I'm worried about getting a DVD writer...

[mojo2185]

I'm sick of VCDs, its a pain putting them on several discs for good quality, etc... yadda yadda.
But I'm very reluctant to wander into the world of DVD writers. Why? Because I'm afraid that soon after purchasing one, a faster drive, such as a 8X drive will come out and make mine obsolete (not obsolete right away, but in the long run). This is what pretty much happened to me with my CD-R drive. I got a computer with one (4X, this was awhile ago), a year later, it was up to 8X speed, and now CD-writers max even above that.
Also, I'm worried about media. It seems pretty expensive and tough to find the right type. There is cheap media available, but I've read tons of posts of complaining, etc. Also, do any burners with cheap media actually burn at 4X speed?
Is now a good time to buy?

[andkiich]

The way things go in computer circles with everything is that in 6 months the whole machine is almost obsolete. If you sit and wait for the bigest baddest thing, then you'l wind up continuing to wait because a few months after the biggest baddest thing, you'll be waiting in the 10x DVD, and the cycle repeats ad nausium. Besides, at 4X, I really don't mind waiting 14 minutes for a 4.3GB disc to burn.

[Vejita-sama]

A 4x DVD burner burns a disc in ~15min. Plextor has an 8x drive coming out but it's not sustained 8x, more like 6x~8x (near end of disc) with project burn times of ~9min.

But as stated no matter when yo buy or what you buy, 1yr latter it'll be outdated (a year is a long time in the computer field). Media prices are actually fallying rapidly. And remember each disc holds 4.3GB of data (so that's like 5x CDRs).

I buy Princo 4x media (which works fine for me, others prefer Ritek) for ~$1/disc (Ritek is ~$1.43/disc). There are no-name brands out there for less than $1/disc (but I don't trust them )

The real question you should ask is what do you want and when? Because if you wait long enough blu-ray will drop in price and just kill the whole DVD-/+R market... If you want to start making DVDs today just accpet that fact that something better will come out, if you can waita bit 8x drives will drive the price of 4x drives down, but is it worth the wait.

[Humor]
I bought a 2x SCSI Phillips CDR in 1996 for $350 (on sale with rebates). 2x media was just starting to be made and you had to burn pretty much everything at 1x to be safe. 7yrs latter 52x drives cost $35. Should I have waited???

I bought a 486 dx/33 for ~1500 in 1991. The local used PC store sells these cpus in packs of 10 for $5, and that's overpriced IMHO.

etc. etc.
[/HUMOR]

[SLICK RICK]

Thats the way things go, espicially with computers. You just have to find the best deal on the product you want and realize that there is going to be a better one a few months from now for the same price (maybe cheaper).

SLICK RICK

[mojo2185]

Hold on a sec...

Besides, at 4X, I really don't mind waiting 14 minutes for a 4.3GB disc to burn.

4X burns a whole DVD in 15 minutes? Well, that really doesn't seem to bad then. I was thinking in terms of half-hour+ for a full dvd (it takes around 15-30 for my CDs to burn on my CD writer). I just couldn't stand sitting around while my DVD burns (much like I do with my CDs), but 15 minutes isn't so bad.

Do any DVD burners actually perform well at 4X? I was looking in the DVD-R area (rather than DVD+R, unless the writer can do both), specifically the Pioneer line. Many posts/reviews I've read said that "works well at 2X, problems at 4X." It makes me think "whats the point of a 4X burner if it can't hit that speed?"

CompUSA Savings on Pioneer A06... looks so tempting...
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=175298

Thanks for clearing somethings up!

[Dubber]

Problems with 4x burning are most likely related to media quality.

I too, had an older and slow CD Writer and by getting my NEC 1300A I got both formats ( + and - ) covered as well as a faster CD Writer too.

I've got the NEC as it proved to be a very reliable unit and a few other companies sell the same drive with their logo too.

Another reason I got a dual format unit is that I figured out that DVD+R media is usually of better quality, but if need be, I can use cheaper media in DVD-R format too.

[mowgly10]

Makes me sick to say this but I actually paid over $3000 for my first CDR. An external Pinnacle Micro 1X burner. Hell with being the first on my block to have one I was one of the first in the state. Guess I should have waited a bit. Oh yeah the blank CD-R's were $16 a piece and there was about a 1/4 failure rate. Sort of puts things in perspective where we are now.

[FOO]

Buncha weenies.
I used to have to go find a punch card machine that
worked and sit there all day to generate input for a computer.
(any error and the whole card is a rectangular coaster)

I also walked 20 miles to school uphill in the snow each way.

