"We hope to spark volume and demand for the DVD category. The pricing has come down on these drives, but some vendors are still charging a bit too much. We've tried to price this in a way that, between the speed, the software, and the price, we'll have a triple benefit for consumers." - Glenn Brower, NEC's director of storage products.

NEC Solutions has taken the unusual step of marketing and shipping a DVD burner under its own brand. The ND-3500A model comes in at a very reasonable $100 and can write at up to 16X for DVD-R and DVD+R; 4X for DVD-RW and DVD+RW; and 4X for DVD+R Double Layer.

Glenn Brower of NEC also added that the drive has the interesting feature of being able to write certain 8X media, such as disks by Verbatim at 16X. This is handy given the low availability of 16X media at this time.