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Hardware Technology

New Low Cost DVD Burners Hit The Streets 273

Posted by CowboyNeal from the budget-disc-creation dept.
SpinnerBait writes "DVD burners, until recently, have been a bit too pricey for the average consumer that just wants to backup large amounts of data or rescue a failing DVD movie disc. However, OEMs like AOpen have finally broken the $100 price point, as this article and performance analysis at HotHardware reports. Performance, for this sub $100 DVD burner was respectable as well, burning almost an entire DVD's worth of data in about 15 minutes. Not too shabby at all... just in time for the holidays."
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New Low Cost DVD Burners Hit The Streets More

New Low Cost DVD Burners Hit The Streets

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  • Blah, (Score:5, Informative)

    by BeninOcala ( 664162 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:30AM (#7647513) Homepage
    This isn't that new Best Buy has had Sub $100 DVD burners for awhile but it was with the dreaded mail in rebate...

    • Re:Blah, (Score:5, Informative)

      by DaHat ( 247651 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:43AM (#7647605)
      going to http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1056281 016831&skuId=5720419&type=product links to what I picked up a week ago for 130 before a 30 dollar MIR. 100 bucks, not bad for a +/- R/RW :)

      • Re:Blah, (Score:3, Informative)

        by stienman ( 51024 )
        I couldn't neuter the link, so the best bet for everyone to see this particular drive is to search for the SKU, which is 5720419. Another click on the listing in the search and you're there.

        It's a Digital Research 4x +-, with 2MB buffer. Prices is $149 with $20 instant savings, and a $30 rebate, making it $99 + tax (though the tax is actually on the $129 price) in the end.

        Too bad it isn't circuit city - I love their printed rebates. So easy to fill and send...

        -Adam
    • which means it doesn't count. The price of that DVD burner is not $100, it is $100 plus the labor you need to complete in order to get your money back, plus the temporary loss of wealth, plus the hassle of accounting for it all.

      The fact that they won't sell me the product without strings attached tells me that they never intended to sell me the product at the "special" price in the first place.

      They'd never be doing this if every single customer sent in the rebate. They only do it because they know that so

  • Expensive Media (Score:4, Insightful)

    by errittus ( 13200 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:31AM (#7647520) Homepage
    I'm waiing for the media price to come down. The prices i've seen on the burner is competitive, but the DVD-R media is still alittle pricey for me.

    • Re:Expensive Media (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      1 DVD-R = 7 CD-R's

      Lowest CD-R price: $0.25 * 7 = $1.75

      Lowest DVD-R price: $0.85 * 1 = $0.85

      Why on earth would you backup using CD-R?

      • Re:Expensive Media (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
        I've been buying my Imation spindles at $5 for 50, so make that a dime.

        I will say that I prefer DVD simply because it is a lot fewer discs to handle and I don't have to prune less necessary files so often.

  • This must be... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AzBats ( 666888 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:32AM (#7647524) Journal
    The end of CD-RWs?

    • Re:This must be... (Score:5, Informative)

      by rickthewizkid ( 536429 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @12:19PM (#7647777)
      No... it's the end of FLOPPIES! :)

      I remember as a kid going from a 170k single sided 5.25 in my Commodore to a 1.44 meg 3.5" disk in my PC and thinking "Wow! I'll never use all that storage space!" Of course, I said the same thing about my 1 GB hard drive that cost me $300, and my CD-R (not RW!) that cost nearly as much.

      Needless to say, this might just be the time for me to acquire a DVD burner - Staples has a nice DVD burner for $129 after rebate that does support DVD -R[W] and +R[W]

      -Rick

    • The birth of DVDR ISOs (Score:5, Funny)

      by disc-chord ( 232893 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @12:41PM (#7647887)
      DVDR isos have been around for a couple years now, slowly gaining popularity (especially among console gamers). But this is going to be the real step towards mainstream DVDRs.

      DVD Player $40
      DVD Burner $80
      DVD Media $1/pop
      MPAA going down like a $2 hooker... priceless.

