Sony DRU-500A Review

An anonymous reader writes "Just found a nice review of the Sony DRU-500A" This looks to be damn solid DVD burner. It's amazing how much prices on these things have come down. It might be time for me to make my epic film starring CowboyNeal, Samzenpus and Hemos in a moving story about Love, Friendship, and Growing Up in the Face of Adversity. I probably should write a script or something before I start filming. Or not.

DVD-burners == zip drives

[SexyKellyOsbourne]

Unlike CD burners, DVD drives will never catch on, much like zip drives never did.

DVDs were created to be obsolete, and within a few years, when Blu-Ray technologies are creating 30GB+ disks, a DVD burner will be one of those devices that will make someone say "You bought an expensive computer 4 years ago, and that device was overpriced crap", much like we view zip drives today.

Compared to what capacity we truly need for video and storage, DVDs are weak, and their burners and discs are too expensive, incompatible, and slow to be of any practical use in the near future.

CDs at least are dirt cheap -- almost free with rebates -- and I got my 32x burner used for $15. There are never any compatibility problems, and they're a universal format for both audio and video.

Crashproof?

[den_erpel]

I was actually waiting for this drive, but mainly because of this story [kerneltrap.org] and others about Sony's dirty tricks with DRM, I'm waiting for another drive.
I don't care about copying CDs or DVDs, but I do care when my system hangs when I want to listen to a CD/see a DVD while (in between) working...

Is anyone aware of drives like this from other vendors?

Re:DVD-burners == zip drives

[Issue9mm]

I don't agree. I have a DVD-burner that I use for nightly / weekly backups. The amount of data that I back up routinely surpasses the capacity of a CD-ROM drive. Yes, another hard drive might serve my needs better, but I wanted something I could take offsite in the event of a hard drive failure.

Plus, it's handy to take my videos of the daughter and move them to DVD, allowing me to send them to my father across the country.

-9mm-

Re:DVD-burners == zip drives

[asparagus]

For data, perhaps.

I'm a filmmaker. 2 years ago, video was the best format availible to me. Now, I distribute on DVD.

Until a technology comes along that replaces DVD (and HD-DVD tech will hopefully be backwards compatible), I'm in business.

So there. :-P

-Brett

Re:Sony DRU-500A Review

[ender81b]

Probably none, it would be suicide. Listen, big companies like Sony have these divisions - music, hardware, whatever. 10-1 odds that each division has no idea/say in what the other does. I would imagine that there would be an epic fight for the music/whatever division to include some sort of DRM on a burner like this. Why? Because it would (most likely) attract alot of negative attention and possibly cause the drive to not sell well. Therefore, the hardware division isn't going to allow for DRM without alot of pressure or the big guys upstairs telling themt too.

Also, it would be curious to see which division of Sony makes the most money - the media or the hardware. If I where a betting man I would say the hardware, ergo they have more say.

Shrug, just my .02 cents.

Re:DVD-burners == zip drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Why I love my dvd burner:

xbox + modchip + dvd burner + blank dvd's + nntp feed == hours of fun and joy for my son + growing up without any respect of other people's property.

i can't imagine my father not only letting me steal things, but stealing them for me...

Re:DVD-burners == zip drives

[Snafoo]

Weird... you just took me back to grade 9. I remember advising a friend that he not buy a computer with a CD drive on the advice of MacWorld, which claimed that CD-ROM was a technology which had already peaked; with production overhead ostensibly too high, sizes too small, read-speeds too slow and writing impossible, the technology was surely just a way-station on the road to magneto-optical floppies.

The weird bit is that every point MW made was correct -- and in a world devoid of network effects, the market for CDROMs would've wasted away. But we all know how that one went...

DVD media

[eekDude]

I don't know much about DVD technology, but I was under the impression that prerecorded DVD movie disks have a capacity of ~9GBs. If this is correct, when will we be seeing recorders (and disks) that will reach this recording capacity?

Re:Sony DRU-500A Review

[Simonetta]

I agree that the FUD factor for buying any new consumer device caused by the manufacturer's undisclosed DRM policies will significantly affect the price that consumers are willing to pay for any new consumer device.
The consumer electronic device manufacturers(sp?) will find to their dismay that people will start to buy new equipment only after its DRM parameters have been established by early adopters.
Smart consumer device makers will hire a third party trusted source (like Consumer Reports) to inspect their source code and report exactly what does and what doesn't work with any new device.
By promising for a year that DRM would be in every new device within a year the consumer electronic device makers have created this mess for themselves!