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General discussion

Do I really want/need DVD burner?

by NancyR Nov 10, 2004 12:19AM PST

I am getting ready to purchase a new laptop and think I have worked out most issues except the choice of optical drive. I assumed I wanted a DVD burner, mostly for storage, but now I'm not so sure. I got a CD burner when they were fairly new and have ALWAYS had trouble with it. Are DVD burners still too new? I would like to have that large capacity and would also like to transfer old VHS tapes to DVD. I would be willing to wait, however, it the drives are quirky and unreliable.

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6 Posts
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Re: Do I really want/need DVD burner?
by richfei Nov 10, 2004 2:35AM PST

Personally I find a dvd burner extremely useful, since i Have a lot of images and important documents that I want to archive and if I did it with a CD burner it would take about 6-7 cds

DVD burners for a desktop is definitely a lot more mature than what you can find on a laptop. I think you pay a slight premium for dvd burners for laptops. In my case, I probably wouldn't pay the premium and get an internal dvd burner, since I already have a desktop with an inbuilt faster dvd burner

If I really need to burn large files from my current laptop, I just transfer it to a PSD device (holds 20Gb) and then transfer to my desktop to burn to dvd there

You could always make do with a CD-RW and purchase an external burner and use it for the laptop that way
But if you don't have a desktop and want to transfer VHS tapes, then you're probably better getting hold of a laptop with DVD Burner option, since most of the AVI files you transfer across once encoded to Mpeg will probably be much larger than can fit on a regular CD

I transfer home movies from my Camcorder all the time (which you can do from VHS to Camcorder) to my desktop, edit them, encode them and burn to DVD. Invariably they're always much larger than 700Mb, so a DVD burner is a necessity unless you sacrifice quality

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Re: Do I really want/need DVD burner?
by KenSanramon Nov 10, 2004 3:18AM PST

It is very important that you get a multiformat DVD burner (not just DVD+ or DVD-) as many consumer DVD players only play DVD- --- you will pay about a $200 premium over a DVD ROM/CD-RW on a notebook for a DVD burner so many people don't get one.

A desktop is better as it usually gives you 2 drives (1 a DVD burner) so you can copy from one bay to the other - on a notebook you have only 1 drive and the hard drive so you have to copy data to that.

You can also add an external DVD burner (via USB 2.0 or firewire if you have that on the notebook) that will get better performance at a lower price that internal but then it is not portable. But the CD-RW/DVD ROM option is ideal for many........

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Re: Do I really want/need DVD burner?
by Ryan T Nov 10, 2004 4:39AM PST

Well I don't know about the quality of Laptop DVDRW drives, however, I just bought an Optorite DVD+/-RW drive for my desktop and it works perfectly.

However, one thing I was not made aware of is the inability to back up my pressed DVDs (which have a maximum capacity of 9 GB) onto a DVD-R or RW disk.

However, transferring from VHS should be no problem. As a CD-Burner, which I use it for 90% of the time, it's fabulous. It's faster and better than my old 48x24x48x Sony Burner, which was no slouch itself. Overall, I find that the current (and even the last) generation of DVD burners are quite robust drives, and if your computer can keep up, they can be effective video editing tools.

On that note, I should mention that in January, I installed a TDK indiDVD 4x2.4x4x +/- DVD Burner on a client's Pentium 4 3.0C GHz Northwood computer with 1 GB of PC3200 Ram . . . a fast computer. I wanted to transfer from a Digital Video Camcorder to DVD Video. To encode from the camera's format to DVD format took about 30 minutes for a 30-second clip. So while the drive worked in a stellar manner, there are other gripes when working with video.

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For Ryan.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Nov 10, 2004 5:27AM PST

That backup issue has been addressed in other discussions about DVDSHRINK.

Use the forum search.

Bob

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Re: For Ryan.
by Ryan T Nov 10, 2004 5:41AM PST

Wow. Thank you. That's wonderful, since you can't buy DVD X-Copy or 123 Copy DVD anymore.

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Re: Do I really want/need DVD burner?
by susceptor Nov 11, 2004 2:32AM PST

Get a burner.
You will not regret it.
I got myself a sony (external)burner about 4 months ago for $150, and it has worked great!
I burn music, movies, pretty much anything, it's fast, easy to use, and I have had no problems with it at all.

If you have mp3s, a dvd is a perfect way to store them. I have 1 dvd that has 114 tracks on it! I can pop just one disk into the tray and have all my music needs met for the night.
it's also great for backing up files. Just try storing all your data on CD's, and you will end up with 20+ disks before you are done. On the other hand I have only 2 DVD disks with all my files on it.
Disks now cost about 60 cents, so its as affordable as a CD+-RW.
Bottom line, if you dont have one and are thinking of getting a new PC, then get one with a DVD burner.

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