Highly Anticipated: LiteON DVD BURNER!

[vfrjim]

Definitely a miss IMO, they should have been ~179 or so to grab the market from Cendyne and others, I myself also got the Cendyne (pioneer 105) for the officemax special of $169, so this is definitely cold till they get a reality check on the market.

Jim

 

[Cybordolphin]

So how long before these are sub $100 and burning at 24x plus? Anyone wanna guess....?

 

[nightman]

Yes.They were going to be under $200.I hope the price will drop when they start shipping them in larger qtys so we can get one for about $150 using coupons.

 

[So SimpaL]

Is there any astronomical chance that dvd burners (during read-only) region zone settings can be disabled?
or set to zero?

 

[nero2]

Originally posted by: So SimpaL
Is there any astronomical chance that dvd burners (during read-only) region zone settings can be disabled?
or set to zero?

Yes: www.rpc1.org

For most of the more popular models of DVD burners, there are firmware hacks that disable region protection, and in some cases do other wonderful things (like enable 2x writing on 1x media).

 

[OneStepsAhead]

Originally posted by: cmv
I can't wait for the $30-$60 DVD burners.

And the free-after-rebate DVD platters (which are still selling in the $1.50-$2.00/each range for quality media.)

 

[jodhas]

I bought my 4x cd burner for $199. I just recently bought a 48x Burner for $9 AR.

I am not going to buy DVD Burners until they're WELL below the $100 mark.
I gotta learn from History. They WILL GET CHEAPER!

 

[jasonroehm]

Price is a big thing, but the other thing keeping me from getting a DVD burner is the fact that there are no dual-layer discs, so the only ones you can get are the 4.7GB ones. For most movies that come on the dual-layer discs (9GB), this means you have to split the movie or cut stuff out, which doesn't do it for me. When I can get a reasonably priced DVD burner that I can just make blind copies of DVDs with, that's when I'll purchase one.

 

[GeminiZi]

Hey guys, what's up?
I got my DVD burner with my Dell Dimension 4550 just recently, i think my specs are 4X/2.4X/12X DVD+R/+RW & 16X/10X/32X CD-RW Internal EIDE Drive. I was wondering if someone can link me to where it said that this burner is a NEC. Are there any known problems with this DVD burner, or is this a great burner? I have no use with the burner right now, I don't have a fast internet connection, so I can't download any movies to burn. The only reason I got the DVD burner was because it was another $80 bucks. I don't know much about the process of DVD burning, do I just download avi, mpg files and encode them, and then burn them onto dvd? If anyone can give me a link on how to make movies, that would be great.

Thanks Guys.

 

[SimMike2]

For most movies that come on the dual-layer discs (9GB), this means you have to split the movie or cut stuff out, which doesn't do it for me

You can get programs like DVD2ONe which will put one 9GB movie onto one DVD-R disk. The quality is usually pretty darn close to the original. Before you automatically assume it is going to be bad to recompress, keep in mind that many movies are already put on a single layer disk anyway. So what I am saying is there is a variable compression rate that is used in this process. 9.6 data rate is the top for DVD. This will allow about two hours per dual layer disk. If the people who distribute the movie want to go cheaper, they can lower the data rate to around 4.8 and fit a two hour movie on one layer disk. Most people can't really tell the difference, as it is pretty subtle. I've "compressed" three hour movies from one dual layer disk to one DVD-R and most of the time the final results are pretty good. So you can get the data rate as low as 3 or so and still get half-way decent results. I find DVD2ONE does an excellent job, only having trouble on misty or foggy scenes when it has to do lots of recompression.

 

[ingenue007]

Does compression compress the sound too? No 5.1 then?

How about no compression but splitting the DVD into 2 DVDR disks. Will this keep the original 5.1/DTS?

I want no sacrifice in quality.

 

[Tung]

I have the sony DRU500A and loving it. I'd get this burner only if it could burn 1x media at 4x or higher.. perhaps 8x

 

[SimMike2]

Does compression compress the sound too? No 5.1 then?

The sound is not recompressed. What you do with dvd2one is choose the soundtracks you want to include. I usually just choose AC3 dolby 5.1. I think you can keep more than one, THX or whatever, but you lose space that means the video needs to be recompressed a little more. The sound is exactly the same as the original. If you want the disk to look totally identical, buy the original. If you want a copy which is almost as good as the original, and many times just as good, use dvd2one. Just remember the longer the movie is, the more chance recompression will introduce MPG artifacts. But this doesn't always hold true as much depends on the quality of the original. If the original looks pristine, dvd2one can usually do a pretty good job.