      It is now a lot cheaper to pirate DVD movies than it is to rent. Forget your Divx, delete your P2P programs. It's time to embrace the new age of digital piracy. I'll see ya all on alt.binaries.dvdr ;)

  • Compatability? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 77Punker ( 673758 ) <(ude.tniophgih) (ta) (40rcneps)> on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:32AM (#7647525)
    Will these DVD's play on all decent players? It doesn't really matter how cheap these are until they actually work. Last I heard about these devices is that there's many formats what aren't interchangeable.

    • Re:Compatability? (Score:5, Informative)

      by LedZeplin ( 41206 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:48AM (#7647630)
      The key to getting them to play on set top players is the booktype [dvdplusrw.org].


      There is a bit on the dvd that tells the software what kind of media it is. and naturally dvd+r's will say 'dvd+r' but you can override that with 'dvd-rom' and finicky dvd players will play the discs in blissful ignorance.

      • AFAIK, only older DVD+R drives (the ones that max out at 2x writing speed) let you change the book type. But if anyone knows how to set the book type on a Sony DRU510A or Plextor PX-504A, let me know.

        • Re:Compatibility? (Score:3, Informative)

          by Briareos ( 21163 )

          Well, using Nero 5.5.10.54 with my Ricoh RW5240A (which writes +R/+RW with 4x) lets me set the book type without problems. And yes, the one video DVD I've burned with it using DVD-Shrink to make it fit on the disc played flawlessly in my rather old Pioneer DV 525.

          Oh, and I got it for 99,90 EUR at a local electronics store. (Granted, that makes around 120 USD, but it still fits that "just below 100 $CURRENCY" marketing gimmick... :)

          np: Triosk Meets Jan Jelinek - Theme From Trioskinek (1+3+1)

    • I had the same concern. A year ago when I started looking at DVD burners I intended to convert movies from VHS to DVD and even make my own movies (family camcorder movies and photo slideshows). I noticed there was DVD-R, +R, -RW, +RW. What the heck is all this?

      After checking out this site [dvdrhelp.com] I learned that the formats -R and -RW were not standardized. Apparently some companies jumped the gun before the format was fully worked out. This would explain why 'some' DVD's I rented would not play. Thus +R and +R

  • floppy (Score:3, Funny)

    by potpie ( 706881 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:32AM (#7647528) Journal
    Now we have CD burners and rewritable CDs that can store over 650 megabytes of data. We have writable DVDs that are able to store entire movies in very high quality video. There are countless other data storage formats such as memory sticks, smart cards, and others that can store wide ranges of amounts of data from 8 megabytes to 128 megabytes and up. So which do I use most often? My 1.44 megabyte floppy drive.

    • Re:floppy (Score:5, Funny)

      by dvdeug ( 5033 ) <dvdeug@@@email...ro> on Saturday December 06, 2003 @01:03PM (#7648055)
      So which do I use most often? My 1.44 megabyte floppy drive.

      So have you completed your first hard drive backup yet? Only 20,000 disks to go . . .

    • Re:floppy (Score:2)

      by Alan ( 347 )
      Hehe, I use the floppy disk to back up my 1.44mb quickbooks backups and that's about it. I can see if you're a student that it'd be more useful for carrying around reports and assignments and such though, but for the sort of data storage I do, CDs are just barely cutting it, and as soon as I see one of these cheapass dvd drives up here in .ca, I'm buying it!
    • I think the biggest deal with floppies is that you just drag and drop files on to them (and I never had quite that much joy with packet-writing CD software.)

      DVD-RAM apparently is just as good - so, assuming you get a DVD writer that supports the format (like the LG superwriter models), then these may be the true end for floppies.

      My advice: get a DVD writer with DVD-RAM support. The LG model is available in the UK for 75UKP ($129, but DVD writers are cheaper in the US anyway), and can write DVD+R/RW and DV
  • If you scan the fatwallet.com hot deals forums you can get DVD burners for less than $100, sometimes a less than $50. Also crazy deals on media etc.

  • Only Does '+' Formats (Score:5, Informative)

    by Flave ( 193808 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:35AM (#7647541)
    Note that this burner only does the '+' formats. Any DVD burner worth its salt these days should be able to do both '+' and '-' formats. I'd stick with Pioneer or Sony for now -- they do all formats, have good quality/reliability, and their prices are coming down.