[The village idiot]

I still burn DVD at 1x. Not that big a deal. It's not like I do this for work where time is money. Hell, relax.... Buy a cheap 1x or 2x used and have fun! You are talking DVD burner, not pacemaker!

And I seem to recall that 8x is very near. That means I might actually upgrade to an old 4x soon.

Now DVD-RAM at 3x, that might be worth jumping on.

[TBoneit]

Well I burn all my disk at 4X with the Sony and no problems. I've used the Optorite at 4X in testing at work with no problems either. Might be because I use brand name media ( I buy on sale) The TDK 4X +Rs I used were $129 for a spindle of 100 + Tax, The Memorex 4X +Rs I'm using now were $34.99 for a spindle of 25 + Tax (1.48 per disk)

They have been no problem either ( I am buying retail too) I walk in pay my money and walk out with the disks.


[/url]https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=175290[/url]

refers to 15 pks Buy one get one free, so 30 pcs for $34 on sale at office depot.

So I say go for it
Cheers

[kamuixtv]

Avoid pioneer

[handyguy]

It's not how fast they become its how much time you want to spend writing a disk.

Also important are software size limitations. HDs are getting way bigger than the software you have to put on it. A dvd does like 4.4gigs & that's a lot of data.

Bluray, now that should be the next media to come out that we can afford, 23 gigs per disk.

Buy dvd media online not in the store. you can get them around 80 cents each that way.

[normando]

Avoid reading the previous Pioneer bashing post!

Buy the Pioneer DVR-106 at newegg.com and tack on the extended warranty for $11. I just picked one up myself.... this is a dual format 4x burner with a 2 year warranty for $196!! This is an OEM product, so you must have a version of nero 5 on your machine that you can upgrade to version 5.5.10.42 for free at nero.com.

I have been using Pioneer DVD Burners for 3 years at work and home with no problems. (DVR-S201, DVR-104, DVR-105, & DVR-106) If your computer is healthy, you will not burn any coasters. I think I have burned under 10 coasters total using all these burners with a plethora of different media brands in 3 years using the top speeds that each drive supports.

All of the folks that have all these horror stories complaining about this and that media need to keep their multitasking down to browsing the web when they are burning. If you don't task the HD your burning from, you won't get a coaster using a Pioneer.

[BobK]

I was thinking in terms of half-hour+ for a full dvd (it takes around 15-30 for my CDs to burn on my CD writer). I just couldn't stand sitting around while my DVD burns (much like I do with my CDs), but 15 minutes isn't so bad.

Besides getting a DVD writer, you could get a new CD writer. Just about every week there's someone (Best Buy, Staples, Office Depot) selling 52X CD writers for around $20. Sometimes you have to wait for a mail in rebate, others you get the discount at the register. With 40-48X CDs it'll take about 3 minutes to burn one.

[garryheather]

No problem with the various Pioneers here either... let's go and bash Kamuixtv instead !



Only kidding. Unless he can say why, and not some sweeping statement based on one problem he may have experienced but no-one else has doesn't count of course, take that response with a huge pinch of salt.

You wait until you try and make up your mind about what media to use... that's been known to start wars !

[kamuixtv]

Pioneer
- You can't use taiwanese media except RITEK or your using hacked firmware
- Hard to prove but hacked firmware may damage your drive
- Following the words above you may end up writing @ 1x
- If it's ok for you to use TDK, TY or any japanese brand media go ahead...



If A06 gonna be like this? **** then...

[garryheather]

I always ask... what's wrong with 1x ?

I'm quite happy to burn at 1x if it means a decent, reliable burn. Besides, I've got better things to do with my time than sit in front of the PC shouting "come on !!" while it does its thing.

I've seen some very informative television programmes in that hour before now. I've had my dinner in that time. Hell, I even got laid during a burn. Twice !!

BTW - I haven't found a single disc that my A04 wouldn't record on at 1x. Getting the damn things to play back on another device is another matter, of course. However, it's got to be said that my personal preference of discs - excluding those you mention - is (in no real order) e-Proformance (prodisc, IIRC), Mirror / Eclipse (AN31), Nan-ya, the Princo version of Datawrite classic, the original Choice Media white tops... all with genuine Pioneer firmware.

[musotechy]

More speed is not always the best way to go, especially when it comes to DVD burning. DVD burning for the home user is still a new technology, overtime it will be perfected. Speeds will probably not grow greatly as they are already write data faster than CD-R. CD-R is already kind of maxed out at 52x, any faster and the discs melt!!!

For me slower is better with a deeper sustained burn

Thanks

[macleod]

I have some 4x media that I am using my 4x burner (pioneer DVR-105 or a05) for. At least for me on my system, when I choose the option to burn at 4x it is about 30 seconds faster than burning at 2x when I use dvddecrypter or nero.

