Being accursed with a best buy gift card of ~$75, I chose to peruse their selection of CD/DVD RW, since my desktop lacks one. Unfortunately, their variety is meager; a HP 1260i and a LG GH24 are the only internals among the plethora of externals. Both have similar price, ratings, and + & - CD/DVD compatibility, which most are superfluous to my needs. The LG, however, has lightscribe, which is superfluous as well. I haven't had enough experience with either company's hardware to winnow the choice to a singularity, so hopefully you guys might know. On the other hand, should I look elsewhere if both prove to be inferior? Thanks for your consideration.
Internal CD/DVD RW dilemma
- Thread starter StevethePirate
- Start date
SNGX1275
Posts: 10,615 +467
Good, but loaded question. I'll try to address some points.
I've never seen or heard of any DVD burner having any problems reading/writing cds. So if that was of any concern I'd dismiss that.
Not sure if HP builds their own or if they rebrand others (likely rebrand, but I don't know), but LG drives IMO are pretty decent (I actually had one die, but I've known several other people that swear by them). HP pretty much started or was a frontrunner on Lightscribe though, and I think if you plan on doing any of that having an HP drive might be better. I recently saw a video review of an older Lightscribe drive (one I have) and apparently, at least for CDs, the media you lightscribe onto makes a big difference in the quality.
$75, if either of those drives (I didn't check BB) are close to using up your gift card, maybe you should spend the money on bluray disks or something. You can buy a cheap burner from Newegg for less than $30 that will work great. Maybe spend the gift card on the lightscribe capable disks which are expensive everywhere.
I've never seen or heard of any DVD burner having any problems reading/writing cds. So if that was of any concern I'd dismiss that.
Not sure if HP builds their own or if they rebrand others (likely rebrand, but I don't know), but LG drives IMO are pretty decent (I actually had one die, but I've known several other people that swear by them). HP pretty much started or was a frontrunner on Lightscribe though, and I think if you plan on doing any of that having an HP drive might be better. I recently saw a video review of an older Lightscribe drive (one I have) and apparently, at least for CDs, the media you lightscribe onto makes a big difference in the quality.
$75, if either of those drives (I didn't check BB) are close to using up your gift card, maybe you should spend the money on bluray disks or something. You can buy a cheap burner from Newegg for less than $30 that will work great. Maybe spend the gift card on the lightscribe capable disks which are expensive everywhere.
I thought lightscribe was strictly a label engraver; not an augment to data writing.
Also, are bluray drives ubiquitously CD/DVD compatible. And it seems bluray's capacity is currently excessive for most media storage; most videos are only a few gb and most decompressed audio--id est: FLAC--are only a few hundred mb; ~1gb for a discography.
The primary reason for installing a new optical drive is to write CD/DVD's.
By the way, those two drives at best buy are ~$50.
SNGX1275
Posts: 10,615 +467
It is, I was saying that the quality of the image you "print" onto the disk is affected by the disk brand. At least that was what was inferred in the video I watched, the image isn't extremely sharp on the 2 disk I've lightscribed to.
I know about bluray too, I was saying you might be better off just buying a few movies with the money and buying a burner from newegg.
I know about bluray too, I was saying you might be better off just buying a few movies with the money and buying a burner from newegg.
