Seems like dvd burning is finally becoming mainstream (ie reasonably priced) and I was wondering what y'all do with your drives? What is the quality like on dvds after using something like dvdshrink? What's the average price on dvd blanks these days? I was thinking about going for the Plextor because they make such great drives, but is an 8x really worth it?
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What do you do with your DVD Burner?
- Thread starter gsiener
- Start date
In my opinion, it is still worth it to wait a little longer. Burning speeds are probably going to increase at similar levels to CDRWs. If you are like most people on these forums, then you will buy an 8x drive now and another one when 24x drives become available. If you are like me, then you will be happy with your 8x burner years from now and it would be worth it for you. I have no plans to replace my 8x4x32 HP CDRW any time soon. 10 minutes is a totally acceptable wait time for me to burn a CD.
Megatomic
Lifer
I don't have one YET but I do plan on having one by springtime. What do I plan on doing with it?
1. Back up all the family VHS to DVD. This includes movies and home movies alike.
2. Go into part time business doing the same for a pre-established clientele. They are just waiting for me get a drive so I can start.
3. Make back-ups of all my data. I have many gigabytes of photos and mp3s that need to be on DVD rather than on 3 hard drives.
I do plan on getting one of the best 4X burners when the 8X burners become more commonplace. Hence the waiting. 🙂
1. Back up all the family VHS to DVD. This includes movies and home movies alike.
2. Go into part time business doing the same for a pre-established clientele. They are just waiting for me get a drive so I can start.
3. Make back-ups of all my data. I have many gigabytes of photos and mp3s that need to be on DVD rather than on 3 hard drives.
I do plan on getting one of the best 4X burners when the 8X burners become more commonplace. Hence the waiting. 🙂
Kristi2k
Golden Member
I have the Plextor 708A, it's fast with the 4x media and it's fast with the CD burning too. I haven't been burnig DVD's much because the media is so expensive. This is my 3rd burner (2 CD burners, 1 DVD burner) and have had any problems with Plextor. There's no 8x media that I know of right now.
Jeff7
Lifer
I burn DVD's, duh. 😛
I've only got a 2x drive (1x on DVD-RW's). I was an early adopter - before 4x drives existed. It's a Toshiba SD-R5002 or something like that. I know it has 5002 in it. 🙂
I mainly use it for video - record TV shows with my WinTV PVR-350, edit the ones I like with Ulead Videostudio 7, and burn them to the DVD. I get decent quality, and commercial free-shows. I do plan at some point in time to use my DVD's for Norton Ghost backups. I just need to find a place to stash over 100GB of stored MPEG2 files. Might be time to invest in some more big hard drives.
I've only got a 2x drive (1x on DVD-RW's). I was an early adopter - before 4x drives existed. It's a Toshiba SD-R5002 or something like that. I know it has 5002 in it. 🙂
I mainly use it for video - record TV shows with my WinTV PVR-350, edit the ones I like with Ulead Videostudio 7, and burn them to the DVD. I get decent quality, and commercial free-shows. I do plan at some point in time to use my DVD's for Norton Ghost backups. I just need to find a place to stash over 100GB of stored MPEG2 files. Might be time to invest in some more big hard drives.
chocoruacal
Golden Member
*Home movies
*Cap favorite TV shows and burn them
*Backup DVDs
*Backup data
Do you REALLY need us to list them all 😛
I've got no complaints. On smaller (32" or less) TVs you'd never notice the difference.
Check fatwallet.com. I don't (and won't) pay more than $.50--$1 per brand name disc. I never have any problem getting them at that price locally...Fuji, Verbatim, Memorex, etc.
2x=24 minutes
4x=15 minutes
8x=8 minutes
So I guess only you can answer that question, because only you know how many you'll be burning. My drive is 4x but to be honest, good deals on 4x media is a lot harder to come by locally than 2x. For me the price difference between 2x and 4x/8x isn't worth the reduction in speed.
Well....until this week I used my Pioneer 104 for making backups of large amounts of data. Unfortunately it just died(after almost exactly one year) and has not worked well since I updated the firmware to handle 4x DVDs. If you have an older DVD-R drive stick with the older media.
unless you're pirating DVDs en masse, there isn't a real need to wait for 8x dvd burning.
