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Pioneeer DVR-A03 DVD BURNER! Internal IDE DVD-Rewritable Drive $419 shipped

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aks93

Senior member
I was looking to buy the best dvd burner for under $500. I came accross this one. If theres a better one pls let me know. Otherwise Ill assume the Pioneer A03 is the way to go: here
The vendor is Micro Pro. They any good?
 
the prices on these are dropping really quickly, i don't see the point in buying one now...just a few weeks ago it was almost $500 if i'm not mistaken.
 
isn't lite-on coming out with their own dvd burner early next year, i can't wait to see the price on that
 
DVD-R, DVD-RW, or DVD+RW... are all of these compatible it DVD Players today?

More importantly, which one is most likely to fail? Maybe DVD-Rs are becoming cheaper because it can't compete with the rewritable DVDs and will be defunct in a year or so. I think Pioneer is the only manufacturer of DVD-R drives.

Time will tell.

I will probably wait to buy a DVD writer until the speeds are increased to the point where you can write a DVD in 10 minutes or so. Right now I think the best they can do is 30-40 minutes. Correct me if I am wrong.
 
anyone know much about the various formats or point me at a good source of information ?

Difference between DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW DVD RAM ?

What's to stop me buying one of these and backing up my movies DVDs ? - there must be something, otherwise someone with one of these and a netflix account is going to be very happy.. media cost ? storage capacity ?)

Which formats allow me to play the discs in my regular Sony consumer player ?

many thanks.
 
There's a huge difference between the competing standards. Do a search, or better yet you lazy bums, I will. Hold on.



<< DVD-RW is mainly for people looking to record video and play it on consumer DVD players. But that format isn't as convenient for data storage as are DVD-RAM and DVD+RW, which allow drive owners to store data randomly, like a hard drive does. In addition, consumers can only record once per session with DVD-RW drives, meaning that if people want to add a video clip to others already on a disc, they must erase the entire disc and record all the video clips at once. >>





 


<< What's to stop me buying one of these and backing up my movies DVDs ? - there must be something, otherwise someone with one of these and a netflix account is going to be very happy.. media cost ? >>



bingo, media cost. Blank dvd media cost 15-20 per disc. Why would someone want to spend that much for a blank media and copy the movie when they can just buy it for the same cost if not cheaper?
 
The first problem with copying movies is that the blanks are only 4.7GB (actually 4.3GB usable) and most movies will be way over that. If you're very creative it can be done but the movies must be downsampled or stuff must be ripped out. Once the media capacity increases it may be more realistic. I have seen name brand media as low as 7.99 for DVD-R.

DVD-R can be used in a standalone player if the disc is burned in UDF and if the version of UDF is compatible with standalones.
DVD-RAM is not playable in a DVD-ROM drive or a DVD Player.
Hope that helps some.
 
Question is though, is this the best deal on the best DVD burner available right now? Is the pioneer a03 really da king?
 
i know COMPUSA had a DVD burner for $300 Ater a $100MIR... this was a Que dVd-r..... i don't know why ppl don't like Ques but i always build systems with ques and the owners haven't had a pblm.... so i expect the prices to go down even more....
 
What's to stop me buying one of these and backing up my movies DVDs ? - there must be something, otherwise someone with one of these and a netflix account is going to be very happy.. media cost ? storage capacity ?)

Plenty, Macrovision, something like Cactusvision (?)(no joke it has cactus in the name) and the fact that there is no program I'm aware of called cloneDVD like there is for clonecd. So I don't think you could copy bit for bit all the intentional errors built into DVD's. You didn't hollywierd was going to make it easy for you.
 
dvdr prices are getting cheaper everyday...u can get 6 apple dvdrs for $30 shipped.....that's orig price....on sale they would b even cheaper!
 
Macrovision only prevents copying a dvd with a video tape recorder. It does nothing to prevent a user from ripping vob files using one of the dozen or so decss-enabled programs out there.

I see two problems with getting a recorder for copying purposes. First, there is the media cost. However, I expect this issue to go away just like it did with CDs. Second, current dvd-r media is limited in size as mentioned above, which means short movies, or tv series.

jay



<< What's to stop me buying one of these and backing up my movies DVDs ? - there must be something, otherwise someone with one of these and a netflix account is going to be very happy.. media cost ? storage capacity ?)

Plenty, Macrovision, something like Cactusvision (?)(no joke it has cactus in the name) and the fact that there is no program I'm aware of called cloneDVD like there is for clonecd. So I don't think you could copy bit for bit all the intentional errors built into DVD's. You didn't hollywierd was going to make it easy for you. >>

 
Ripping and reencoding is the way it will have to be done there is a sector that has some CSS data in it and all blank media has that sector disabled. DVD-RAR not playable on home DVD player so I think its the first to fall then between DVD-R and DVD+RW, DVD-R is more compatible (95%) and media is cheaper but you can not rewrite. It is like CDR. DVD-RW is like CDRW, media is more $ but it is rewritable. about 90% compatible with DVD players. Personally I never use the rewrite capability of my CDRW drive CDRs are too cheap. I imagine I will capture to hard drive for stuff I would want to overwrite. I'll sit this out a few more months. Some DVD players play one format but not the other or vice versa you might check to see which format your existing player can read and make your decision based on that. check www.VCDHelp.com
 
DVD+RW is the format to wait for. Greater compatibility with settop players and drives. CD+RW drives are just now hitting the market and this will probably be the desired format over DVD-RW.
 
If I remember correctly, I think is was Panasonic that came out with a drive just like the Pioneer but it was a lot cheaper. At the time, 6 months ago or so, the Pioneer drive was 800 and the Panasonic drive was like $500. I'm just not sure if it was Panasonic, but I'm pretty sure.
 


<< DVD-R, DVD-RW, or DVD+RW... are all of these compatible it DVD Players today?

More importantly, which one is most likely to fail? Maybe DVD-Rs are becoming cheaper because it can't compete with the rewritable DVDs and will be defunct in a year or so. I think Pioneer is the only manufacturer of DVD-R drives.

Time will tell.

I will probably wait to buy a DVD writer until the speeds are increased to the point where you can write a DVD in 10 minutes or so. Right now I think the best they can do is 30-40 minutes. Correct me if I am wrong. >>



Haha, only 30-40 minutes? When I back up my DVDs to SVCD it takes about 8-12 hours using a TBird 1.3 with 512mb ram. 😉
 
umm...simply put, that's because you're recompressing the audio/video to follow the SVCD specs (and are more than likely using multipass VBR). i think the 30-40mins he was referring to was simply the write time.
 
Does anyone think theres a better DVD burner than the pioneer a03, Im very close to doing this deal, but I want to be as sure as possible first...
thanks
 
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