Question on DVD burners.

[Bob Safay]

Hi all. I am thinking of up grading my dvd burner. I have an HP computer and I use Vages 5 and DVD2. I am looking at the PLEXTOR PX708a dvd+/- writer. Does anyone know if this is compatable with Vages? Is it a really good burner (I need to do Masters and send them out for mass copying). Or, would you suggest another burner? Bob Safay

[Newdjeen Klime]

Plextor its... Best Of The Best CD/DVD Burners on the World ;-)

[Andriy Zolotoiy]

The king of burners but I suggest to look at newer ones, 16x avail now.

[Jeremy Davidson]

I heard that the Pioneer 109 was supposed to be a good drive. How well does it stack up against the Plextors?

[Bob Safay]

Holy Speed Batman, 16x!!! But is it compatable with Vages 5? If so I got to have one this weekend.

[Glenn Chan]

The little I know about DVD burners and media:
A- If you're sending out masters, some people give diehard recommendations for DLT. The tape drive is not cheap, although you can snag em off eBay.
Many people just burn a DVD to send to the duplication/replication facility. The best DVD media you can get for DVD-R and DVD+R are the ones manufactured by Taiyo Yuden (the 4X ones are little more reliable than the 8X ones).
B- As far as burners go, they all have some tradeoffs which makes it hard to tell which is top dog right now.


Places to get information on this stuff:
A- If you have the time, the forums at cdfreaks.com give you way more information than you need to know.
B- The Ars Technica.com buyer's guide is decent for quick recommendations. Their advice is geared towards the 'typical' ars reader, with a tilt towards gaming so some recommendations don't apply to video (in particular, the video card [for video editing, you do not need a gaming card] and CPU).
DVD burning is pretty much the same deal though.
http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer.ars

DVD rewritable/CD-RW: NEC ND-3520A

DVD writers became an affordable, mandatory requirement for the Hot Rod less than a year ago, with improvements happening often enough that we have changed the DVD writer in almost every update since then. The relatively-recent release of 8x DVD +/-RW units has already been one-upped by the appearance of affordable dual-layer burners, which in turn have been taken over by 16x units with 6x dual-layer speeds. The NEC ND-3520A and Pioneer DVR-109 are two of the leading contenders, with BenQ, Plextor, and many others in the market as well.

High-speed media, both single and dual layer, is still scarce in the US, but with the relatively small price difference between 8x and 16x units, the extra money for 16x is well worth spending.

2- Some DVD media you can burn at a higher speed (tradeoff: greater number of errors; DVDs have error correction, so below a certain threshold it will give a perfect output of 1s and 0s).
Not sure which 8x media will do 16X. 8x Taiyo Yudens will burn at 12X speed fine.

[Bob Safay]

Well, thanks for the replys, after doing a little more digging I am leaning toward the Plextor 712A or the 716AL. I still need to know if Vages5 and DvD2a will work with this burner? Any thoughts?

[Jeremy Davidson]

I don't use Vegas (currently on Premiere, but I may switch on my next software upgrade), but I don't see why it wouldn't work. You may want to check on the dual-layer option, but higher speeds should be OK.

Glenn, where are you finding Taiyo Yuden 4x discs? All of the suppliers I've checked have discontinued them because they think "faster is always better." The -R 8x discs are working OK on my current Sony burner (500A), but it can only do 4x anyway. 'Will upgrade that someday too, but since I don't do large batches of discs very often speed really isn't a big deal.

[Steve Roffler]

I've been using the Plextor PX-708UF with V5 and DVDA2 without problems for almost a year.

[Bob Safay]

Steve, thanks that is what I was hoping to hear. I am now leaning toward the
PX-712A or the PX-716AL.

[Andriy Zolotoiy]

Plextor wins at actual burning speed. Remember that many drives advertise 16x speed but really achieve that speed on the outer circle.
Some software like DVD Decrypter shows actual burning speed in real time. On my 708 I noticed that inner 20% of the disk is burned at 4-5x and the rest at 8x. Big difference.
Plextor has very good firmware support as well. And you can buy cheaper 8x media to get 16x speed. Go their website, there is media compatibility list. Memorex, TDK, Maxell are good media brands to go with.

[Glenn Chan]

Jeremy, I live in Canada so I got a bunch off ncix.com. They might have alright prices for Americans... I'm not sure what the deal is with taxes/customs and shipping. If you live in the US, you can probably get a better deal.

There are also local deals through big chain stores (i.e. best buy) for Fuji DVDs that are made in japan (those are the 8x taiyo yudens I think).

I think for most stuff the 8x TYs are a better idea for the faster burning speed.

[Matthew Lombardo]

I have been using the 716UF and never had a single problem using it with vegas 5.

[K. Forman]

I can't remember ever having any compatibility issues with any of my Plextor burners. They usually work with anything. Of course, I hear the Pioneer are at the top of the list, but Plextor is more affordable.

[Glenn Chan]

Isn't Plextor more expensive?