DVD burner shopping checklist

Panasonic and the DVD Forum are primarily responsible for the original DVD-RAM and DVD-R/RW formats, while Philips and a splinter group, the DVD Alliance, have pioneered the DVD+R/RW alternative. The five DVD formats offer roughly 4.7GB of storage, but they differ in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways. DVD-R and DVD+R may be written to only once, but offer high compatibility with drives and set-top players. Most of the drives now also support the DVD+R DL (dual layer) format for storage capacities of up to 8.5GB. DVD+RW and DVD-RW can be written and erased approximately 1,000 times, but they are a little less compatible. Sturdy DVD-RAM can be written and erased up to 100,000 times but it's a slower media and few drives or set-top players can read it. The next generation of optical standard, Blu-ray and HD DVD, are available on selected desktops and notebooks. However, their high prices for drives and media do not allow them to enter the mainstream market for now.

DVD formats

Things to consider • What type of discs are you burning? (i.e. data or video) • How much are you willing to spend on media? • Go with a format that offers you the best compatability. • Some formats are not supported on certain Operating Systems

Drives that are one step behind the bleeding edge usually offer the best price-to-performance ratio. As of August 2005, the fastest DVD burners were rated 16X/8X/16X; they are capable of recording at 16X on DVD+R and DVD-R, writing at 8X on DVD+RW and DVD-RW, and reading DVDs at 16X. Burning speeds for the DVD+R DL is 8X while DVD-R DL is 4X.

DVD speeds

Things to consider • Does your PC's specs meet the minimum requirements? • Is your media capable of being mastered at high speeds? • Most of the media in the market today are rated 8X (for +/-R) and 4X (for +/-RW). • Write-once media (like DVD+R/-R) are faster than rewritable ones.

SCSI and parallel ports used to be popular connections for external drives, but more modern technologies, USB 2.0 and FireWire, also known as IEEE 1394 (and iLink by Sony), have rendered them obsolete. USB 2.0 is the more common connection type, although FireWire offers greater transfer speeds. Just about every internal drive uses an EIDE (enhanced integrated drive electronics) interface.

Six-pin FireWire

Things to consider • What type of connection(s) does your PC have? • Are the proper software drivers included? • Does the manufacturer supply the correct cables? • Support for newer connection standards such as SATA. • Is it easy to install?

A DVD writer should come with DVD-burning software. Nero Burning ROM is currently regarded as one of the best, but Adaptec's Easy CD Creator and NTI CD-Maker work well, too. Bundled software is often a "lite" version of a larger application, meaning that it doesn't have all the features of the full release. Still, even the lite versions include all of the tools that most users will need for burning all kinds of discs; for capturing, importing, and exporting video; and even for some basic audio and vide editing.

Ahead Nero

Things to consider • What Operating System(s) (OS) does it support? • Protection against fatal buffer-underrun errors such as Burn-Proof or Just-Link? • What DVD formats does it support? • Is it upgradeable?