Page 1 of DVD rewriters

Hi,

today i will mostly be buying a DVD Re-writer (well hopefully!)
seeing as a lot of you erm...backup your dvd`s for safe keeping ;)
i was wondering if any of you have had any experience with the
BTC writer from thecomputershop. I gather from other postings
that they`re a little iffy with regard to replacing stuff.

but.. it`s the drive i`m interested in seeing as it supports ± R/RW.

I know that i can get cheaper online, but i want it today (impatient i know :o )

any thoughts, advice is most welcome... or are there any other ±R/RW writers
available from retail outlets for £80 - £90?
are Aldi still selling the Medion rewriter?

thanks :D

Ste.

This item was edited on Saturday, 21st February 2004, 10:42

I bought an NEC 2500 model here ( this is black version - comes in plain old beige as well ) http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=58481

It has come down in price by about 15% since I bought mine a fortnight ago, so an even better buy now .

For reviews of it look here :http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdwriters.php?DVDnameid=208&Search=Search&list=#comments

I can`t recommend it highly enough, plus EBUYER have 1/2 price P+P this weekend as well, I bought it along with DATAWRITE YELLOWS which are perfect for it, about 25 backups done now and all working perfectly on 3 different DVD Players.

8)

;)

This item was edited on Saturday, 21st February 2004, 10:57

It`s generally regarded that there`s no rewriter that offers better compatibility than the Pioneer. You may get the 106 for that price. The 107 is out now which does 8x recording to - and + but the media is harder to get hold of.

Ste

I got the Pioneer 106 in my new PC, been very good up to now, no problems. One thing I`ve always found strange though as drives get faster, same with Cd writers. The speed increases as technology moves on, but you hear people saying to burn at a slow speed to get less errors, sometimes saying burn at 1x speed.

So what`s the point of faster writers, if people will only burn at a slow speed anyway, you may as keep your older drive if its working well?

Always puzzled me that one. Personally, I`ve always burnt at the fastest my drive allows and never had a problem (8x cd and 4x cdrw CDs on my old pc- 16x cd, 4 x dvd 2.4 dvdrw on this one)

thanks for the advice Guys, i`m a goin` a huntin` 8)

Ste.

Custom PC magazine did a comparison on DVD Writers last month and said that the Lite-On LDW-811S is the currently the best on the market. :D

Quote:
So what`s the point of faster writers, if people will only burn at a slow speed anyway, you may as keep your older drive if its working well?

The thinking behind it is a car that can do 200mph will handle 90mph a lot easier then say a car that can only do a 100mph.

Thats my way of looking at it. :)

Oscar.

This item was edited on Saturday, 21st February 2004, 15:29

And like a car, a rewriter`s less likely to have a crash at lower speeds 8)

J Mark Oates

Quote:
The speed increases as technology moves on, but you hear people saying to burn at a slow speed to get less errors, sometimes saying burn at 1x speed.

So what`s the point of faster writers, if people will only burn at a slow speed anyway, you may as keep your older drive if its working well?

It`s not as simple as that. As with CD-Rs, every blank DVD has an optimum writing speed. This optimum speed isn`t necessarily 1x (it may be 2x or higher, and is increasing all the time, just as DVD writer speeds are increasing).

So, you have to experiment with different speeds to see what works best for the blanks you use. It`s all to do with the dye formulations - you may find that cheap DVD-Rs (using older dye types) burn best at 1x, whereas the newer, higher quality ones work better at 4x or even 8x.

I`ve seen it likened to writing your name on a piece of paper using a cigarette lighter (!) - i.e. if you move the lighter too slowly, you`ll burn too much of the paper, whereas if you move it too fast, the paper won`t be burned enough and the writing will be too faint to read. Try it sometime. (Actually, don`t. :D )

Mike

This item was edited on Saturday, 21st February 2004, 16:22

Hmm...all interesting ideas. I`ve never used really cheap media, so maybe that`s why I`ve a;ways been lucky. The drive on my old pc is a Traxdata CDRW and I always used Traxdata disks on it, which were recommended for that drive (and reasonably priced too).

Used a box of Aldis Tevion DVD on this Pioneer drive, and now using Datawrite (Ritek) disks which both seem ok, although not the cheapest I could have got (could`ve got Bulkpaq for a fiver less, but heard bad things about them. :)