rik1471

Anyone have facts about which format DVD Writer I should buy and what the capabilities are etc.

Scoty

Pioneer A03, A04 or A05, no bull sh*t

Shaun

DVD-R & DVD-RW NOT DVD+R or DVD+RW

A03 & A04 are both dual speed writers, while A05 is quad speed.

stevebt

iTrader: (8)

if you buy the new sony its 4x write and does both media so you dont have to worry about which one to buy

bigsinky

depends what u wanna do m8. for just backing up data onto a 4.7gig disc then a -R writer will do. Pioneer just produced a new writer that has X4 write compatibility (a 105 i think) (but X4 media is still scare). you can still write DVD movies on -R but people will tell you that there are a lot of stand alone players that wont read them and that +R is better. (of course it would be coz the media is twice the price).

NEC are releasing a dual drive the NEC ND 1100 which does both -R and +R and so should give you the best of both worlds. at around 309 euros it seems to be a good buy.

I personally bought the sony DRU 500 when it was released for 199 quid and had a few probs at the start, but sony provided a free firmware upgrade which seems to have ironed out the problems. be aware that if you go for a spanking new drive then you might only be able to use the bundled software that comes with it (which is usually crap in most instances, tho thats in my opinion) because programs like NERO, CLONE CD, ALCOHOL 120% may not have them on their compatible drive lists. Having said that it doesnt actually take them that long and in some case like NERO they jump the gun and provide compatibility a few weeks before a new drive is released.

Software wise if u is planning on doin your own DVD movies, be that, **cough** backing up your original DVDs, or authoring movies that you have downloaded from Usenet groups you are gonna need some good software. I would recommend you get a hold of DVD Decrypter,IFO edit, PowerDVD player, ReMPEG, and an AVI conversion tool and some good authoring software all of which are available for download if u know where to look.

Hope this helps ya and if you need any further info just let me know.

cheers

big sinky

rik1471

Cheers

Does anyone know if we're gonna be able to just copy original DVDs any time soon?

When I say copy I mean like you can copy CDs now.

Scoty

You can with DVDXCopy

Brun

Sounds legal

Avi

But isn't an average film about 8-10 Gig?