Best Dual Layer DVD Burner? (Mac)

[stanislawski]

What's The Best Dual Layer DVD Burner for My G4 1 Gig Mirror Plate?

[dcsos]

http://www.macworld.com/2005/06/secrets/julyhandson/index.php?pf=1

When you’re shopping for an internal DVD burner, look for one made by Pioneer. Its drives offer the greatest compatibility with the Mac operating system, and recent versions don’t require the kind of firmware updates that other drives demand. Pioneer’s current SuperDrive is the DVR-109, which can burn both single- and double-layer DVDs.

or these guys who don't say what brand their even cheaper alternative is
http://www.mcetech.com/imacg5dvdr8dl.html

The new MCE 8X DVD±R/RW "SuperDrive" Upgrade with Double Layer (also called Dual-Layer)

[macuser25]

the new lacie burner with full copy of toast 7

[From a Buick 8]

It is not going to be a full copy of toast.

I second the vote for a pioneer drive, check new egg .com they have a good price on them

[chikanakan]

Actually it is the full version that ships with the Lacie drive.

http://www.lacie.com/

[From a Buick 8]

Well i have no direct info on this, but based on this guys exp i would use care.

http://www.ripdifferent.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1715

[RatVega]

If your objective is to replace the internal drive with a faster/better one, the Pioneer 109 is good.

If you're looking for and external, you can make your own or a lot of people offer them with the Pioneer drive. BTW, LaCie doesn't have a particularily good reliability reputation.

If your plan is to produce double-sided DVDs for set-top playback, save your money - the level of compatibility is poor, and it's the players' fault, not the burner. The double-sided feature is handy for making data ROM though.

[stanislawski]

The plan is to produce double-sided DVDs for set-top playback.
So are you saying wait until set top players advance and allow dual layer playback with a higher succes rate?

[Spoffo]

I think the success rate on dual layer playback is just fine. Remember 90% of commercial DVDs are dual layer and have been for at least 5 years. I burn lots of DLs using a Pioneer 109 in my G5, and they play without any problems on 3 different players in my home, plus various of my kids and a couple of different ones in conference rooms at my church.

The only problems I've seen have been on a few players built before around 2000 or earlier. Also, playback on computer software players has occassionally been a problem. They sometimes seem to hang at the layer change on disks that play fine on stand-alone players.

One secret to consistently good disks I've found is to keep the total size of the VIDEO_TS folder to around 7.5gb or less. Inconsistent quality in DL blanks seems to mainly involve bad coatings at the very outside of the disk. Keeping the total file size to this limit meeens that you keep the data and the all-important layer change a little bit in from this edge.

[Ladd]

What's The Best Dual Layer DVD Burner for My G4 1 Gig Mirror Plate?

I have essentially the same computer as you (dual 1.25 GHz Mirror Drive Door [MDD]) and last March installed internally a Plextor 716A dual layer 16x burner. It has worked fine with everything from Toast to EyeTV to the Apple iApps.

One of the major reasons I went with Plextor instead of Pioneer was that Pioneer hasn't released a Mac-compatible firmware updater for any of their drives in years. Yes, there are hacks to be found that will allow you to load the PC version of the firmware updaters onto the drive in your Mac if you wish to go that route.

Plextor, on the other hand, regularly releases OS X *AND* OS 9 compatible firmware updaters for their drives, even drives that are no longer their latest and greatest. Firmware version 1.09 for the 716A drive was released just a few days ago, with version 1.08 released last June.

Anyway, just a data point that Pioneer isn't your only choice.

[Spoffo]

You don't really need to do anything with the firmware on a Pioneer drive to get it to work in a Mac. The only thing you need to do is run Patch Burn (freeware) which patches an OS file so that the Mac sees the Pioneer drive as an Apple-authorized Superdrive. The G-5 Towers all come with the same Pioneer drive as factory installed. The only difference with the Apple version of the firmware on this drive is that a) burning +R disks isn't supported (it is by Pioneer, but Apple doesn't pay the license fees to burn them) and b) - at least through OS 10.3.9 - burning DL disks wasn't supported, even though the Pioneer drive and Toast software do.

[miksu]

Get NEC! Model, uh, U can choose any. Nec is about only one, that is easily upgradeable on OSX. No need for PC, like with Pioneer etc. And it's quality is legendary. There are drives and then there are those made by Nippon Electric Corp (NEC). They just happen to work and Tiger has native support. Why spend money for the second best (Pioneer), as best one (NEC) has same price and better support?!

