these days I'm in desperate need of a dvd burner because my 240 gig Hdd is almost full and instead of buying a new HDD....i want to get a burner and move some gigs off my current drive ....did some research on it and found that pretty much all the new DVD-burners are performing well and are excellent in reading, writing and ripping......There is 2 categories that they can be generally categorized in

1) Non -Dual Layer burners: like Plextor 712a that doesn't support putting 8 gigs on one DVD atm...but does have an 8 MB buffer and also has the capability of putting 900 megs on a 700 meg CD

2) Dual Layer burners: like sony dr710a, NEC 3500, BenQ etc whicht support dual capacity but only has a 2 meg buffer

have been using CD-burners for a long time ,and what I learnt from them is...bigger the buffer, better the chance of writing a CD at high speeds on a busy system....Not 2 sure about the DVD-burners tho....I am at a point where I want to get something soon but can't decide whether i should go with category 1 or 2.....

Any suggestions or feeback is appreciated....

HP pavillion with DVD-R DVD discs

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HP pavillion with DVD-R DVD discs

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I use a Benq dvd burner and it serves me well!

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Pioneer DVR-107D (oem). I highly reccomend the Pioneer brand as this example has worked well for me, even with dirt cheap media.

Having DVD Dual layer functionality is nice for the future - but dual layer burning is not yet feasible; there is a lack of supply in DL media & the ones you can find now are still expensive. Wait at least a year or so until dual layer becomes mainstream. Stick with single layer discs b/c of thier relative maturity & affordability.

As for your concern of the buffers - if you have a computer with decent specs, I doubt you'll have much of a problem with buffer underruns. A 2 MB buffer will work excellent with any of the Pentium 4 (or equivalent AMD) with at least 512 MB of RAM, and taking the data off a separate HD (not your system HD).

I have an AMD Athlon 750 Mhz PC w/384 MB of ram & burn off a 2nd IDE HD. Unless I have tons of background processes running, I rarely have a problem burning at 8x - and the buffer underrun protection always saves the day if I do get underruns.

quote:

Originally posted by goodnet Pioneer DVR-107D (oem). I highly reccomend the Pioneer brand as this example has worked well for me, even with dirt cheap media. Having DVD Dual layer functionality is nice for the future - but dual layer burning is not yet feasible; there is a lack of supply in DL media & the ones you can find now are still expensive. Wait at least a year or so until dual layer becomes mainstream. Stick with single layer discs b/c of thier relative maturity & affordability. As for your concern of the buffers - if you have a computer with decent specs, I doubt you'll have much of a problem with buffer underruns. A 2 MB buffer will work excellent with any of the Pentium 4 (or equivalent AMD) with at least 512 MB of RAM, and taking the data off a separate HD (not your system HD). I have an AMD Athlon 750 Mhz PC w/384 MB of ram & burn off a 2nd IDE HD. Unless I have tons of background processes running, I rarely have a problem burning at 8x - and the buffer underrun protection always saves the day if I do get underruns.

word! i have the Pioneer DVR-108. Its awsome.

4x DL, 16x single layered. and i gots no coasters yet! ive burned about 150dvds already. I definatly am happy with my burner.

The only complaint about this burner that some people have is the slower rippping speed, but thats due to a built in limit. You can just upgrade the firmware, and boom, fast ripping.

And the best part about this burner? it will not let you burn faster than the disc is capable of handling, so no wasted discs. BUt you can burn at 12x on some 8x media, because the disc can handle it, just not advertised. I do it all the time.

Wicked man. My only regret with the 107D was Pioneer releasing the 108D DL burner a month later. I could have waited a month & gotten the 108D at a very simaler price when it came out.

I've heard that Pioneer has thier own blank media certification labs. I wouldn't be surprised if they use thier results to decide if a particular media can be burned beyond it's rated speed, and program it into thier firmware revisions.

quote:

Originally posted by goodnet Pioneer DVR-107D (oem). I highly reccomend the Pioneer brand as this example has worked well for me, even with dirt cheap media. ...

best one on the market, IMHO.

I've always been a big Plextor supporter...unparalleled quality...but the new Pioneer DVR-107D is even better.

im actually loooking into buying one

ive read a lot of reviews from other ppl and stuff

my 3 choices are LG GSA-4160B, BenQ DW1620, or the NEC ND-3500A

out of those 3 ill prob choose the BenQ DW1620. and its only $82 OEM at canada computers.

here are some reviews for each
------------------------------

NEC ND-3500A

BenQ DW1620

LG GSA-4160B

Pioneer DVR-A08/108
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CDRinfo.com

LG GSA-4160B

BenQ DW1620A

NEC ND-3500A

Pioneer DVR-108

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I'd stay away from BenQ. Through reviews and my own experiences with an Acer product (Benq = Acer's peripheral line now) they pale in comparison to the quality of other manufacturers. Those reviews on videohelp.com don't look promising either (seems to prefer +R discs).

The NEC is almost the same price and I've heard much better things about it in general.

quote:

Originally posted by goodnet Having DVD Dual layer functionality is nice for the future - but dual layer burning is not yet feasible; there is a lack of supply in DL media & the ones you can find now are still expensive. Wait at least a year or so until dual layer becomes mainstream. Stick with single layer discs b/c of thier relative maturity & affordability.

Rite on...i thought the same about DL after doing some reading on it...its a good new technological enhancement and will eventually become cost and media effective at some point... but for now it takes painfully long to burn 8 gigs (45 mins @2.x) plus the media costs a fortune if one an find it

quote:

Originally posted by goodnet As for your concern of the buffers - if you have a computer with decent specs, I doubt you'll have much of a problem with buffer underruns. A 2 MB buffer will work excellent with any of the Pentium 4 (or equivalent AMD) with at least 512 MB of RAM, and taking the data off a separate HD (not your system HD). I have an AMD Athlon 750 Mhz PC w/384 MB of ram & burn off a 2nd IDE HD. Unless I have tons of background processes running, I rarely have a problem burning at 8x - and the buffer underrun protection always saves the day if I do get underruns.

Altho , I have a fast machine --P4 3.02 ,S-ATA HDD ,1 Gig Ram... but still sometimes while using my LG CD burner with Nero...The buffer fills up to the max and writing quality detoriates...I use my system very heavily and and there is allot of processes running in the background while i am burning....So just to avoid the under/over run with the dvd-burner i am interested in getting one that has more than 2 megs buffer....I know its not completely avoidable but i am trying to minimize the occurrence...

Now I have to decide whether i should get a Plextor-716a or Pioneer 108...price difference is 80 bucks.....

The trend has moved towards small on-board buffers for CD/DVD recorders. That's probably because most burning software uses a portion of the physical system RAM to buffer data anyways - and it saves on manufacturing costs im sure.

Even then, burning at 8x is at 11 MB/second a second already. Unless that onboard buffer is 16 or 32 MB, theoretically it shouldn't make a real difference. If the main RAM gets high use from other processes you'll get bottlenecked there either way...

My suggestion with the Pioneer of course, even though it costs significantly less than the Plextor, I don't think its sacrificing the quality as much.

Last edited by goodnet on Dec-10-2004 at 02:28