    Also, new 8x recorders are coming.

    Also, new double-layer recorders are coming.

    The target is constantly moving...

    • That's why they're cheap (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gilesjuk ( 604902 ) <<giles.jones> <at> <zen.co.uk>> on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:59AM (#7647687)
      Any sensible person will wait for dual layer drives. Will be able to backup DVD films and fit nearly twice as much data on a disc. Not to mention you can still do single layer if you really have to.

      • Re:That's why they're cheap (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @12:24PM (#7647794) Homepage Journal
        And once the dual layer drives are out, it'll be time to wait for shorter-wavelength burning, or some other must-have feature.

        Computing and electronics is always a game of 'enough for now, at a price I can handle.'

        • Re:That's why they're cheap (Score:5, Insightful)

          by pair-a-noyd ( 594371 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @12:55PM (#7647999)
          Yes. Don't jump on the bandwagon the day stuff hits the streets, wait until it hits the streets. As in the curb. People are throwing away old systems like mad now.
          I just picked up a CLEAN (non smoker) PII 400 with a CDR & a CDRW & a ZIP. 8 gigs, plus loaded with win98 and and a few games. All I had to do was pick up up from a trash pile and wipe the dust off of it. The power supply was dead. It works GREAT now. Yeah, slow but, it was all but free. $15 for a new ATX power supply and I have a PC that people would have once KILLED to have.

          Guess what? Load it up with Linux and you've got a damn nice server for next to nothing.

          I've got dozens and dozens up more dozens of old PC's this way. Just drive and and scan the rubish heaps, see something, stop and grab it. It's FREE..

          Now, when will people start throwing P4's out??
        • Maybe, but then most DVD players will only support dual layer.

          Imagine if when CD-R first came out it only could write half a CD, would you buy a drive then or wait maybe a month or two for one that can do a whole disc?

          Single layer DVD writers are just that, a crippled DVD writer incompatible with all the DVD film formats out there.

    • Re:Only Does '+' Formats (Score:5, Informative)

      by DarkEdgeX ( 212110 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @12:02PM (#7647700) Journal
      Agreed, you can get a Pioneer DVR-A06/106 for $140 with shipping, if not cheaper (I bought one two months ago). There's no reason to get locked in on media choices if the difference is just $40.

      FYI-- Pioneer DVR-A06/106 do 4x DVD+/-R and 2.4x DVD+RW and I think 2.4x DVD-RW. There's a newer 8x DVD+/-R drive coming in January from Pioneer (DVR-A07/107) so it might pay to wait another month and check out the pricing on that.
    • The prices ARE down. Now, if I were facing a $200-250 price tag, I'd have to give pause considering that it's only going to be double that for one of the double-layer burners (which is niftier than the 8x speed burners...).

    • Re:Only Does '+' Formats (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @12:21PM (#7647785) Homepage Journal
      I'd only play the waiting game for so long.

      If you wait for what's next, and it comes around, then you'll hear people saying to wait for what's next. There will always be newer and better but if one just waits then you'll also be putting off using the thing.

      The '+' format seems to do well enough although I've preferred to keep the dash format available too because it is in the "real" DVD standard. The '+' format is kind of a bastard offshoot and only served to pad Sony & HP's profits at the expense of market confusion.

    • So what? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Now, maybe you need a reason to use DVD-R as it might, sometimes be more capatible with more DVD players. This is not as big an issue as it used to be though.

      However, for general computer usage you flat out can not beat DVD+RW. It's sorta like flash media in that it has a limited number of write operations but it allows completely random access. This is great because you can use the DVD almost like a hard-drive. It's better to use a filesystem that limits rewriting the same spot too many times (like th

      • Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Nogami_Saeko ( 466595 )
        I have a dual-format burner and have tested both -R and +R format discs in a variety of set-top and computer DVD drives.

        The +R disc didn't play in any of the set-top players I own (ranging from 1-4 years old).

        The -R played in 3 of the 4 initially, and 4 of 4 once the last machine had a firmware update.