[terryj]

Spend Money on the Pioneer, Apple NATIVELY supports Pioneer in all builds of the OS going forward, has since first Superdrive announced ( ex.: upgrade 2 Tiger, built in support for -109.). That's good enough for me.

[butt_crack]

Hi, I own the Sony DRX-720ul-t external burner 16X and it l kicks butt!!

Got it from newegg.com for like 120.00 free shipping.

[Ladd]

You don't really need to do anything with the firmware on a Pioneer drive to get it to work in a Mac.

True, the issue isn't with getting the drive to work with our Macs initially. The issue is being able to apply tweaks from the manufacturer to make the drive work better and also maintaining compatibility with newer media as the older media that the drive was designed for becomes increasing difficult find.

While I was happy that the upgrade from my factory installed 2X DVD burner gave me a theoretical 16X speed, I did it mostly because it was getting very difficult to find 2X media, nor any media rated for any speed that would even be recognized by the drive to be burned at 2X or even 1X speed. A firmware update would have allowed the drive to at least still function in some capacity.

If purchasing a Plextor drive for the same cost as what a Pioneer would have cost gives me an extra six months or year's use out of the drive, than that is free money. It's not like I gave up anything in performance to get that possible extra use, it's just that the regular firmware updates tilted the decision slightly toward Plextor when there were no other factors distingushing between it and other drives.

YMMV.

[willrob]

I'm not sure about Plextor but Pioneer seems to stop their firmwre updates once a replacement model is released. The Pioneer 109 stopped at 1.58 when the 110 came out.

DVRFlash 2.1 works great with the 109 and is currently being updated to work with the 110D and 110 as well.

I also have a lot of 2X and 4X media, which I still use [in my 109] , but lack the patience to use them for full size projects. When I want to put 1 or 2Gs of video on a DVD, I drag them out.

If I were making this decision, I'd also check out the NEC drives, from a company that actually makes a MAC firmware updater. (and who make the chips inside the Pioneer)

[RatVega]

The plan is to produce double-sided DVDs for set-top playback.
So are you saying wait until set top players advance and allow dual layer playback with a higher succes rate?

No, what I'm saying is that (according to Bruce Nazarian, a DVD guru and consultant to Apple for DVDSP) the "burned" dual-sided DVDs will generally have playback issues attributable to the player. To the best of my knowledge, there is no concerted push anywhere to improve this situation since DL will soon compete with the HD formats (where they'll really have capacity) and the focus is on cost reduction.

I'm sure some out there have had some success, but based on the compatibility data, that's not how to bet if the distribution is important (as in for money.)

My personal feeling is that if the compatibility ever gets close to DVD-R, the cost of the substrate will still be an issue as the user base is a LOT smaller.

[Ladd]

According to the website "Accelerate Your Mac!", the just released Mac OS X 10.4.3 update includes native support for the Pioneer 109 dual-layer drive.

[miksu]

10.4 supports almost any brand DVD-burner, both single and dual layer. I don't consider it valid argument, someone else can do. Easy FW upgrades can save U lot of dead presidents and hassle My Nec ND-2500 is supported natively in 10.4.

[willrob]

DVRFlash 2.1 works with the 109 and is currently being beta tested for 110D support. But you're right, NEC respects Mac users and sllows them to upgrade their firmware. Pioneer doesn't even claim their drives will work in a Mac.

[dbond]

Get NEC! Model, uh, U can choose any. Nec is about only one, that is easily upgradeable on OSX. No need for PC, like with Pioneer etc. And it's quality is legendary. There are drives and then there are those made by Nippon Electric Corp (NEC). They just happen to work and Tiger has native support. Why spend money for the second best (Pioneer), as best one (NEC) has same price and better support?!

Not all G5's come with Pioneers actually. Mine has a Sony DW-U21A.

I'm actually going to go the Plextor route myself once I upgrade.

[negritude]

While I was happy that the upgrade from my factory installed 2X DVD burner gave me a theoretical 16X speed, I did it mostly because it was getting very difficult to find 2X media, nor any media rated for any speed that would even be recognized by the drive to be burned at 2X or even 1X speed. A firmware update would have allowed the drive to at least still function in some capacity.