1x burn = avg time 45-50 minutes
2x burn = avg time 20-25 minutes
4x burn = avg time 19.5 - 24.5 minutes

Hell, I even got laid during a burn. Twice !!

do you stop when you hear the ding that is done and ready for another burn What do you say??

[RabidDog]

that bloke must have been pleased!

[troyvcd1]

I think this is all crazy about 8x or 4x. I convinced my wife I needed a dvd writer. So I promised I would back up twin towers. It took my computer 17 hours to decode this movie with dvd2dvdr. Who the hell cares now if it takes 15 minutes or 30 minutes to write the dvd.

[LanEvo7]

I don't think DVD writers are going go get any faster. I mean like truely faster, not only during the outer tracks. There was an interesting article at http://www.dvd-recordable.org/ , unfortuanlly the server is full so I can't find it, about how it might not be physically possible to burn dvds at higher speeds. This is because the rotation of the DVD would be to fast and it could cause the disc to shatter. We are already seeing the limits on DVD burning since 8x isn't really 8x. Its more like 6x since it doesn't burn 8x unless it reaches the outer tracks. So I don't think you have much to worry about.

Pioneer
- You can't use taiwanese media except RITEK or your using hacked firmware
- Hard to prove but hacked firmware may damage your drive
- Following the words above you may end up writing @ 1x
- If it's ok for you to use TDK, TY or any japanese brand media go ahead...

Do you have the Pioneer confused with the NEC drive? I haven't found one "cheap" disc that didn't burn in my A05. Well, one princo failed me during buring, but that was probably the disc.

[CHAOS]

Makes me sick to say this but I actually paid over $3000 for my first CDR. An external Pinnacle Micro 1X burner. Hell with being the first on my block to have one I was one of the first in the state. Guess I should have waited a bit. Oh yeah the blank CD-R's were $16 a piece and there was about a 1/4 failure rate. Sort of puts things in perspective where we are now.

AMEN to that brother!!!!!!!

Do you have the Pioneer confused with the NEC drive? I haven't found one "cheap" disc that didn't burn in my A05. Well, one princo failed me during buring, but that was probably the disc.

Hmmm.... i had a dvd+ 2x that i bought in a box from verbatim but it was an nec dvd drive and i never had a problem with any media i burned in it.

[gmatov]

What do you think Garryheather would say? He's a gentleman. "Excuse me.", of course.

I don't understand the "deeper, sustained, burn". As though if you slow way down, and focus the laser on a given spot for a longer period of time you will change that spot to a readable 1 or 0. If they have gotten the laser hot enough to change the state of that spot to reflective, non-reflective, why in the world do you think the laser would burn at the same intensity at half the speed? (Rotational)

It would, naturally, be reduced so that it did not totally vaporize the reflective layer, ink, dye, whatever you want to call it..

To the original poster, go buy the damned thing now. If you wait for the very fastest machine to ever come out, you are going to get one just before the newest type of media comes out, what, Star Trek's dilithium crystals, again?

George

[dougry]

Look at tigerdirect. They have sveral now at 100.00. So if it's obsolete in a few years, you're only out $100.00. Far as media goes, I buy 50 DVDR LEDA brand from shop4tech for $45.00. And with my Toshiba SD-R5002 I have NEVER made a single coaster.

[overloaded_ide]

Lot's of good posts here.

The speed you need depends what you plan to do and your system you are using, but being as prices are so low for various burners might as well get the fastest anyway

If you pop in a disk and burn when you go to bed, does it matter if it took 1 hr or 15 minures to burn it? If you need 9 disks today, then it does!
I needed 9 copies of a full disk (original content), all I had was 1x disks!
2x burner but only 1x disks. Big BUMMER!
About an hour per disk!

If your system can't transfer data fast enough to burn full speed, then you don't need full speed anyway. You might want to check the system out. Course you could get an 8x and just burn at 4x or 2x untill you upgrade if need be.

Price of burners are low enough now (but lower would be better too). I paid $180 for mine and now it costs like $120? Also mine is a 2x, there was no 4x that I know of then. Only Sony had the dual format and it was about $300!
I can get a 4x dual format NEC for less than $150 now also.

Newegg.com is a great place to shop online! Never had a problem with an order myself. You can get a bad item anyplace anytime! Only one I ever got was a bad system board and they replaced it, only cost me for shipping it back. AND I think it could possibly have been my fault it did not work too! In a couple years and a ton of orders that was my only problem!

