OT- DVD Burner Which one?

Here is a link that might help explain EIDE or make it more confusing.

ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/pc-hardware-faq/e nhanced-IDE

Marty,

IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics and is an interface for connecting hard drives and CD/DVD drives to computers. EIDE is Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics which is just a faster interface. IDE is ATA (the official name) and can come in many sub categories (ATA, Ultra ATA, Serial ATA, etc.). For all practical purposes, you don’t really need to know all this. If your computer is relatively new, you can pretty much plunk a new DVD burner in there, install drivers and you’ll be ready to go. If you’re going to have CompUSA install it, I’m sure they’ll help pick one out that’ll work fine with your system. Just get the fastest write speed as you can find (4X, 8X. etc.) and I’d also look for a burner that can burn and read both -R, -RW and +R, +RW media. Then you don’t have to worry about matching up media with your drive. The other usual things you’re going to need are lots of RAM and a fairly powerful processor. Burning DVD’s is pretty processor intensive and takes a certain degree of computing muscle.

Oh and FYI, most DVD burners I’ve seen will also burn CD’s.

Joe

IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics and is an interface for connecting hard drives and CD/DVD drives to computers. EIDE is Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics which is just a faster interface. IDE is ATA (the official name) and can come in many sub categories (ATA, Ultra ATA, Serial ATA, etc.). For all practical purposes, you don’t really need to know all this. If your computer is relatively new, you can pretty much plunk a new DVD burner in there, install

drivers and you’ll be ready to go. If you’re going to have CompUSA install it, I’m sure they’ll help pick one out that’ll work fine with your system. Just get the fastest write speed as you can find (4X, 8X. etc.) and I’d also look for a burner that can burn and read both -R, -RW and +R, +RW media. Then you don’t have to worry about matching up media with your drive. The other usual things you’re going to need are lots of RAM and a fairly powerful processor. Burning DVD’s
is pretty processor intensive and takes a certain degree of computing muscle.

Oh and FYI, most DVD burners I’ve seen will also burn CD’s.

While we’re on the DVD topic, I recall that competing DVD formats used to be a huge issue and reason to avoid DVD burners for a time. Now it appears as though things have settled down. Even if there isn’t a winner, there are multi-format drives.

My question is, (and a brief Google search gave me an answer, but I’m looking for confirmation and more experience): Will DVD-R and DVD+R discs play on standard DVD-ROM drives (ie. PC DVD players (player only models), set top DVD players, etc.?

One link I’ve found,

http://www.dvdirect.com/TSS/charts/DVDFormats.htm

indicates that -R and +R discs can be read by both. If that’s the case, then it appears it’s a toss up as to which format to use. One case for the +R format is that it appears as though many of the budget 8x burners right now are 8x only for the +R format, and are still 4x for the -R format.

Does anyone have conflicting information or experience?

Thanks,
John

Thanks BOB and JOE,
According to your post, I think it best if I just let CompUSA pick out one since I did buy the computer from them and that way they will back up the job. This particular computer came with a DVD burner but at the time I bought it I decided to omit it.
Marty

Marty,
I have one each a Pioneer, Sony, and a Memorex burner. I bought the Sony when it first came out, then the Pioneer when they went to the +OR – format, so it would burn either +/- disks, then the price dropped so much, I just bought the new Memorex 8X burner +/-, for more speed and the software package it comes with. (Finding 8x media will be the hard part however. Most of them have burners that burn at 8x now anyway). The MAIN thing I would suggest to you to look for Marty is the SOFTWARE that comes WITH the burner.
On average..any good burner will burn the same..more or less anyway, and they all burn CDs (that I know of anyway.) Some up to 32X now, a big improvement over the 8X and 16X speeds of the first ones.
I mainly bought the last one, the Memorex burner, because it came with a software burning package, that has a retail price almost of what I paid for the burner. I found it on an on line special, and the total cost was $129.00. I was just going to buy Nero 6.1 platinum that costs $99.99, but got a complete burning bundle with the Memorex burner for free. So really it was like getting the new 8X burner for only $30..see?
So when you shop price for the burner, dont forget you have to have SOFTWARE to burn with as well. That is how some of the makers sell them so cheap, they give either no burning software, or a limited version of it, so you have to upgrade to burn anything that would really be of use to you. (Such as backing up movies, etc.)
I am sure the good people at CompUSA will recommend a good burner to you, but they may not take into account the software you will need, and later you will have to drop another $50 to $100 or more to get it to do what you want it to do. So read what comes with each of them carefully.
Good luck to you,
Gary~*