What is best DVD burner to purchase?

[backert1]

Hello,

I would like to purchase a new internal DVD burner R-/RW- to burn about 120 famliy video DVD's (60 DVD's - 2 copies each). My present DVD burner is a panasonic unit in a sony Viao computer that has a max DVD burn speed of 1X. I would like to be able to shorten the burn time and after reading many posts on the optimum burning speed (4X to 8X) I still have a few questions.

1) What is an affordable, reliable DVD burner (available in the US) that will product quality recordings that will be compatible with a wide range of DVD players?

I do not need to have Blue ray capability yet (not yet affordable). My current DVD players work well with my pioneer DVD progressive scan player.

2) Is there a specific DVD brand / model that works well? Fewer recording errors, stable over time, etc?

Thanks,

Todd

[skier-hughes]

All of the big brand dvd writers are equally reliable these days as they've had plenty of time to sort reliability problems.

I'd stick to burn time of 4x

Quality is more to do with the original file and encoder then the burner, if the file is poor it'll nver be good. If the encoder is poor, it'll never be a good dvd. The writer just writes the info it is given, so this info must be good.

Taiyo Yuden as a dvd brand.

It's still going to take you a fair while to burn that many dvds.

[2Dogs]

Hi Todd,

I would respectfully beg to differ with Graham's assertion that all burners are created equal. I believe there are some strong candidates amongst a lot of mediocre burners.

Some burners can perform disc quality scans using the freeware CD-DVD Speed program, or K Probe. Makes that can do so include BenQ (now defunct) Lite-on, NEC, and Samsung (after a small registry tweak) Plextor drives, generally very expensive, can perform a disc quality scan using their own Plex Tools software. This scanning ability may be of no interest to you, but then again, it might.

You then need to choose between a burner that can be connected by a bulky IDE "ribbon"cable or one that uses the more recent Sata interface. The principal advantage of the SATA burners is the less bulky, easier to route cabling. There's nothing inherent in the interface that results in better disc burns. Some burners, such as some from Pioneer and LG can benefit from the use of a 64 conductor IDE cable, which enables the faster UDMA 4 mode.

Looking at your system, I'm assuming that you have a desktop pc rather than a notebook, and that your existing burner is an IDE unit. Your motherboard may have SATA ports, however, so you might be able to use a SATA burner.

Of all my own (seven) burners, all IDE, I like my Pioneer 111D best - it seems to be compatible with the widest range of blank DVD media. The nearest IDE equivalent is the newer DVR-115D, which gets pretty good reviews, and can write at up to 20x speed to suitable blank media.

Pioneer DVR-115D

The SATA variant is the 212D, which can write at up to 18x.

Pioneer DVR-212D

I like the fast read speed of my Pioneer - it's my first choice when importing content from a DVD disc.

The Samsung SH-S203N gets good reviews and is thought to be a pretty decent drive. It uses the SATA interface.

Samsung SH-S203N

The IDE variant is the SH-S202N. If you are not interested in making labels using Lightscibe (I don't bother, since a) Lightscribe blank media is expensive b) Lightscribe labels take about 20 minutes to burn and c) Lightscribe labels are low contrast) you can go for the SH-S202J version - even cheaper!

Samsung SH-S202N

Samsung SH-S202J

Moving on to blank media - I find that my Pioneer burns really well to TDK or Imation 16x DVD+R blank media - but only that which carries the "Made in Malaysia" label. This uses the Daxon AZ3 media code. The problem is that you can't tell the media code of blank media by looking at it or by anything written on the info on the label. Many different brands of disc use the utterly mediocre CMC MAG M01 media code, and I avoid those discs at all costs.

Just recently, I finally got around to trying out some Taiyo Yuden premium grade 8x DVD-R blank media. It's made in Japan, as opposed to Taiwan, like most commonly available media. My Samsung SH-S183M gets really great burn quality to it.

Taiyo Yuden Online Source

I can honestly say that I wouldn't consider buying anything else now - unless I see a $10 for 50 offer on the aforementioned TDK or Imation discs. I intend to try out the DVD+R TY discs soon.

There remains some confusion over disc compatibility. In the US, DVD-R blank media is more popular, whilst in Europe they strongly favour DVD+R. I find that as a general rule, I get better burn quality to +R media.

Some early DVD players had difficulty reading DVD+R discs - but that problem can be solved by ensuring that the DVD burner writes the disk with the DVD_ROM booktype. You can set this, or it will be done automatically, with the Pioneer and Samsung burners.

One last point which may be of interest. For some burners, you can get Region Free firmware which will allow you to play DVD's from other regions on your drive. Regular drives will allow you to change the region four times before it is locked. Since I have many UK DVD's, I find this a very useful feature - so my Pioneer has region free firmware.

To be honest, if you have room in your pc case, I would recommend installing both a Samsung and a Pioneer - then you could have the best of both worlds!

[backert1]

Thanks for the reply and recommendations. Unfortunately the desktop computer case is a "mini" version on this Viao system (never again will I buy a mini tower case) and I don't have room to add a 3rd internal cd/DVD player. I will need to scap one of the them and they are IDE interface. If I recall correctly my DVD player is a Pioneer DV-104 -RW DVD player burner capable of 2x burning.

If I read the combine responses, It looks like if I buy a new player and run at the 4x burn speed, I can cut my burn time in half - good gain and probably worth the $50-60 for the upgrade.

[skier-hughes]

It looks like if I buy a new player and run at the 4x burn speed, I can cut my burn time in half - good gain and probably worth the $50-60 for the upgrade.

In theory, but not always in reality, but it will certainly be quicker.

[Clevo]

I have both a sata DVD burner and an IDE driven DVD burner.

On the Sata drive I let it run at 8x and have not had any problems yet (on good quality well known brand named discs). Fingers crossed