CD-R drives started to become obsolete because they couldn't fit all of the mp3s and movies people were downloading and burning. just took too long with too many discs.
DVD-R is a whole new ballpark. you're talking about 70 full mp3 ALBUMS on a single DVD-R disc.
It's also equivalent to around 6 divx movies that are 700MB each. at 4x, you'll be burning that in 15 minutes.
I used to have to burn a bunch of CDRs to make room on my hard drive. now i only burn a couple of DVD-Rs to make room on the hard drive. being that it fits so much more data, you just won't be using it as often as you used the cd-r drive.
besides, by early 2006 we should start seeing blue-ray discs which will make your dvd-r drive look like a floppy drive.
CD-R drives started to become obsolete because they couldn't fit all of the mp3s and movies people were downloading and burning. just took too long with too many discs.
DVD-R is a whole new ballpark. you're talking about 70 full mp3 ALBUMS on a single DVD-R disc.
It's also equivalent to around 6 divx movies that are 700MB each. at 4x, you'll be burning that in 15 minutes.
I used to have to burn a bunch of CDRs to make room on my hard drive. now i only burn a couple of DVD-Rs to make room on the hard drive. being that it fits so much more data, you just won't be using it as often as you used the cd-r drive.
besides, by early 2006 we should start seeing blue-ray discs which will make your dvd-r drive look like a floppy drive.
JackBurton
Lifer
I can't believe someone with a Plextor 708A said this. First off, you can use 4X media to burn at 8X on that drive. Secondly 8X media is already out.
WTF? I've got 26GB of data I want to backup, why would I want to burn at 4X instead of 8X? 26GB (6 DVDs x 4.3GB) would take ~90mins with 4X and ~48mins with 8X. Now tell me again why I wouldn't need an 8X burner if I'm not pirating movies?
gsiener, there is no need to get anything slower than an 8X burner. I however wouldn't recommend the Plextor 708A. Plextor has been dethroned by NEC. Check it out, NEC's ND-2500A . It will burn DVD+R AND DVD-Rs at 8X, whereas the Plextor can only do 8X with DVD+R media. And at ~$140, why would you buy anything else? 😉
i don't know much about nec's latest 8x drive, but the 4x is notorious for being picky about media.
and yes you may save that 40 mins of burning, but it's not like you're sitting there waiting for it to finish burning.
and let's say that even if you are, you aren't going to burn dvd-r discs everyday like you did with cd-r discs.
let me put this in perspective. my friend has 20,000 mp3 albums. ALBUMS. average that to 12 songs per album, and that's a total of 240,000 mp3s. now he used to burn 6 or 7 CDR discs per day. if you had to do that, you should have a fast burner. but in comes the DVD burner. now he only burns ONE dvd-r per day. so yeah i guess if you burn at 8x, you won't have to wait as long. but on the other hand, you just won't be burning that many discs period. my friend used to download more than he could put away. now he can't download fast enough. especially since most americans use slow lines (200K/sec), an 8x is not a requirement. It's nice. speed is always nice. it's just not a priority. 15mins vs. 7 mins. big deal.
we've reached the point in technology where we've got more storage capability than we have data to put it on to. for the time being at least, until high definition DVDs come out. by which time blu-ray will be available.
i wouldn't go with a brand that i didn't trust. NEC is definitely not a brand i trust to do DVD-R. maybe i'm wrong about this, but no one's gonna tell me that the 4x version was great. plextor doesn't do -R, which seems to be the standard these days anyway. if not standard, at least the most common (and cheaper) i don't know why plextor went that route. maybe because +R has more reliability. whatever.
if you want 8x, i'd wait around for the pioneer a07. even so, it's really expensive.
and yes you may save that 40 mins of burning, but it's not like you're sitting there waiting for it to finish burning.
and let's say that even if you are, you aren't going to burn dvd-r discs everyday like you did with cd-r discs.