        The results were a little better in DVD-ROM drives, but -R still has a sizeable edge. Naturally this will change with newer players, but if you need compatibility with older players, then -R is definately

    • Re:Only Does '+' Formats (Score:5, Informative)

      by mm0mm ( 687212 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @12:30PM (#7647826)
      A buddy of mine burnt several DVD+Rs for me. After I came back home, they became coasters as I found out none of the PCs I own read them. My laptop is less than a year old for god's sake. Despite its hype, DVD+R format is useless unless you have a compatible drive(players should be ok).

      Also, new 8x recorders are coming.
      Also, new double-layer recorders are coming.
      The target is constantly moving...
      As far as the next generation high capacity DVD format is concerned, Blue-ray [blu-ray.com] is currently under development, headed by Sony, Matsushita(panasonic [matsushita.co.jp]) and phillips. Meanwhile, (oh what a surprise) there is another high-cap DVD standard [usatoday.com] using blue-laser technology, headed by Toshiba and NEC. It is called HD-DVD and it stores 5 times more data than current DVD+/-Rs can hold. Needless to say they are incompatible to one another.

      while neither of new DVD standards is available in the market yet, it is a matter of time that they will replace the current standards. Then again, we will face incompatibility issues between Blue-Ray and HD DVD. Competition is good, but consumers have got enough of those with VHS/Beta, LaserDisc/Videodisc, Win/Mac, yada yada yada.

      Despite its hype and promises, DVD+R may live a short life (maybe 10 years) IMO.
      • Despite its hype and promises, DVD+R may live a short life (maybe 10 years) IMO. ...in the early 90s, about how the upcoming DVD standard would be obsolete in a span of 3 years, replaced by Blue-Ray discs.

        I think both CDs and DVDs will live on for a long long time. Because they're the smallest common denominator for audio (CD) and video (DVD), in much the way most of us still have that 1,44mb floppy which was outdated long long ago.

        The way prices are going, I rather think we'll see a push for removable HD

    • Note that this burner only does the '+' formats. Any DVD burner worth its salt these days should be able to do both '+' and '-' formats. I'd stick with Pioneer or Sony for now -- they do all formats, have good quality/reliability, and their prices are coming down.

      Also, new 8x recorders are coming.

      Also, new double-layer recorders are coming.

      Good point. I'm holding off for the dual layer burners myself. But, there's always the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. By the time the dual layer burners com

  • Are these low cost DVD Burners Linux Compatible (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HidingMyName ( 669183 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:37AM (#7647553)
    I realize these may be foolish questions, but I don't own any DVD Drives (but that might change). Do DVD burners/drives have an interface standard and what is the status of Linux support (e.g. is it like cdrecord)? If not, are any of these drives supported? Have DVD drive owners been happy with Linux run time support? And finally are there any good GUI wrappers, for CDs they have xcdroast, which does what I want.

    • Re:Are these low cost DVD Burners Linux Compatible (Score:5, Informative)

      by bored_SuSE_user ( 701483 ) * on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:47AM (#7647624) Homepage Journal
      I have a Sony DVD Writer in a Formac firewire case (not orig combination) and I have had no problems with the drive itself. You can download cdrecord-PRODVD which works pretty much the same as cdrecord. K3b pops up when I put a blank DVD in (kind of it isn't it?) so I can burn the DVD very easily from an .iso image or select my own data. I checked that this drive worked first here: cdrecord site [fokus.gmd.de]. There is also DVDR tools [nongnu.org] which I haven't used. Both are free though. I do however have occasional problems with firewire, but under SuSE 9.0 it's not stable yet.
      • cdrecord-PRODVD is a mess. You have to deal with license restricitons, time-limited keys, and limits on the speed you can write discs.

        A much better solution is to use the regular cdrecord with growisofs [chalmers.se], which lets you lay down and grow an ISO9660 file system on (as well as to burn an arbitrary pre-mastered image to) all supported DVD media.

    • Re:Are these low cost DVD Burners Linux Compatible (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      cdrecord supports DVD's now, practically all frontends that use cdrecord support DVD's now too (so you can use xcdroast for burning DVD's - it works for both + and -).

