DVD-RW shopping

Most current burners can do dvd's and games no problem, some are picky about media and speed though. Some 1st gen 8x burners do 8x fine but have trouble w/ 4x media.
Ive seen a 12x already, and sata burnersr gunna hit anytime now. But If I was in your shoes, I would save up the extra for the sony dru700a(under 200$). It does dual layer!!!! 8.5gb's a disc!! (This is HUGE for dvd movies as most dvd's are pressed dual layer between 6-7.5 gig's, without the dual layer u only have 2 choices, 1 strip out "everything" but the actual movie and still have to compress the video sometimes, or span over 2 dvd's which is a pain to burn/watch/ and is costly!)Sony's dvd burners have always performed very very strong.
Comes w/ beige and black faceplate. Sonys has been first to market at every level of dvd burning and has always come strong! Sony's first dvd burner retailed for 400$ 1.5 years ago.

Aside from that, while most burners are +&- stick with plus (media)as it is the superior medium with the ability to packet-write to rw media!!!!

Tomshardware.com has dvd shootouts regularly, it would be prolly the best place to see how most models stack up to one another. I have TDK 420(1st gen 4x + burner) and its performed like the mac daddy!!! Any other ?'s ask as I am fairly well versed in this area!!

We got in a new device at CCity on friday before I left for my trip to Canada. It's a dual layer dvd burner that would bump up the burn capability to above 8 gigs. Take a look around for something like that.

Be weary of dual layer DVD...the media (discs) cost $10 a pop..EEK!

-Craig

You may want to consider a external HD for back-up.

Example, I recently bought a Maxtor 250G 7200 for $139. I them bought a very nice multi-color lighted encosure called Metal Gear Box for $50.

For under $200 I can back-up my computer, games, MP3s, TIFF pics almost forever.

However, I am guilty of being a computer junky. I absolutely LOVE to spend $$ on puters. Later this year when prices drop on the 400&500G HDDs, I'll have to own one. Or two.

My goal is to have at least one Teribyte of storage.

Sorry I have gotten off subject. But thought a ext HD were worth a mention.

While an external hdd is an option, dvd burner is more versatile

Dual layer breaks down like this:
commercially bought discs are pressed not burnt, basically like a stamping machine.
dvd-9 is where they take two stamped layers and put them together inside a dvd.
the laser shifts focus to read the deeper layer. if you see a hiccup in the middle of a dvd, its usually the player switching between layers.

burners, untill now, could only burn 1 layer, now the sony i told u about can burn two layers on the same side, expect to see dbl sided dual layer discs down the road for a total of 17 gigs per disc. of couse by then the high def(blu-rey pun intended) burners will be out that can burn discs of 40-50 gigs.

If you are located near an OfficeMax, often the 8x variety of drives are available for approximately $39 to $69, after rebate. With coupon (readily available, through searching on Google), less.

Example: recently (February) purchased an 8x dual format (not dual layer, obviously) Lite-On drive, model LDW-851s for $34.99. Specifications can be found here. Mind you, this was several months ago, and prices may have gone down a bit, especially considering the release of dual layer burning technology to the general public.

Just one item of note: the drive referenced in the original post is capable of reading dual layer discs, but not writing unfortunately.

well, if you can wait, everyone else is gunna have dual layers out soon enough and by christmas dual layer burners will prolly be under 100$ I make copies of dvd's all the time, I burn custom compilations of xbox and ps2 games, dont forget that it still burns cd's!! which are dirt cheap now.

What I do is.....
Build cpu, install latest motherboard drivers, update windows then....
make a bootable image of the drive approx 4.5 gigs (my burner has overburned a gig before I got like 5.625 gigs onto a rated 4.2 gig disc!!!!!) using norton ghost!!!! Its the sh!t, if i need a rebuild i just pop in the cd and in bout 15 minutes I have a reformatted clean updated XP install which could normally take 4-6 hours depending on update download and install time. It took me a few times b4 I realized to not install anything else like grapchics drivers or software. But c'mon complete fresh updated install in under 20 minutes. I dont think I could go w/o ever again.

Xbox = a whole nother thread, but Im also the man to talk to as Ive modded several!!
There is a new exploit that doesnt require a mod chip, but no more online, some modchips can be turned off to allow online play, but its still risky. I have 2 xboxes 1 modded and 1 w/o so I never have to worry. www.xbox-scene.com is the place to start and usually the place you end up anyway as far as moddin xbox goes, but its hard to sift through their site for the essential info, thats where I come in....hehe.
It took me a month of surfing hard to find websites, newsgroups and irc to find all the illegal software required, but that was a year ago, might be easier to find now, oh yeah.... it is, I got it....hehe

I use a combo of dvddecrypter, dvd2one, and nero, but w/ the new DualLayer sony dru700 I just installed on my dad's rig, no need for dvd2one nemore. dvdXcopy sucks.