let me put this in perspective. my friend has 20,000 mp3 albums. ALBUMS. average that to 12 songs per album, and that's a total of 240,000 mp3s. now he used to burn 6 or 7 CDR discs per day. if you had to do that, you should have a fast burner. but in comes the DVD burner. now he only burns ONE dvd-r per day. so yeah i guess if you burn at 8x, you won't have to wait as long. but on the other hand, you just won't be burning that many discs period. my friend used to download more than he could put away. now he can't download fast enough. especially since most americans use slow lines (200K/sec), an 8x is not a requirement. It's nice. speed is always nice. it's just not a priority. 15mins vs. 7 mins. big deal.
we've reached the point in technology where we've got more storage capability than we have data to put it on to. for the time being at least, until high definition DVDs come out. by which time blu-ray will be available.
i wouldn't go with a brand that i didn't trust. NEC is definitely not a brand i trust to do DVD-R. maybe i'm wrong about this, but no one's gonna tell me that the 4x version was great. plextor doesn't do -R, which seems to be the standard these days anyway. if not standard, at least the most common (and cheaper) i don't know why plextor went that route. maybe because +R has more reliability. whatever.
if you want 8x, i'd wait around for the pioneer a07. even so, it's really expensive.
JackBurton
Lifer
Are you saying that the Plextor 708A doesn't do -R at all, or not just at 8X?
If you aren't comfortable with NEC then like you said, the a70 should be coming out shortly (January 2004). And hey, 15mins, 8mins, big deal right? Why didn't you stick with a nice shiny 2.4X DVD burner? 30mins, 15mins, big deal. Are you gonna sit there and watch it burn? 😉
As far as the a70 pricing, how are you going to say it IS expensive if it isn't even out yet?
oh and the nec costs me only 140bucks plus some shipping so 150.00~ or so..
and for that price, who cares if the 8x drives drop to 100 or 120, i'll get my money's worth easily by the time the prices drop that far. And i think most do sit around and wait for there cd's or dvd's to get done... well at least i do..
well so far, its pioneer, plextor, NEC(so far so good), liteon (i hear some not so good things from dvd burner perspective)
and for that price, who cares if the 8x drives drop to 100 or 120, i'll get my money's worth easily by the time the prices drop that far. And i think most do sit around and wait for there cd's or dvd's to get done... well at least i do..
well so far, its pioneer, plextor, NEC(so far so good), liteon (i hear some not so good things from dvd burner perspective)
christ i give up.
BUY THE 8X FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. 😉
anyway, i didn't buy the 2.4x because i wasn't in the market then. i bought my drive a couple months ago. i was really thinking about waiting for the 8x because i thought it would be like CDR burning. you know, the faster the better.
well it turned out that i just didn't have to do NEARLY as much burning as before.
the question should be reiterated to: why didn't you go with the 4x instead of the 8x? in which case... i did go with the 4x.
the reason being that i had a hard drive that was making all sorts of clicking noises, and a bunch about 100gigs of mp3s on it that i badly needed to backup. would've majorly sucked if i lost all that. anyway, turned out that it was a bad power supply that would hiccup once in a while, and that's what caused the clicking on my HD.
so after i changed the PSU, i have no problems on my HD and i've got a 4x burner, which i find FAR MORE than sufficient.
regarding the pioneer A07 being too expensive, i made an error in the post. while i was editing, i wanted to say that the 8X media is expensive. and i really don't wanna hear anything about flashing bioses to burn 4x media at 8x.
i've already read too many horror stories for people trying to do that for 1x burning to 2x or 2x burning to 4x.
OH and lastly. if you're waiting around for your burns to finish, then you're totally wasting your time. burn proof technology doesn't allow for coasters, so i actually play UT2K3 while my DVDs are burning. have you ever seen the buffer go down to ZERO, and then the write LED stop on the drive, and then after a minute, start back up again as if nothing happened? it's pretty freakin sweet!
OH and double lastly. i use 1x media on my 4x drive, and i burn at 1x.