    • K3b! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Balinares ( 316703 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @12:03PM (#7647707)
      For burning anything (audio CDs, data CDs, mixed CDs, DVDs, eMovix projects...) K3b [sourceforge.net] is king. Never found a better burning frontend (including on Windows).

      Don't worry about burning stuff under Linux, that problem seems solved for the time being, which is way cool.
      • I have to agree. I am a Gnome user so I never tried K3b until this week. The interface and functionality is just great. I wish this or a similar app would come out for Gnome/GTK. Until one does, I will stick with k3b, though the integration with Gnome of course is non-existent : (

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Some of them not. I had bad luck with a BTC lowcost DVD +/- that had very good specs (4x DVD-R/+R, 32x CDR burning), but worked neither with dvdrecord, nor growisofs, nor the nonfree dvd-capable variant of cdrecord. I wouldn't be surprised if the drive was identical to the LiteOn DVD+/- that has identical specs.

      Fortunately, I was able to exchange the BTC against a marginally more expensive LG drive (4040B). While it burns CDRs only at 24x and CDRWs at 12x, it worked out of the box and like a charm with

  • Backing up my media onto CDROM is taking too long and is too painful.

    Now, I'd love to see a portable FireWire DVD rewriter for $100. Then we truly have the floppy for the new millenium.

  • Not sure this is a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bedouin ( 248624 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:39AM (#7647573)
    Especially if they're anything like cheap CD-ROM drives. All my moderately priced drives are still working and some are 5 years old or more. Yet the $30 52x drives usually never made it past one year . . .

  • but how well do they work? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Monkelectric ( 546685 ) <{slashdot} {at} {monkelectric.com}> on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:55AM (#7647668)
    I've owned *quite a few* CD burners in my life (6+), and the one thing I've found to be true is you are always screwing yourself if you buy the cheapie model. What good is a CD Burner if it chunks 20% of your discs?

    I decided I woudln't buy a DVD writer until plextor came out with a dual format burner (I've never had one of their CD writers mess up a single CD -- ever), and low and behold they did.

  • Keep an eye out for deals (Score:5, Informative)

    by billyradcliffe ( 698854 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:56AM (#7647674) Homepage
    I got myself a LiteOn LDW-411S at Best Buy for $80 after mail in rebates. After reading a few reviews it seemed like a solid drive. The nicest thing about this one is that it does 40X CD-R, which most others only do 24X. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot more of these drives under $100 before and after the holidays.

    Someone made a point about the cost of the media. This is very true; it's still rather expensive. However, that's mostly on the retail level. If you take a look around online, you sould be able to find really good media for $1 a piece or slightly more. Ritek is one of the brands that's hailed as highly compatible and overall very good, and you can get a spindle of 50 from newegg for about $55. Not bad!

    One last thing, one of the best sites for all things DVD+-RW, check out DVDRHelp.com [dvdrhelp.com].

    • My local Best Buys are so wonderfully kind to never stock anything, so I had to pay $10 more for my 411S at Circuit City. Still a real bargain.

      Not only does it do 40x CD-R, it also does DVD+RW at 4x, which is faster than most of the other writers out there (they usually only handle 2x for +RW). This [cdfreaks.com] review is what convinced me to finally go out and buy it. The 411S, with the original firmware, had serious issues recognizing the cheaper - media. The new firmware, "FS0F", mostly fixes this. - is more dif

      • You know, that is the thing that is always so hard to know--DO I trust this brand. Personally I prefer to stick to name brands, and I wasn't sure about LiteOn's quality--and when media is not cheap, you don't want to end up with coasters.

        This is why I do 99% of my burning under linux--I generally have had less problems that way (except for with a certain GUI burning prog that deleted some of my data [cdbakeoven2.0]). I know what I did wrong in that case, and won't repeat that mistake, but it is poor desi
        • Haven't bought any DVD writers yet, but I figure quality for a given manufacturer is probably similar for all their drives of this general type, so:

          I've bought four LiteOn drives: 2 CDRW and 2 DVD, and that was after asking around the better clone dealers at the swaps. No one had ANY failure reports, in fact several passersby contributed positive opinions about their CDRWs (swapmeet folk are not shy about butting in :)

          So far I've been nothing but pleased with all of them (the CDRWs have had heavy use late
    • Have you been successful in running this drive under Linux? I am suspicious that it is identical to a BTC drive with exactly the same specs which, as my own experience and (unfortunately, two days too late) a test of the German "Linux User" magazine told me, does definitely not work under Linux.

