Sony DRU500A - review

[joepic]

I just purchased my Sony on 10/25 from CompUSA for $350. I had one on order from DELL for $285 but they postponed shipping unitl 12/31/02 !

I will detail in a seperate message my experience with different media and software.

This is my first DVD burner and I would rate the DRU500A a score of 10 !

For those folks looking for a review on this burner try:

Sony DRU-500A Dual RW DVD±RW
http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/index.php?reviewid=154

Sony software upgrade - RecordNow DX
http://sony.storagesupport.com/dvdrw/dru500a_notice.htm


Here are some of the comments from the review:

Highs:
Can write to both DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW media
Writes to DVD+RW and DVD+R discs at 2.4x (2.5x?)
Writes to DVD-R discs at 4x and DVD-RW discs at 2x
Writes to CD-R's at 24x
Features Sony's Power-Burn technology
Can read most CD and DVD formats
Good transfer speeds with all types of CD media
Can format DVD+RW discs in the background. Ready to write in about a minute!
Good CD writing quality
Has an 8192KB buffer
Relatively quiet when reading and writing.
Nice looking design

Lows: 4x DVD-R and 2x DVD-RW media will be hard to find for a few months
High seek times when reading CD's and DVD's
Reads DVD videos and DVD-R/RW discs at 2x and DVD+R/RW at 2.5x
RecordNow might be too limited for advanced users
VERITAS DLA download not available until November
Has some problems recognizing 99 minute discs
No headphone jack and volume control on front of drive.

Power-Burn
Power-Burn is Sony's own recording protection system. This technology not only prevents buffer underruns when writing to CD's, but ensures reliable and accurate recording.

On the DRU-500A, Sony has taken Power-Burn to the next level by adding support for lossless linking technology. Lossless linking allows the DVD writing process to be stopped and resumed at any point without compromising compatibility. Without this technology, this process might create empty space that would make the disc incompatible with many DVD players and DVD-ROM drives.

DVD+R and DVD+RW Performance
I was a little surprised by the drive's writing times. When writing to DVD+RW media, the DRU-500A was actually faster than all of the DVD+RW drives we've looked at.

The Sony's DVD+R writing times were even more impressive. Other drives supporting the DVD+R format have usually taken a few additional minutes to write our test data to a DVD+R disc than to a DVD+RW disc. This was mostly due to the additional finalizing time the DVD+R media required. With the DRU-500A, this finalizing time has been cut down to about 30 seconds.


Conclusion
The Sony DRU-500A is the first drive to support both the DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW format and is also the first drive to hit the market with support for 4x DVD-R and 2x DVD-RW speeds. Here's part of CDRLabs' conclusion:

The Sony DRU-500A has been really hyped up over the past few weeks. With its ability to read and write to DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW media, many people have held off buying a DVD writer until the DRU-500A started to ship. If you're one of those people, I will say that it was definitely worth the wait. While the DRU-500A has a few performance aspects that could have been better, it's still the top dog when it comes to DVD writers.

When it comes time to write DVD's, the DRU-500A currently has no equal.

[snowmoon]

I don't have one of these units, but from what's been bouncing around it might have been good to mention.

LOW:

Compatibility issues with media.

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=119783&highlight=500a

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=118427&highlight=500a

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=117940&highlight=500a