DVD Burner round-up @ TechSpot

[Julio Franco]

If you depend on your hard drive to save critical information, you could be sail boating without a paddle. When things get sticky, you better have a backup plan.

Gone are the days of storage floppies and zip drives… CD-RW drives do an excellent job in making cheap backups and just about every new computer is equipped with one. As computers and software evolve, so will media. DVD burner drives are already optional equipment on many computers, and will probably become a standard within the next year. Are you ready for a DVD burner?

[center]

[/center]

We sure are! Read on to learn more about flagship products from 1st tier manufacturers, we test drives from Plextor, Panasonic and Pioneer in this round-up.

 

[agissi]

Woo, awesome Julio, Im reading it now.

Also, your on the MajorGeeks website (well not you, but this review)

 

[R.Cade]

I just wanted to mention a DVDR drive I picked up that has better features then these drives and for under $200.

It's the OptoRite DD0203. It does both DVR -R and +R at 4x, as well as both RW formats, 24x CDR and RW, and a new 48x HDBURN standard... which is 1.4 gig on a regular CDR! Pretty hard to beat IMO, and worth a look.

http://www.optorite.com/newproducts.htm

the drive is also made by AccessTek

http://www.accesstek.com.tw/

 

[Julio Franco]

Thanks for the note R.Cade, we have had this round-up in the works for several weeks now and these drives were sent to us just before a new wave of faster products was released.

I will try to get in touch with Optorite and other manufacturers such as Sony (DRU burners are very popular) for extended coverage. Hope that you stay around the boards and join the community.

 

[zacox]

Pioneer DVD Read Speeds

Pioneer has limited its out-of-the-box DVD rip speed to 2x.

Getting around this is fairly easy, requiring only a firmware upgrade. The firmware is out there.

Peek into http://www.firmware-flash.com to find patched firmware for the Pioneer A05/105 that will remove the 2x limitation and allow full rip speeds.

Just to give you an idea, rip speeds from a patched A05/105 average 8.5x on a single layer disc and 5x on a dual layer disc.

How might this change your opinion about the best burner in this roundup?