. It did seem too good to be true.

Although I tend to believe budz that a new LG model would be as good as any (for my needs) I will go with the Asus, just because I've had good experiences with some of their other products. I'm really not burning that much anymore, I'm thinking of getting a media player when I upgrade the main TV to HD.

Much thanks for all the input...

-D

[budz]

FYI ASUS drives are rebadged LITEON drives. ASUS does not make their own optical drives.

[drak23]

budz: Figures. Ah well LiteOn gets decent reviews. I ordered the Asus/Liteon this morning, if I have problems I'll post my experiences here.

[themaster1]

Someone know where i could get a dvd burner / blu ray player combo with a nice looking front panel in black or gold or both ideally... lots of black & a bit of gold.

I have a general question regarding such player(s), do they work in Sata 1 or 2? I only have a sata 1 bus but i think if sata 2 it's backward compatible anyway, i'd need confirmation.

For a pc indeed

[redwudz]

Burners are much slower devices than the SATA specification, so SATA 1 (150MB/s) will work fine on a SATA 2 connection. (300MB/s) Optical drives would be SATA 1 devices.

There are also cables rated for SATA 1 or 2, though I doubt it makes much, if any, difference with short runs. SATA cables are normally 1 meter (About 3 feet) or less maximum length. Most all BD burners or ROMs are SATA.

Black faced optical drives are the norm at present. Haven't seen other colors, except for beige. Maybe on a OEM drive with a custom face. You can always detach the face and use a plastic paint like Krylon Fusion to change the color. But it's a bit thick, and takes a long time to set up, so not perfect.

[lordsmurf]

I don't smoke and even if I did it wouldn't kill a burner in a month and a half of little use.

You could kill a drive in 1 day if you chain smoke over a computer.

[T-Fish]

thats a bold statement there lordsmurf and even if its correct which i doubt and i am a smoker, it would apply to all drives, yet some last longer under the same conditions, so while a smoking environment certainly kills an optical drive faster, one can still compare different brands and form his/her own opinion. saying that someone's opinion is false b/c he/she smokes is BS.
maybe only smokers can give valid recommendation to other smokers looking for a new drive. maybe some drives withstand it better than others. maybe only a smoker would notice that difference and not you

[lordsmurf]

thats a bold statement there lordsmurf and even if its correct

It is true.

which i doubt and i am a smoker,

You're letting your bias blind you.

i so while a smoking environment certainly kills an optical drive faster, one can still compare different brands and form his/her own opinion.

This is twisted logic. It's not much different than comparing different types of poisons, and trying to decide which one kills you slower. It's still poison!

saying that someone's opinion is false b/c he/she smokes is BS.

I disagree. An opinion based on false information is BS. There is a such thing as a "wrong opinion". Basic philosophy.

maybe only smokers can give valid recommendation to other smokers looking for a new drive. maybe some drives withstand it better than others.

No. Optics are optics.

[kazyn]

I buy pioneers, they are the best in my opinion. Smoking can't kill your optical drive, I smoke all the time and my dvd drives still work fine...weird eh. Lordsmorf aren't you tired of being wrong?

[budz]

I buy pioneers, they are the best in my opinion. Smoking can't kill your optical drive, I smoke all the time and my dvd drives still work fine...weird eh. Lordsmorf aren't you tired of being wrong?

PIONEER no longer manufactures their own dvd burners....they now use rebadged LITEON drives.

[T-Fish]

It is true.

LOL, now im convinced.
water can kill a drive in seconds. i guess no one in e.g. Malaysia can use optical drives. (high humidity in case you dont get the joke)

I disagree. An opinion based on false information is BS. There is a such thing as a "wrong opinion". Basic philosophy.

false information according to you (based on YOUR opinion), sigh.

[ricoman]

You could kill a drive in 1 day if you chain smoke over a computer.

That has to be one of the most ridiculous statements I ever heard. But you are apparently convinced so I won't bother to argue.

[lordsmurf]

Some of you obviously don't know anything about optics, especially the chemical reactions that can occur between lens coatings and that cancerous shit you keep sucking into your lungs. This has been known about for probably 50 years now among photographer. (REAL PHOTOGRAPHERS, not the asshats that buy a $500 job from Best Buy and pretend they know anything -- sort of like the people who buy computers with DVD burners and suddenly consider themselves experts in IT or videography.)

[ricoman]

I don't smoke and I don't doubt that smoking could have a negative affect on delicate optics. But, the idea that you can destroy a drive with one day of smoking sounds a bit outrageous. I just spent an hour googling smoke and optics and I couldn't find anyone but you saying anything like that. Again, I don't doubt that it can damage optics but question the whole 1 day thing.
You could stand to lighten up a little with your self-righteous, know-it-all tone too. Asshat huh! That's a new one on me.

[lordsmurf]

There's nothing 'self righteous' about refusing to back down from proven science just becomes somebody doesn't want to agree -- especially when it's somebody forming an opinion based on nothing, or on incorrect information and assumptions. (We have enough of that in the political world.) If I didn't know this to be true, I wouldn't be saying it here. I come here to help people, remember that.

Samsung and Sony OptiArc are the two best drives you can buy right now.

If you don't puff smoke all over them, they'll work fine for at least a couple of years (typical life expectancy of optical drives). Suggesting that there might be a 'smoker friendly' drive out there is ignorant.

[VegasBud]

lordsmurf,

On the one hand, it makes some sense that anything airborne (between the lens and the read surface) could interfere with the (laser) light (reducing intensity and increasing scattering), both going to (burning and reading) and returning from (reading) the read surface, which would adversely affect the functioning of the process. It also is logical that some amount of any airborne contaminant would settle on the lens, with similar adverse effect.

On the other hand, I've smoked around every cd/dvd burner (and player) I've ever had, without any discernible problems. In fact, the only reason I have ever replaced an optical drive was to keep pace with the advance of technology, not because the drive is failing (or has failed).

To reconcile the two "hands", I would guess that the amount of airborne contaminants (from smoking) in the ambient air is too low to cause a noticeable problem, even over an extended period of time (at least three years, in my experience).

Even if a completely different mechanism is at work, how would it be possible that it has no discernible effect on any of my drives, even after three years?

If you have a link to more details, I would appreciate it, as I'm not having any luck "googling" the subject.

By the way, I can't say I've ever heard that cigarette smoke chemically reacts with lens coatings in cameras. Once again, if you have a link, I would appreciate it.

[MJA]

Hi, My old NEC ND3520A has started giving me trouble and I think it needs replacing. Having used this drive for the past five years, I am no longer au-fait with the current state of affairs regarding which drive to get - i.e. to be able to make, ahem.. backups... of various discs, and maximum compatibility with blank media etc.

What's the current ideal drive to get these days ?

Cheers !

any DVD burner made by samsung,NEC,sony,LG will do the job.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010100005+4093&QksA utoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configura tor=&Subcategory=5&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabSt oreType=&srchInDesc=


UPDATE,
I didn't know you are from the UK when I posted the link for newegg.lol