DVD Burner Recommendations?

[Will Rickards]

I'm now in the market for a DVD burner (woohoo Christmas money!)

I know merc said Liteon in this thread:
http://www.storageforum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4085

I'm looking for < $100 US.
Quality much more important than speed.
Especially reading CD/DVDs.
Obviously I don't want coasters so writing quality is important as well.

irrelevant further explanation:
My PC has a slot load pioneer DVD drive model 105S and a liteon/verbatim 40x12x48x burner, and a zip drive. I've got a separate IDE controller (silicon image based) just so I can have all these devices and two hard drives on their own channels. But my computer won't boot off either of the CD drives for some reason.

My mom wants a CD burner for her older computer. Her christmas present so to speak. So I'm going to give her my liteon/verbatim burner. I'm getting a DVD burner to replace the CD burner, pioneer DVD drive (it gets flaky sometimes about reading cds), and zip drive (Haven't used it in many moons). This will leave me with three IDE devices, so I plan on moving my hard drives back to the onboard controller. I'll just put the DVD burner on the same channel as my secondary drive. That way if I need to burn I'll burn from the primary channel to the secondary channel.

I'm also pretty sure I can just take my hard drives and move them. Since the drivers for the built-in controller should already be in windows. I might have to change the boot.ini to point to the right controller but otherwise I should be fine, correct? I'll be moving them off the silicon image controller (PCI card) onto the onboard IDE channels which are I think ATA100 or ATA66. And the drive is 120GB so it is below the 127GB barrier for normal LBA. So I don't need the 48bit LBA extensions. Just double checking. OS is win2k. I'm looking to get a windows XP CD and move to XP. I also plan on somehow getting linux on there. Maybe with all the spare room I can add another HD.

 

[Will Rickards]

Also found this thread.
Where the NEC 3500 was recommended.
The one reviewed at CDRLabs.com came with Ulead MovieFactory v3.5 which Merc recommended.
Sounds good so far. But newegg has both the 3500A and 3520A. So I figure the 3520A is the one to go with. But there seems to be models with and without software at newegg?

Anybody know differences? I don't mind shelling out for the retail version to get the software but newegg doesn't seem to list retail version.

 

[Groltz]

Thumbs up on the ND-3500A. I've had zero problems with mine. It does very good 16x burns.

Admittedly, I only use it for burning DVD+R's...No RW's.

Per some recommendations I've read, I've only run Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD+R's on it.

Drive purchased from Newegg as a bare OEM.

It looks like they're no longer carrying that one in beige...The ND-3520A must have superseded it.

The difference between Newegg's "OEM" and "OEM w/ software" offerings seem to only be the inclusion of an OEM "Roxio Easy Media Creator" disk.

 

[Will Rickards]

Did you get any software with your OEM unit?

 

[Groltz]

Did you get any software with your OEM unit?

Nope.

"Bare OEM" was just that...Nothing was included.

 

[Will Rickards]

Thanks. I want to concentrate on the NEC retail units then.

 

[MaxBurn]

I hear great things about the NEC 3500. Myself I just got a Pioneer DVR-A08XL. I was impressed that I can now burn my DVD-R at 12x and they play fine on my set top player where as my Sony DRU530a could only go up to 4x before they wouldn't read on my set top player.

Review:
http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/index.php?reviewid=250
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?ArticleId=10584

 

[LiamC]

I went looking for a 3500A because of that other thread. Nobody had one in stock, so I settled for a LiteOn 1653 & TDK 8X DVD-R media (my LG DVD player only likes -R apparently).

Haven't burnt many discs, but so far no coasters. I got the burner because I was sick of the kids (2 & 4) wrecking their DVD's. So now, I use DVDShrink to copy just the movie to a blank and they use that instead of the master. The bonus is that by copying just the movie track, you put the movie in and it plays--you don't have to go through 5 layers of menus just to play the movie. For infants, that's a bonus. :wink:

So far happy with the LiteOn.

 

[Pradeep]

Thumbs up for 3500.

 

[Will Rickards]

I think I'll wait for the 3520A retail units to appear. CES is this week so there should be an announcement soon.

 

[GMac]

I was the one who started the other DVD burner thread, and thanks to your recommendations went with the NEC3500A. Haven't done much burning so far, but what I have done worked a treat , so I can happily endorse it.

GM

 

[Tea]

Tannin and I installed a Lite-On here on the home machine about four months ago. It was just before dual layer burners became readily available and reasonably priced - maybe more like six months. Thus far, it has performed flawlessly as a CD reader and ... er ... hasn't been asked to do any other work at all.

Ummm ... let me put it this way: in fact, we haven't actually got around to installing the CD/DVD burning software yet.

But apart from that, it works fine.

Reads Tannin's Age of Empires CD perfectly.

The really interesting question, I guess, is which will happen first? Will one of us want to watch a DVD or maybe burn one oner day? Or will the Lite-On DVD-R get turfed out and replaced by something newer and sexier first? If we do actually ever want to use it for something less humble than playing Age of Empires without troubling to remove the blank CD from the old-fashioned 52x CDRW in the other slot, will we be able to find the installation CDs?

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode...

 

[Buck]

My distributor has a boat load of the black bare-bones 3520A in stock.

 

[Mercutio]

One of my distributors told me a couple weeks ago that LiteOn drives are actually manufactured by JVC.

I don't particularly have any data to back that up, but I hold LiteOn in much the same regard as JVC, so it wouldn't surprise me.

 

[CityK]

I picked up a 3500A yesterday...Within windows, when I put a data CD in the drive, it spins up so fast and so loud that it would make the likes of Pratt & Whitney or Rolls-Royce green with envy.

