Toshiba SD-R5002 DVD-R/-RW 16x10x40x12x Combo drive: $149 + shipping

[OneCheapBastard]

Found the deal here at buyextremegear. $149 + shipping.

Newegg has it for $209 shipped. Buy.com also has it for $209.

I know nothing about this drive other than the specs listed in the above link. Enjoy.

 

[dejacky]

nice catch! I've been looking for something like this. Has anyone else heard about this? How is it?

 

[Synergy3618]

This is a 2X DVD-R only burner, an obselete model and should be on the liquidation shelf soon. You can pay $50 more and get dual format 4X DVD burner or about the same for a 4X DVD+R burner.

 

[fraeone]

Everything synergy said is true, but a couple of caveats.. for me, speed ratings are academic because 1x media is cheaper than everything else, unless you need your dvd a few minutes sooner, or you're doing massive amounts of burning, speed should be academic for you too.

Also, I have never had a reason to want +R; -R works great in all the dvd players I've tried, includng PS2/XBOX. The burner has been rock solid for me, never had a problem.

On a side note, I have heard terrible things about buyxtremegear, which according to some reviews on resellerratings have changed their name a few times because of terrible consumer ratings.

 

[Pratik]

Now this deal dropped to $136. I still think DVD-R isn't bad but if you're going to get one, may as well be 4x write speed now.

 

[Rio Rebel]

This is an excellent deal. Thanks for the heads-up.

On the issue of speed, though, there are a few things to bear in mind if you haven't done any DVD burning yet:

1. 2x vs 4X is a very significant difference - 30 minutes vs. 15 minutes.
2. However, this is not like burning a cd. If you are burning commercial DVD's, you *must* decode them (I use DVD-Decryptor), which is dependant on the ripping speed of your DVD source drive (15 minutes is probably minimum; 30+ minutes is not uncommon at all). Then there's the issue of shrinking it to fit on a 4.5 gig DVD. The point is, you're not talking 15 vs 30 minutes here to burn a DVD - you're talking 15 to 30 ON TOP of probably 30 minutes to an hour or more.
3. 1x media is certainly much cheaper than 4x. But I don't burn 100's of DVD's, so I'd rather pay around 75 cents more per disk to burn in a fraction of the time (remember, 1X is over an hour of burning time).