External USB DVD Drive

[theonlybadger]

Greetings, my friend recently bought the Samsung SE-S184M/AMBN, 18X DVD-Writer , External USB 2.0 LightScribe for his 3 year old laptop. His USB is only 1.0. The problem is that non-dual-layered dvds work just fine, but dual-layered dvds are very choppy. Is this a problem that can somehow be solved or is t bound to happen? Thanks for your help.

 

[Peter]

USB 1.x is limited to less than a megabyte per second throughput. Depending on how high the encoding quality of a DVD is, it may or may not be sufficient for replay. Dual-layer DVDs tend to have not only longer movies, but a higher data rate as well.

If that laptop has a Cardbus slot (most do), and XP service pack 2, then get a Cardbus USB 2.0 adapter. They're inexpensive, and work really well. Some even add a FireWire port to the mix.