As for new stuff or dropping prices, just something we have to live with and should enjoy to the max! My first 1700xp CPU (oem) cost me $150.
The next one cost $100, on the third it was the retail one for about $75. My 2000XP retail CPU was $100. Now I will be building a 2500XP with 333 FSB system and the cpu is only $92 retail boxed. Although I hate when I pay $100 today and tommorow it's only $90, I love the fact I can get better stuff next month for the same or lower price. I like to build systems, I have 4 and building number 5! Latter I will start selling a few as used for about what it cost me to build them, or the cost of building a better new one anyway.

What I do now is decide a price I want to pay for something and look to see what I can get for that amount! Though I will go a little over and glad to go under, I look to see what is selling at $100 now! Hard drives, CPUs, system boards etc...
Also I look above that price just incase I am just $5 from a great deal.

Basically at $100 I figure I can't lose much if the prices drop.
Some things just can't be had for that price though, so I start at $100 and work my way up seeing what is available, like for DVD R burners. I dought I can get any for $100 even. But I can get -R for $120 or go to $150 for a dual format NEC. So next I look into reviews and comments on the drives I find for the price I want to pay.

Sort of the same thing for disks. I decide how many I want to order, 100. I want to pay $150 or less and I want printables this time and prefferably 4x just in case I buy a 4x burner soon. So now I go shopping and see what I can get where for that price. Then I try to find comments and reviews about those disks from that online store. Make sure not alot of people are having trouble with those disks or the vender.

I have found if you shop around a little like this you get a better deal and don't feel ripped if the price drops a little in a week. Also often you end up with better quality stuff than if you just go to a store and buy whatever they have on the shelf!

But yes, if you go out and buy the top of line CPU today for $500 you will feel ripped in 2 months when you can get it for $200 because the price dropped 3 times when the newer faster ones hit the market! Same with nearly anything in computer hardware!

[Skylooker]

Because I'm afraid that soon after purchasing one, a faster drive, such as a 8X drive will come out and make mine obsolete (not obsolete right away, but in the long run).

Guess what Mojo? The computer you're talking about putting this burner in was probably obsolete when you bought IT too. Just go get the drive and have fun and stop worrying so much.

[gmatov]

Overload,

Right on!!!

Jesus, computer components drop in price, or increase in performance on an almost daily basis.

A can of beans, a gallon of gas, a car, a DVD just goes up and up and up. And cars, I don't even want to talk about. 7 year loans for a god-damned automobile? Jesus. In my day, a 3 year loan meant every 3 years you bought a new car. 7 years is half a short mortgage. For a CAR? And we complain about a DVD burner that is 150 today, but might be 140 tomorrow. AND, we'll go out and spend 150 for 4 to have dinner and a movie.

We always get more and better performance for less, day by day, well, week by week, but you know what I mean.

We have computer shows out here on a monthly basis. A hundred or more vendors, most of whom are cutting the margin to the bone to make a sale. Depending on the # of tables, they may have to pay 600 bucks a day, so have to sell to pay the rent. CPUs, RAM, drives, MOBOs, this is the place to buy, so long as you have seen them there before and can almost count on them being there the next month, in case you got a lemon.

This is not to pick on those members who might be students, and really can't afford to buy 2nd, 3rd tier components. For them, my sympathy, when you get into the real work force, as opposed to the jobs you are stuck with to try to make a buck while you are in school, the options might be different.

Just live with it. My first CD burner was a 2X-1XRW SCSI. More coasters than useables. And the disks cost more than Spode China per plate.

Good luck.

Get the damn thing. Enjoy!!!

George

[trhouse]

It does not matter when you jump in. Gordon Moore, one of Intel's founders, said in 1965, that circuit densities in IC's like Pentium processors would double about every 18 months ( Moore's Law ). IBM announced at a conference about two years ago that there were no technology roadblocks for the law to be sustained for another 10 years at least.

Our first company computer in 1989 had an Intel 80286 processor running at 6 MHz. The hard drive was 30 MB. Our latest computers run Pentium 4's at 2.53 GHz and the hard drives are 120 GB. Obsolescence is the only thing guaranteed.

[gmatov]

trhouse,

Unless you're a relatively new company, like 14 years old, you really had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the computer age, didn't you?

30 Megs? You waited till they became "reasonably" priced. Not the 5 meg, 10000 buck model from the previous year. I'd have to hunt up the prices, but still have a Byte Mag with old Quotes. They'd make you bust a gut.

Watson, of IBM, saying he could anticipate the need for, perhaps, 5 computers in the "whole" world.

Bill Gates, and who could possibly need more than 1 megabyte of base RAM, so we had to load high, etc.

Again, buy the damn thing, and enjoy. Well, maybe they won't last till you get out of school, but you can always reburn before they rot.



George