Do you have one? Do you use it as much as you thought you would? How much are they going for these days?
You came to the right place. I specialize in RMSD (removeable media storage devices) reliability. Are you looking for a portable or desktop drive? If desktop, I would highly recommend that you stay away from the generic and off-brands. They have a difficult time reading some DVD+RW media. NEC makes a good DVD+RW drive, as does Samsung. Some of these can write at up to speeds of 8X. However, usually they won't do higher than 2X or 4X. They will cost you between $210-$300. Right now, I would avoid the slim DVD+RW portable drives like the plague. They are a huge headache for me right now. Due to the cost of media (~$1.50 per piece) DVD+RW is expensive. The best thing about it, however, is that you can back up 4.7GB on one CD.
my new sony desktop pc came with a dvd burner and i just mentioned yesterday how much of a waste of money it was...ive used it twice in the last 8 months...
Thanks, Baqui... I'm not sure exactly what I'm looking for just yet. That's why I started this topic in the hopes of gathering more info.
I would probably use one quite a bit, but I don't have one yet. Not only do I have the need to back up a lot of data, but I have a lot of video files that I archive, etc. Having a DVD archive would be better than anything I've got now. Plus, as long as I got one that made discs that were compatible with my home DVD player, I could watch my silly little videos in higher quality on my television. I will probably buy one in the not-to-distant future.
I bought the Sony DRU-500A model a few months ago. I converted some video tapes to DVD for my parents. Nothing fancy, just wanted to put them on DVD and be able to watch them. I also have about 16 gigs of uncompressed video highlights from this season that I'll probably be backing up to DVD as well as a hard drive. The Sony model I have records does the +/- recording "standards" which is why I got it. Unless you want to make your own dvd's (videos/archives) I really don't know why you'd need/want a DVD burner. And the process of making DVD's can be a complete pain in the butt...
My Phillips DVDR985 stopped working all of a sudden. And yeah making dvds out of tapes is a pain in da ass.
Baqui99 Isn't DVD-RW format more popular ? It seems DVD+RW and DVD-RW are still not settled yet. $300 is not cheap, before folking out that much dough, I would like to know which one is going to stay. Kind regards
The - standard is supported by Apple, Hitachi, NEC, Samsung, Pioneer, Toshiba and Sharp The + standard is supported by HP, Dell, Philips, Sony, Yamaha, Mitsubishi and last month Microsoft joined them. I think both formats will be around for awhile.
So, what's the deal with the formats? Will both the + and - play no problem on standalone DVD players? Im thinking about getting one soon as I, like Doc, have gigs and gigs of Rox highlights to archive..and I want to start converting VCR to DVD...I have the setup already (capture card etc) I just need to be able to burn them to a disc larger than 700M. Advice?
Yes, either one will play standalone. Again, be wary of generic media that's sold at Fry's. Sounds like a pretty big project - converting to DVD.
cool... I almost never buy generic media..always named..Memorex, Verbatim, etc.. It will be a huge project, I have well over 500 movies (taped/store-bought)..but I'm in no rush..as long as I can eventually get them into a format that has a longer shelf-life. Thanks.
It tends to vary among the players. At one point the "-" standard used to be the more compatible, but I've also seen reviews that state neither is really all that much more compatible than the other. As for advice... hope you have time. Rendering an entire game was taking anywhere from 7-8 hours to 2-3 days depending on what kind of compression and quality I was using. That was on an AMD 2200+ with 1 GB of RAM. Also, hard drive space may be an issue depending on how you record. Consider that 1 hour of uncompressed video = approximately 13 gigs of hard drive space. I have about 420-500 gigs of hard drive space devoted as temporary storage space for recording/editing Rockets games right to my hard drive. I then edit out the highlights, then delete the game to free up space. You could always record the games as MPEG in realtime, but I wanted to store the highlights in uncompressed format for when MPWhatever compression comes out or when DVD FormatOfTheWeek takes over or TechnologyXYZBecomesStandard. What's really a pain is the software that does the layout and stuff. I'm not really interested in making playable dvd's so much as archiving massive amounts of data, but from what I played around with and read about, the software on the market today ain't all that. Most of it's buggy as hell. I've also noticed that I may have recorded the games incorrectly. Most DVD authoring software doesn't recognized my files after I've edited out commercials and whatever else. I can still play them and view them, but the software barfs when I try to make DVD's. I'm going to have to experiment with the settings I use in Premiere when I record over the summer. All-in-all the best advice I can give you is to get ready for some time consuming effort - especially if you have to edit or want to add artistic touches to your videos.