When I boot from a CD, its as quiet as a mouse....having tried buring yet, nor playback of a DVD or audio CD.

 

[CityK]

having = haven't

 

[LunarMist]

Mine is on the loud side but not as loud as some similar high speed drives. Maybe your unit is defective.

 

[LiamC]

Merc,

I was under the impression that LiteOn OEM's for others, not the other way around. JVC drives may very well be LiteOn's. Won't change your opinion one wit though... :wink:

 

[CityK]

LiteOn and JVC do have an relationship for DVD drives, but nothing further i.e. not DVD burners.

http://www.jlms.com.tw/download.htm

 

[Groltz]

I think I'll wait for the 3520A retail units to appear. CES is this week so there should be an announcement soon.

ND-3530A specs released.

Link

My 3500A is now two generations behind in a matter of 3 months. :rofl:

I'm looking forward to seeing how the Plextor PX-716SA (after they release some decent firmware) and the Pioneer DVR-109 fare in the future reviews.

 

[Will Rickards]

Okay so I'm getting tired of waiting for 3520A retail.
Only problem I have with buying OEM is the lack of burning software.
I have Nero but it is OEM for use with my Verbatim(Liteon) drive.
And I'm donating this drive to my mom so along goes the nero that works with it.

So Roxio Easy CD Cremator is an option for an extra $3 at newegg.
I've never used Roxio but have gotten the impression that nero is preferred.
So I went looking for OEM Nero copies but no go.

So anybody got any ideas there?
Is there an open source windows app I'm missing?

 

[Pradeep]

Got a couple of 3520 OEMs for work on Thursday, work fine.

For software, I use Veritas RecordNow DX 4.5, it used to be available from the Sony Storage support site (full standalone that works with any drive), but it looks like they now have some kind of updater to 6.7 instead.

 

[mubs]

I've used Easy CD/DVD Cremator for years. For basic stuff, it'll do, though it is bloatware. I've made plenty of data/music CDs with it, and a few data DVDs. Don't know how good it is at making video DVDs; never did it yet.

 

[Mercutio]

My main objection to CD Creator - aside from the massively level of bloat, is that the OEM version can't make every type of disc. The OEM version for example can't do a video-DVD.

Hit froogle and I'll bet you can find a decent copy of Nero or Nero express.

 

[Jake the Dog]

I purchased a LG 4163B a few days ago and it's OK. the specs are similar to my Pioneer S806 (externally cased DVR-A08XL) and does 16x DVD+/-R and 4x DL +R but it seems noticeably slower doing -R, -RW and +RW writes. I haven't measured how much slower so that's just my subjective opinion. the 4163B might be cheap (AU$108 wholesale) but I'd recommend a DVR-A08XL or 3500 instead.

 

[Jake the Dog]

ohh I forgot to add one siginificant benefit of LG DVD writers, and the reason I bought one, they write to DVD-RAM too

 

[Buck]

Thanks for the tip on the LG burners. The Pioneer and NEC DVD burners are essentially the same product.

 

[Jake the Dog]

right you are young buck good point.

 

[mubs]

The Pioneer and NEC DVD burners are essentially the same product.

Care to elaborate, kind sir?

 

[Buck]

Mubs, both the Pioneer 108 series and the NEC 3500 series use the same NEC chipsets. They are built differently, but they both start with something in common. The Asus DRW-1604P uses the same NEC D63635GM and C3335 chipsets.

 

[mubs]

Right. But it's my understanding that beyond these commonalities, they differ in implementation, and most certainly firmware. I believe that though NEC chipsets are in both, the Pioneer can read DVD-RAM but the NEC cannot.

I guess I'm trying to say that it's not like a Kangaru or Pacific Digital, who don't even try to conceal that it's an NEC drive (or BenQ or whoever).

 

[Buck]

Indeed, it is not as if one company is branding another, they just begin with the same chipset. Both the Pioneer and NEC product read DVD-RAM. Considering that their capabilities, performance, and chipsets are similar, I would certainly group them together - although as you pointed out, their firware revisions are different and Pioneer seems further ahead in that realm.

If anything, it makes sense for the market to have these two similar products, since the NEC drives don't seem to be available in retail packaging, but the Pioneers are, yet the NECs seem to be everywhere in the reseller arena and the Pioneer drives are not.

 

[Pradeep]

Indeed, it is not as if one company is branding another, they just begin with the same chipset. Both the Pioneer and NEC product read DVD-RAM.

Buck, the NEC 3500 and 3520 cannot read DVD-RAM.

 

[Buck]

Indeed, it is not as if one company is branding another, they just begin with the same chipset. Both the Pioneer and NEC product read DVD-RAM.

Buck, the NEC 3500 and 3520 cannot read DVD-RAM.

I thought that it could read them at 2x, but after checking the specs, you're right.

 

[Will Rickards]

Why did I pass on the LG 4163?

Anyway I put this purchase off for a few months. I just got the credit card paid down and would like to keep it that way for a while.

 

[CityK]

I picked up a 3500A yesterday...Within windows, when I put a data CD in the drive, it spins up so fast and so loud that it would make the likes of Pratt & Whitney or Rolls-Royce green with envy.

When I boot from a CD, its as quiet as a mouse....having tried buring yet, nor playback of a DVD or audio CD.

I'm really liking this burner. It does a great job on writing. The Liggy & Dee firmwares are also awesome. And to quiet it down when reading, I just use Drive speed (from the Nero toolkit....also available on CDspeed. But for the most part, I just use my Liteon for reading disks anyways (its better than the NEC for that purpose).