If you were looking for a firmware update, you weren't going to find it from Apple. I still have an internal Apple DVR-A04 Superdrive in a Quicksilver 2002, and with the Apple supplied firmware, it sucked big time. Then I cross-flashed it into a genuine Pioneer DVR-104 with the 1.40 firmware for Macs, and it burns whatever I throw at it perfectly at 2x, even the Verbatim 16x DVD-Rs. DVRFlash is a legacy Apple Superdrive user's best friend.

[Ladd]

If you were looking for a firmware update, you weren't going to find it from Apple.

True, and already stated.

Nor will I get the firmware update from the OEM. Which is one reason why when I purchased a new burner, I got a Plextor, which as a company does have an established track record of supporting older models of their burners.

Other folks with other needs/desires may select another brand; firmware updates just happens to be one of mine.

[Ladd]

If you were looking for a firmware update, you weren't going to find it from Apple.

True, and already stated.

Nor will I get the firmware update from the OEM. Which is one reason why when I purchased a new burner, I got a Plextor, which as a company does have an established track record of supporting older models of their burners.

Other folks with other needs/desires may select another brand; official firmware updates just happens to be one of my interests.

[super-G]

What are you guys talking about above here? NEC did not make and does not support Binflash, just like Pioneer did not make and does not support DVRFlash (which, BTW, now supports the 110D with version 2.2). When you talk about "NEC respects Mac users", what does that mean exactly?

I have an NEC 3520 and a Pioneer 110D... about equal, based on my results, but the NEC has a higher range of compatible media. Both work fine with Tiger.

[miksu]

NEC didn't make Binflash, so what? It exists, it works and it works on my OSX box. No need for PC, as it was case for Pioneer drives and bunch of others for updates.

And there's good selection of haxed NEC FW, unlike many other drives. I bought ND-2500A two years ago. Single layer, RPC-2. However, thanks for hardworking people around World, they made FW upgrade for it. It does DUAL-LAYER now, is RPC-1 and no rip-lock Certain drive brands have more value than others, even if their price sticker is same.

Not to mention it's very high build and burn quality...

[willrob]

The Pioneer 110D ($40 shipped from newegg.com) comes with no riplock, is already dual layer and thanks to the hard work of The Dangerous Brothers and Las Vegas, has bitsetting & region free firmware which can be used with DVRFlash 2.2 on a Mac. No PC involved. It is also possible to cross flash it to the 110 model, which has DVD_RAM writing ability.

So the real comparison here is not firmware availability nor flashers, it's the quality and dependability of the writing and reading of the drive, and what range of media it supports and how frequently that media base is updated (via firmware). Pioneer makes great writers (thanks in part to the NEC chips inside).

But Pioneer has a bad habit of abandoning a drive once a replacement comes out; the 109 isn't going to have firmware updates (at least not from Pioneer) to support new media that comes on the market. I'm not sure how well NEC keeps supporting its mechanisms once a newer model arrives on the scene.

I'm a bit jealous of the PC users tool set when it comes to DVD. Recently a new utility [MediaCodeSpeedEdit] enables them to edit the firmware of their drives so that they can tweak the writing strategy for individual media—effectively giving custom profiles for their favorite spindle source, and a path to compatibility as new media comes on the scene.

[super-G]

DVRFlash is to Pioneer what Binflash is to NEC. They do the same thing (to different drives, obviously), and they both work on OSX.

In my direct comparison of the NEC 3520 and Pioneer 110D, I found the following:

Pioneer rips faster, even when riplock is removed from the NEC.
NEC can burn some media faster than Pioneer. Examples: NEC can burn 4x Taiyo Yuden -R at 8x and 8x Philips (sorry, don't know what the real manufacturer is) at 12x, while the Pioneer burns the TY at 4x and the Philips at 6x.

And the final deciding factor for me: the Pioneer can produce usable burns on all the media I have. The NEC couldn't do that.

[willrob]

Pioneer's writing reliability is their best asset. And not writing faster on media that is rated slower is one of their means to creating such reliability.

I'm waiting for the UPS truck to drop off my new 110D today.

[miksu]

No coasters with Nec. Different media (real maker) maybe available depending on location. Happy with Nec in Europe. Best burner I ever had had, starting from -98 Philips CDD-2600 SCSI CD-R (was it 2x write speed, 6x read?). ND-2500 saved me about 50E, when upgraded firmware (the DL/RPC-1/Riplock remove). It's supported by enthuasists also, not only maker. How many alternative/better FW for Pioneer/Sony exists? Nec has longer lifespan As student, can't afford poor media compatiblity, or short life-span drives (Sony, Panny, Pioneer)