Price is not a concern, what is the BEST DVD Burner to buy?

[Vanderlow]

If you buy a 16x burner, and only have 8x DVDs, then you just spent money for nothing.

Not true, here is a list of overspeeding media for the BenQ DW1620. It does 16 brands of 8x media at 16x or 12x, that's with official firmware, not hacked. At cdrinfo.com the 1620 burnt it's test image at the fastest time yet at 5:45.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=105224


A sample is Prodisc R03 burnt at 12x (43 cent)
PI Max 7 avg = .30 Total= 5133
PIF Max 2 Avg =00 total= 366

beat that!

[planomann]

the panasonic dvd writer sw-9572-c has always been the choice for me our company simply because they cater to the enterprise sector and mass data storage technology. the new sw-9573-c is being made available by dfwdepot.com next week sometime. it's much faster and gives you the choice of any dvd format you wish to use.

[TerminalVeloCD]

I would recommend the NEC ND-2510A or ND-3500A. Both drives produce excellent burn quality and based on my tests, outperform the Pioneer DVR-107D/DVR-108 in that respect. The Pioneers are still much better than any LiteON/Sony drive, however. The NEC ND-3500A has also proven to be an excellent reader - obviously NEC has been listening to it's customers. The NEC also seems to do things well out of the box, whereas Pioneers and (especially) LiteON/Sonys require a few firmware updates before they perform well.

Regards,
TerminalVeloCD

[red lion]

Agree totaly with above post

[CoasterCreator]

Well I personally used A Sony for many ...many ..many successes but I am having freezing problems after I enclosed it with a ADS firewire / usb2 case.
I would recommend that Sony for internal only (A little slow at first but after firmwares worked perfect for now).
My main drive now is a Pioneer 108 ( if price is no object for you buy some super fast dvd media ) I use cheap 8X..

[chas0039]

I wouldn't worry about the "slow death". A previous poster with years of industrial burning said he sees 15,000 hours between failures on average. If you buy something now before you really need it you probably will be obsolete before you really get any use. Besides at $60 it is not going to break the bank which is why I have a Liteon for +R and a Pioneer for -R. My first optical driv was $350 and it still works.

As for the external enclosure; heat is your enemy. Make sure you have good airflow and a fan.

[maldb]

Without a doubt, the best writer right now is the Pioneer DVR-108 with firmware 1.10. This thing is awesome!

[chas0039]

Without a doubt, the best writer right now is the Pioneer DVR-108 with firmware 1.10. This thing is awesome!

Update your profile! We still think you are burning with a Sony.

[bdgriff]

ANY of the NEC burners! The "old" 2500, the newer 2510, or the newest, 3500. Between my 2500 and new 3500 (albeit both w/Herries firmware) have burned over 350 discs and had 2 coasters....Not bad for me IMHO.

[maldb]

Without a doubt, the best writer right now is the Pioneer DVR-108 with firmware 1.10. This thing is awesome!

Update your profile! We still think you are burning with a Sony.

Details! Details! Details! OK, I'll update it. It's one of things I never remember to do...

[sacajaweeda]

700+ burns on my Sony DRU-500A so far so good.

BENQ is Acer, isn't it? Acer CD recorder drives were complete shit, IMHO.

[ccbadd]

any NEC (2500, 2510, 3500)

I disagree very much. I had a 1300 which was poorly supported by NEC and later I picked up a 2510 cheap and it is also poorly supported by NEC. If it weren't for Herrie and Liggy and company, I doubt anyone would be bragging about NEC drives.

I think that when people are recommending drives they should steer people in the direction of manufacturers that support there hardware after the sale. Benq recently updated the 822 to allow the user to install either a dual format firmware or a +r/rw +r dl firmware. This was for no charge, I can't seem to find anything close to that comming from any of these other manufacturers. Sure, you can used hacked firmwares on some to cross flash, but that is not supported by the manufacturers. And the NEC bitsetting fimwares for >= 2500 drives are from OEM drives releasts by HP and Maddog, not NEC, why? If consumers don't buy from manufacturers that actually give them what they want out of the box, why would the manufacturers ever care what you want?

[mikepos]

Go to cdfreaks and the firmware page. You'll find the NEC 3500 and pioneer 108 are the top rated drives, with burn quality that beats the others. The pioneer is a lot faster for 4x and 8x but the nec is slightly faster for 12x and a lot faster for 16x. You get little speed jump from 8x to 12x or more.
I just went with the pioneer, it works great and is good because I have 3 25disc spindles of 4x maxell, which for me is about 2 years supply unless I get the camcorder capture/dvd burn in gear. I only backup the movies myself or the neices really like. BTW the pioneer is a good reader for damaged discs, my niece got hold of a 2 day old dvd and tried to put it in the vcr... she was very persistant and got plenty of scratches on it but I still got a good copy of the disc. And from now on I'll backup dvds before I release them, I thought this one was a $16 loss... never know when company will pull a surprise attack on your movies. or your groceries. or your beer....

Mike

[VamPYR]

over 1000 using both pioneer DVR-107D, DVR-106D
just got myself pioneer DVR-108 today.
mostly i use two drive to burn at once using nero 6
DVR-107D & 108 produce better result for me.

[Shocker Milwaukee]

DVD-R & Pioneer 108

or

DVD+R & NEC-3500

[only_emo_kid]

any NEC (2500, 2510, 3500)

woot!! very good burner NEC 3500!!!!!

[handyguy]

Hey, lets not be cheap.

Lets get us dvd authoring presses.

[Jeremiah58]

Too bad the -jsl- don't want to post any more on this topic - I really enjoyed his advises in previous replies. The man seems to know all about burners. Thank you -jsl-.
Lordsmurf never told us what was that something he needed to look into.

Anyhow, there is an old saying, here in SouthEastern Europe:
Every Gipsie recommends his own horse.

I would say there are 2 kinds of burners: good and bad.
I've settled for NEC-2500A and never had a coaster among 200 DVD's I've burned so far.