4x or higher.. perhaps 8x

In my personal opinion 8X is not going to come easily. Right now 4X burning requires a steady data rate of 5MB/s. This is pretty high and if your computer doesn't have enough memory or some other weakness, your computer won't be able to maintain this rate. As comparison, something which most people consider pretty intensive data work, mini DV capture and edit, requires only 3.5 MB/s. So if you bump the rate to 8X, your hard drives and computer will have to sustain a data rate of over 10MB/s. Since the DVD-R holds so much more data than CDR, this would roughly equal burning a normal CDR in 1 min 30 seconds. Trying to get 8X burn speed might really push the whole physical envelope of the burner mechanism.

 

[htne]

Originally posted by: ingenue007
Does compression compress the sound too? No 5.1 then?

How about no compression but splitting the DVD into 2 DVDR disks. Will this keep the original 5.1/DTS?

I want no sacrifice in quality.

The answers to all your questions Grasshopper can be found at


dvdrhelp

and

doom9

But to provide short answers to your questions:

Does compression compress the sound too? No.

No 5.1 then? Yes, you can keep 5.1 sound.

How about no compression but splitting the DVD into 2 DVDR disks? DVDXCOPY will do this for you. Or, if you are willing to spend time learning, you can do it for yourself with free tools.

 

[RDMustang1]

A review on these said they were supposed to hit the market at ~$150.. what happened to that price?

 

[tjaisv]

Yeah these DVD burners really have to come down in price, I mean at least under $200.

 

[RobCur]

i'd wait for 49.95, like CDRW 48x for 40-50 now.

 

[AznMaverick]

this is probably a stupid/ignorant question, but how long do you think it'll take for dvd burners to have a 'burnproof' equivalent, or do these current burners have something like it?

 

[Flair]

You guys talk about DVD2One, but from another Anandtech Hot Deals thread I got a hold of DVDShrink and I love it. It decrypts and shrinks movies without the loss of much quality, and you can tell DVDShrink toget rid of whatever you want, like menus and DTS sound (I only use Dolby Digital). I have been able to shrink everything down to one DVD with no loss in quality and on most DVDs I can still keep the menus and extras. All you got to do is put the files DVDShrink creates into the Video_TS folder in Nero and you are watching DVDs and you don't have to split movies to 2 DVDs.

 

[bravo261]

Originally posted by: cmv
I can't wait for the $30-$60 DVD burners.

ain't that the truth. my first cd-rw was a ricoh for $400 about 4 years ago. last valentine's day, i spent $140 AR on a 32x TDK VeloCD and over summer, the cheapest burner was about $400 and returned. now, there's hardly and ide cd-rw over $100(just one year later!!) and the best dvd burner is what, $350?

$50 burners...c'mon baby!!

 

[SimMike2]

All these DVD burners have burn proof.

 

[kennyG]

Originally posted by: sumrtym
The DRU-510 is almost out and it supports 4x on the RW as well. I'd still go Sony, especially given this is no great price difference.

This makes alot of sence..Well all know the "SONY" would have much better quality.
From what I,ve read the LiteOn was to be cheaper!! Hey if the price was in line with the rest of LiteOn cd\cdrw\dvd drive this drive would sell like HotCakes..sheee I'd buy one

 

[draggoon01]

how big are retail dvd movies, just the movie itself? i thought on average it takes 1 gig per half hour. so standrard movie is 4 gigs. so can't most movies fit on 4.7gig uncompressed with just movie and sound?

 

[GetInMyFatBelly]

I'm leaning towards the Optorite DD0203 for around $280. 8mb cache, +/-, and HD Burn technology. And it's expected Street date is around the 25th, that's means it should be out now.

 

[TerryMathews]

Originally posted by: draggoon01
how big are retail dvd movies, just the movie itself? i thought on average it takes 1 gig per half hour. so standrard movie is 4 gigs. so can't most movies fit on 4.7gig uncompressed with just movie and sound?

Almost all commercial DVDs are at least DVD-9, which is single sided dual-layer for a tad over 9GB. A lot of that is wasted and more is tied up in the special content, extra audio tracks, and menus.

As far as the actual video goes, DVDs can have different bit rates. Most DVD movies are mastered at around 2GB/hr given the normal video stream and one 5.1 audio track.

Most movies will fit onto a single DVD-R. Given enough tweaking.