      -F

  • NEC-1300A for $103 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rick Richardson ( 87058 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @11:58AM (#7647681) Homepage
    Livewarehouse has the NEC-1300A 4X/-R/-RW/+R/+RW for $103 shipped, if you are a bit nervous about buying these off brand drives.

    Note that the reviewed drive came with software (the NEC-1300A doesn't), but the reviewer didn't use it.

    Why is that, you might ask? Well, because most of the video to DVD software is a complete crapshoot, depending on your particular machine and capture card, etc. Blasting the DVD is the easy part.

    I spent a good number of hours *just last night* (yawn) running down just exactly what software would work with my setup (Intel D845PEBT2 mobo, AverTV stereo). Nero 6 Ultra? Nope. Roxio VideoWave 5? Nope. MainActor? Nope. Power VCR II? Yep, we have a winner.

    After my experience, no way would I pay extra to get a recorder plus software unless I knew for a fact that software would work on my computer. If not, better to buy a bare drive and try the test drive download versions of various retail software until you find one that works for you.

    • As an aside, Nero has gone straight to hell. It refuses to overburn on my system with the latest version, but the older ones worked fine on my lite-on 48x24x48 ATAPI. I've all but given up on it - the only things I use it for now are burning DVD-Video and ISO images.

    • Just FYI (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bogie ( 31020 )
      Just FYI there really are no "OFF" brands in the cdr/dvdr world. There are only a couple of major drive producers the two largest being Acer/Aopen and Lite-on. So the "OFF" brands like cendyne, buslink, etc are all pretty much either Acer or Lite-on drives. So if Compusa is selling a "Megapower 4xDVDR" realize that Megapower never had the R&D budget to design and make a high precision part like a DVDR. That's why they all buy them from Acer and Lite-on.

      So next time your shopping keep in mind the only

  • for backup this would suck (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    With the price of media, you are far better off buying a few 80 GB IDE hard drives.

    Faster too.

  • Spend the extra $1.99 (Score:3, Informative)

    by bryanp ( 160522 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @12:24PM (#7647796)
    How about a dual format burner for $101.99 delivered? [newegg.com]
  • I can't find the price anywhere, but it's $99.95, isn't it?
  • Why aren't we seeing any SATA CD/DVD drives yet? Is there some technical reason? How long do we have to wait to see the end of PATA support?

    • Why do we need it right now? The burning speed is currently supported under the current ATA spec. Adding SATA would only add to the cost right now and not increase burning speeds at all. Besides, a trend towards SATA would mean a move away from ATA, which means people would upgrade less component wise. I like standards. SATA added another standard to the long list. I wish everything were just firewire 800 samer connector interior as exterior, That way, we could have smaller enclosures, no confusion of what
      • Why do we need it right now?

        For exactly the reasons you stated - not speed. One standard, smaller cables and connectors, removal of the Master/Slave crap (and not for Political Correctness reasons).

        I'd go with IEEE1394 too, but now the reason against that appears to be cost...
      • I should have mentioned on my other post that, AFAIK, all "non PATA" CD/DVD drives use bridge chips/boards for USB2, Firewire, and SCSI. So, again, you can get your own bridge board and provide your own solution. You can try here [fwdepot.com] for a selection that might suit your needs. They even have USB/Firewire combo and Firewire2 (1394b) bridgeboards. I got my Oxford 911 chip based firewire bride for an external case w/ mobile rack for hot pluggable hard drives. SATA is supposed to be hot pluggable but I have co

    • Re:SATA anyone? (Score:5, Informative)

      by xyote ( 598794 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @01:04PM (#7648057)
      I don't think there's enough of a market to justify making them from the OEM's perspective. When they do, they will probably just tack on a bridge chip which is what some of the hard drive OEMs are doing. You can get a SATA/PATA bridge board now for about $20~$25 which will be less than the premium charged by the drive makers when they eventually do come out with them. If you do that, make sure the SATA/PATA bridge chip supports ATAPI as some of the early bridge chips only supported SATA for hard drives. The Silicon Image SiI 3611 [siliconimage.com] supports ATAPI. Make sure your SATA controller also supports ATAPI, same issue there.


