Recommendations for a modern burner?

[kschang]

There's only one catch: it needs to be available locally retail in San Francisco Bay Area.

I went to CompUSA and bought an AOpen DUW1616L-31 for $69.95, but it's not open yet. If you foliks think there's something MUCH better within say, $15-$30 difference I can always exchange this.

This one has all the usual bells and whistles. The only thing it doesn't do is it only does DL media at 4X, and it doesn't do DVD-RAM (but then nobody does except that oddball Mad Dog drive any way)

And before you ask... It's going into my new PC, a P4.

[FulciLives]

I would go with a Pioneer burner.

This one at BEST BUY is the model I would buy: CLICK HERE

I would return the AOpen to CompUSA and buy the Pioneer at BEST BUY.

Pioneer has always made good reliable DVD burners and this model is one of the few so far that can do DVD+R DL as well as DVD-R DL

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Habby]

To him who has an ear let him hear. The absolute best dvd burner at this minuit is Plextor PX-716A The most compatible Blank disc for the drive is Verbatim DVD-R white ink jet 16 speed burned at 6 speed. When checked with plex tools Pro software my results are excellent almost always. It hardly ever even drops down to an extra good rating. The drive is only about $89.00 and the discs can be found at Sams club. I have 2 of these plextors that I use to burn simultaneously with roxio 7 software. I wouldn't trade my setup for anything.

[ROF]

You have a decent burner in the AOpen DUW1616L. BTW, it's an 8x DVD+R DL / 4x DVD-R DL Burner. You did overpay for it as you can buy it from most online retailers for under $50 delivered to your door but that's to be expected from CompUSA. Why are you limiting yourself to the local economy?

[budz]

To him who has an ear let him hear. The absolute best dvd burner at this minuit is Plextor PX-716A The most compatible Blank disc for the drive is Verbatim DVD-R white ink jet 16 speed burned at 6 speed. When checked with plex tools Pro software my results are excellent almost always. It hardly ever even drops down to an extra good rating. The drive is only about $89.00 and the discs can be found at Sams club. I have 2 of these plextors that I use to burn simultaneously with roxio 7 software. I wouldn't trade my setup for anything.

I own Plextor's first dvd burner the 708A drive which is a great drive. I don't agree that Plextor 716A is the absolute best dvd burner at this time. As for the Plextor 716A drive if you check out the PLEXTOR FORUM at Cdfreaks.com you'll find lots of problems with the 716A drive from the early release that BEST BUY had on the drive to problems in RMAing it back to Plextor. In my opinion Roxio software is buggy which most know it causes software conflicts with other programs.

The best burner for the buck is the BENQ 1640 if you can find one. The BENQ 1655 LIGHTSCRIBE has just been released in the USA. COMPUSA sells a I/O MAGIC LIGHTSCRIBE drive which is a rebadged BENQ 1655 or a LITEON. If you check out the BENQ FORUM there are threads on rebadged 1655 drives. Some have posted that COMPUSA employees have allowed them to open up the boxes to see if they're BENQ 1655 drives.

Everyone will have their own opinion on which drive is the best and so forth. I have (4) BENQ 1640 drives that work well for me. I've also built computers with them for others. The BENQ 1650 will be released soon which will not have the LIGHTSCRIBE feature. I don't need LIGHTSCRIBE because those discs are too expensive and it takes 30 mins for the lightscribe process to be completed.

[kschang]

Well, the the I/O Magic Lightscribes are $99 with $40 rebate, but I hate rebates. :P and try to avoid it as much as possible.

As there's nothing really wrong with the AOpen I think I'll keep it for now.

[simmons3d]

I'm gonna go with the Pioneer 110D. Up here in Canada you can get them for $50 CND ($40US). They are reliable AND they have no RIPLOCK. Don't forget that you're really limited by most burners and their slow rip speeds. Yes, you can play around with firmware but not everyone wants to go that route.

[Habby]

Most of the problems with a DVD burner that most people report isn't a prob with the drive itself. It is usually a conflict on the computer. An incorrect setting or little junkie piece of software on the computer. I was just saying that I had found what i consider to be the best burner. For all you people out there with sound cards by creative you should disable a little utilty called disc detector for it will play heck with burning software.