BUY THE 8X FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. 😉
anyway, i didn't buy the 2.4x because i wasn't in the market then. i bought my drive a couple months ago. i was really thinking about waiting for the 8x because i thought it would be like CDR burning. you know, the faster the better.
well it turned out that i just didn't have to do NEARLY as much burning as before.
the question should be reiterated to: why didn't you go with the 4x instead of the 8x? in which case... i did go with the 4x.
the reason being that i had a hard drive that was making all sorts of clicking noises, and a bunch about 100gigs of mp3s on it that i badly needed to backup. would've majorly sucked if i lost all that. anyway, turned out that it was a bad power supply that would hiccup once in a while, and that's what caused the clicking on my HD.
so after i changed the PSU, i have no problems on my HD and i've got a 4x burner, which i find FAR MORE than sufficient.
regarding the pioneer A07 being too expensive, i made an error in the post. while i was editing, i wanted to say that the 8X media is expensive. and i really don't wanna hear anything about flashing bioses to burn 4x media at 8x.
i've already read too many horror stories for people trying to do that for 1x burning to 2x or 2x burning to 4x.
OH and lastly. if you're waiting around for your burns to finish, then you're totally wasting your time. burn proof technology doesn't allow for coasters, so i actually play UT2K3 while my DVDs are burning. have you ever seen the buffer go down to ZERO, and then the write LED stop on the drive, and then after a minute, start back up again as if nothing happened? it's pretty freakin sweet!
OH and double lastly. i use 1x media on my 4x drive, and i burn at 1x.
i've got a lite-on 411S that i got on black friday. it's a dual-format drive and it's worked fine for me since I've got it. I've probably burned 70 dvds through it so far and haven't made a single coaster.
The drive was $129 - $40 (2) MIR - $30 GC (I had), so the final price was $59. Brand name media runs anywhere from $.50-1.00 per disc. I'll never pay more than $1 per disc. Just buy in bulk and it'll save you a lot of money.
I've been trying to stress this to some of my friends, but they actually persist on buying 5packs from walmart for $15-20 which is just nuts.
The reason I chose a lite-on drive is because of their ongoing firmware updates, they offer new updates very regularly; whereas some of their competitors never release any new/good firmwares to fix little issues that may arise.
The drive was $129 - $40 (2) MIR - $30 GC (I had), so the final price was $59. Brand name media runs anywhere from $.50-1.00 per disc. I'll never pay more than $1 per disc. Just buy in bulk and it'll save you a lot of money.
I've been trying to stress this to some of my friends, but they actually persist on buying 5packs from walmart for $15-20 which is just nuts.
The reason I chose a lite-on drive is because of their ongoing firmware updates, they offer new updates very regularly; whereas some of their competitors never release any new/good firmwares to fix little issues that may arise.
this is an even larger discussion about intellectual property, morality, and the music industry.
i'm not going to discuss that here because it will not do anything but promote polarity.
for the record, most of that 100 gigs is from my personal collection. i had over 1000 CDs that i personally ripped and encoded to my HD. now, i sold those same CDs on ebay, so do i have legal claim to still listen to them? probably not.
either way, will any of this talk change the direction of the obvious future? [/rhetorical]
i'm not going to discuss that here because it will not do anything but promote polarity.
for the record, most of that 100 gigs is from my personal collection. i had over 1000 CDs that i personally ripped and encoded to my HD. now, i sold those same CDs on ebay, so do i have legal claim to still listen to them? probably not.
either way, will any of this talk change the direction of the obvious future? [/rhetorical]
JackBurton
Lifer
I only see ONE person in this thread that needs to get a life, and it ain't sugarkang's friend. I hope you are kidding with that post poppyq, because that is the weakest crap I've heard in a reeeaaaally long time.
Let's see, I...
Ghost Images of HD (usually once a month)
Convert home video to DVD's (doing Christmas video as I'm typing this)
Backup DVD's (w/DVD shrink)
Backup personal files
I have several hundred old jazz albums from the 50's and 60's that I converted to digital and cleaned up a bit. It's nice to put them all on 4 disks.
rb56
Ghost Images of HD (usually once a month)
Convert home video to DVD's (doing Christmas video as I'm typing this)
Backup DVD's (w/DVD shrink)
Backup personal files
I have several hundred old jazz albums from the 50's and 60's that I converted to digital and cleaned up a bit. It's nice to put them all on 4 disks.
rb56
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