      Addonics makes such a bridge board here [addonics.com]. Note their comment about compatibility. Also, AMS makes two styles here [american-media.com] that use the 3611 chip according to their data sheets.

  • I have no use on earth for all the "bundled" and "value added" crap they throw in with the drive, if they think the software is so freaking valuable, how about they keep it and sell me the drive for a bigger discount?

    And why does the DVD software come on CDR's???

  • Carrefour, a french chain of big stores, is selling the LiteOn LDW401S for 99 in Belgium. This promotion is only valid today, december 6th.

  • Doesn't anyone worry about reliability? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KC7GR ( 473279 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @12:53PM (#7647977) Homepage Journal
    The belief that 'You Gets What You Pays For' is one to live by. I have to wonder how long one of these $100 or sub-$100 burners will last.

    The entire attitude of "Just toss it when it fails and get a new one" is a poor excuse. That sort of mindset is exactly why there's such a huge problem with solid waste (much of it old electronics) in the world.

    While I like a bargain as much as the proverbial 'Next Guy,' I also expect equipment I buy to last a bare minimum of five years, more if the price is above a couple of hundred. I don't mind paying a bit more for stuff that's better built.

    • When the 8X recorders hit $100, people will want one of those instead of the old, slow 4X. Any drive bought today is likely doomed for the trashcan in 1 year regardless of how well its built.
    • I am also a big proponent of "You Gets What You Pays For"- however, this does not necessarily apply to electronics. When manufacturing & R&D costs drop, margins go down. Period.

      I bought a 12x CD-R burner (AOpen, in fact) as soon as they hit the sub $100 price- that was probably 3 or more years ago- and it's still chugging along fine.
    • I agree 100%. When I purchase computer equipment I decide what the best quality component is within reason then I search for the cheapest price on that comnponent. Sometimes I wait a generation or two to help drop the cost even more but I don't wait too long as the difference in price is often minimal if I can even get the component anymore anyway. I have a Dual Xeon PII450 system running on a Supermicro board and it has yet (knock on wood) to fail me. I've had friends systems burn through two or three
    • While I generally agree -- in computer components, you get what you pay for -- I've found it's not so simple with CDRW, and likely won't be with their cousin the DVD writer, either.

      Frex, the Yamaha CDRW debacle -- I know of 20 of these $230+ drives that went tits-up at an early age (2 years or less), and NONE that didn't. If they're going to BEHAVE like cheap hardware and die young anyway, why not save myself a lot of bucks and buy a cheap one? Especially if I'm only going to get a year or two out of it re
  • I thought the review was OK, until I read at the end:

    In our last test we loaded MusicMatch 8.0 and a 69 minute audio disc to test the drives capabilities while ripping MP3s. We set the quality to 192Kbps and turned off error correction to show the best possible performance attainable with each drive.

    Looks like they mainly benchmarked MusicMatch against itself here - no wonder the results were identical.

  • Planning to get a DVD burner? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Wheaty18 ( 465429 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @01:50PM (#7648395)
    The site [doom9.org] that the MPAA does not want you to know about!

  • Spell Check (Score:3, Informative)

    by xintegerx ( 557455 ) on Saturday December 06, 2003 @01:57PM (#7648458) Homepage
    SpinnerBait writes "DVD burners, until recently, have been a bit too pricey for the average consumer WHO just wants to backup large amounts of data, or rescue a failing DVD movie disc. However, OEMs like AOpen have finally broken the $100 price point, as this article and performance analysis at HotHardware reports. PerformanceNO COMMA for this sub $100 DVD burner was respectable as well, burning almost (Performance was burning?)an entire DVD's worth of data in about 15 minutes. Not too shabby at all... just in time for the holidays."
  • not unless traditional cd players can read audio cds burned onto dvds.
  • The local Wal-Mart has a dual format Lite-on 4X DVD burner for under $100. Sorry, I don't know the model number.

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