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"DVD Writers for mon PC."

Right chums, I'm looking for a decent DVD Writer for under £50 please. Can someone also tell me about these + and - signs I keep on seeing, and what is it they effect on the DVD.

Also, on ebuyer I can see numerous ones that say OEM (No S/W).
What the hell does this mean.

Thanks muchles.

for £50 not worth it, save your money and buy a decent drive that will last longer than the shoddy cheap ones (although lite on drives are extremly good value I recommend a good old brand name like pioneer)

Yeah, if they don't release it officially, it will turn up on the net somewhere :D

*crosses fingers*

ßulle†† wrote:
> Notorious Biggles wrote:
> With a software upgrade that Pioneer driver that there was a link to
> will burn dual layer blank DVDs.
>
>
> You mean the Pioneer 106 drive? And it's confirmed? Sweet. And to
> think I almost bought a Sony drive...

They have tested it and it worked, but my gut feeling says that they won't release it, so they can try sell a few more burners. However, chances are someone will come up with a hacked firmware.

Everyone who posted in here gets my upmost respect, especially Biggles and Bullett. You guys are bbrrrrrrill.

Danke.

ßulle†† wrote:
> Notorious Biggles wrote:
> With a software upgrade that Pioneer driver that there was a link to
> will burn dual layer blank DVDs.
>
>
> You mean the Pioneer 106 drive? And it's confirmed? Sweet. And to
> think I almost bought a Sony drive...

They have tested a 106 but I dont know whether they will provide a firmware. I have a Sony drive but its an old one so I have no chance of upgrading and even if I bought the old Pioneer the 103 or whatever it was I would have no chance. I will probably get a Pioneer dual layer for my next drive once they are out.

Notorious Biggles wrote:
> With a software upgrade that Pioneer driver that there was a link to > will burn dual layer blank DVDs.


You mean the Pioneer 106 drive? And it's confirmed? Sweet. And to think I almost bought a Sony drive...

OK from the top. You know how with CD burners it is all simply CD-R or CD-RW? Well, with DVD burners there are several competing formats. Like VHS and Betamax. There is DVD-R, DVD+R and DVD-RAM. Few people use DVD-RAM, it is kind of obsolete. It was a DVD in a plastic casing like a floppy disc. Don't worry about that.

But DVD-R and DVD+R are both still around and are roughly equally popular. Now you want to be able to burn to both really, so that you are fully compatible with whatever discs get thrown at you. Or that you "acquire" on the cheap.

Hence dual format burners, ones that burn to both DVD-R and DVD+R. I have one, the MSI DR8-A or something like that. It is an 8 speed burner, which at the moment is the fastest on the market. 2 speed is rather slow. As is 4 speed at that. So what you want is an 8 speed dual format burner. Still with me?

What cookie and Bullett were talking about, dual layer. Well, you know how sometimes you are watching a DVD, there is a slight pause and then it carries on? That was it changing layer. Some DVD movies have so much data in them that they are bigger than a single layer blank DVD. At the moment all the DVD burners are single layer. Dual layer burners will be out soon. With a software upgrade that Pioneer driver that there was a link to will burn dual layer blank DVDs.

Unless you are likely to be copying DVDs, it isn't that big a deal. What they were also saying is that if you wait until they come out, then single layer burners might become really cheap so that they flog them quickly because they are then no longer the latest technology.

Now then, OEM drives... Some of the cheap drives you see on ebuyer or some other places are just the drive, not like you would buy out of PC World with a bunch of software etc. Now, until recently that was a bad idea because then you would need to spend an extra £40 on the burner software. However, [URL]www.cdburnerxp.se[/URL] is a freeware burning package and it works just about as well as the full versions of Nero etc. In short, it is amazing.

So back to drives...
Sounds good [URL]http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=56658[/URL] and also in black for a few quid more.

Nice fast retail drive [URL]http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=55438[/URL]

Cheapest, but I'm not so sure about it [URL]http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=59360[/URL]

Ebuyer are probably the cheapest.

Presedenté Nash wrote:
> Hmmm
> I was thinking of getting
> [URL]http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=52074[/URL]
> With some
> [URL]http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=51178[/URL]

That looks pretty decent. It's only a 2 speed though. If you don't mind waiting, it should be suffficient.

> What are the benefits of having a duel layered DVD anyway; I thought
> we could practically fit everything on normal ones. You yourself, CM,
> said you could fit films on the DVD by simply cutting out the crap
> that wasn't needed, extra languages and stuff.
> So tell me - what's the point?

You can get a full movie on a standard DVD, but it means dropping things like special features and animated menus. A dual layered DVD will let you keep all the fancy stuff.

Presedenté Nash wrote:
> What are the benefits of having a duel layered DVD anyway; I thought
> we could practically fit everything on normal ones. You yourself, CM,
> said you could fit films on the DVD by simply cutting out the crap
> that wasn't needed, extra languages and stuff.
> So tell me - what's the point?

Well, essentially the point is that with a dual layered burner you wont need to cut anything at all. Which saves a bit of time, especially when you have to use mulitple dvd's for just one film (LOTR being a prime example).

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