Solid, cheap DVD burner that can use those cheap ass DVD-Rs?

[Murrdawg045]

I wanna spend about $200-250 on the burner, and I also want to be able to use those cheap DVD-Rs at compusa or mercantime.com.

Can anyone recommend a good one? I was looking at this.

Also, its got 12x dvd read, so I think I would just use it to read DVDs instead of buying a DVD rom drive. But I read some post here that says most DVD writers wont extract a movie faster than 2x, is that true?

[Bob W]

That's a very good price for a dual format DVD burner and with a 4MB buffer. You will however discover that DVD writers are locked at 2x for DVD reading thus pretty much useless for DVD ripping IMO. The only good DVD-Rom drives for speed that I know of are the LiteON 163 or 166 models which go about $39 online.

[Murrdawg045]

What exactly is important about the buffer size?

[Bob W]

What exactly is important about the buffer size?

Less chance of having a "buffer under-run" while recording thus wasting a disc.

[garryheather]

.. don't forget "cheap ass discs" might not work with your standalone.

Burning them is only half the story... you might find your player(s) to be picky about the media they like. You could well end up having to use mid to high end media in order to achieve satisfactory results.

[Murrdawg045]

.. don't forget "cheap ass discs" might not work with your standalone.

Burning them is only half the story... you might find your player(s) to be picky about the media they like. You could well end up having to use mid to high end media in order to achieve satisfactory results.

Apex baby!

[Murrdawg045]

Thanks for the speedy help guys, I really appreciate it

[orbital517]

The drive that you listed looks pretty decent, but i'm not sure if it will be compatible with "cheapo disks". You definitely don't want to get a Sony or NEC drive because they have some trouble reading many "cheap" disks. Click on the DVD Writers tab to your left and you will see many reviews from users that will confirm all of this. As for the buffer size......anything 2MB is fine. You don't have to have 4MB or 8MB........it's all a marketing decoy to sell writers. I have the TDK 440N multi-format as well as the Pioneer 105 DVD-R/-RW and they are both 2MB buffers. I have NEVER EVER gotten a "buffer-underrun error" after over 200 successful burns. And when I burn most of my disks, I have several apps and programs running AT THE SAME TIME while i'm burning. I'll have AOL, Internet Explorer, Musicmatch, and Adobe Photoshop ALLLL running at the same time as i'm recording and not one problem whatsoever with "buffer-underrun errors.

[Murrdawg045]

Good advice orbital, I appreciate it.

[LanEvo7]

Most of the time buffer under run only occurs if you copy from a dvd drive to a dvd burner. If you are writing the info off your hd, the chances of buffer underun are slim.

Thats a really good price for a dual burner, but don't be so surprised if its a bit picky about the media it uses. The Pioneer A05 will burn practically anything.

[Philbiker]

I'm using this OEM Panasonic SW-9571-CYY. Add on an oem copy of Nero Express from Software Outlets and I'm good to go for a very low price. I've used cheap DVD-R discs and they work fine as long as I burn at 1X. I'm making DVDs of home videos and do not care at all about "ripping" or speed. For my needs it is great, and was very economical. The wildcard is that I use DVD-RAM for data backup and it completely kicks major butt.

A very good solution for my needs at an extremely low price.