i just got a liteon dvd burner, it usually is good, the problem i think with mine is that i downgraded to windows 2k and win 2k is giving me so much trouble. but liteon should be good. go figure. pretty much, any is good, as long as you get the right software, and there is anything out there.
I really love my benq 1620. Unless you have sata. I just orderered another one from newegg.com for $65.49 including s&h for my spare pc. It also has another $10 rebate that brings that price down. By far,the best out of my 3 other burners on the compatability issues of my stand alones/ps2/s/home burner/ and the 4 or so pc I play the backups on. It does prefer the + format,and can have the booktype set to dvd-rom to help on compatability. Not just any burner will do. I have 4 total burners and there are compatability issues when those backups are played on multiple stand alones. They may look great when you view those backups on that burner drive on your pc, but certain stand alones can be very picky as to which burner they prefer. Stick with a high quality burner like plextor/pioneer/nec/benq,especially on the ones that will allow the bit-setting to booktype your backups to dvd-rom.Better compatability. But some of these manufacturers are letting some bad drives leave the factory.Get one with a good warranty and a reputable store. Good Luck
I am very new to this and am looking for advice on purchasing a dvd burner on a budget. Is it better to go internal or external? What specs must I look for that are important when choosing the drive? My intent is to burn commercial DVDs using Shrink and Decrypter. I currently have 2 drives in my computer, a dvd-rom and cd-rw. Thanks!
ctbeagles, I'd go with internal all the way. Cheaper. Stick with a high quality burner like I posted earlier. I'd pull out the cd-rw drive with the new dvd drive. I've got mine set at: Lite-on 167t/ secondary master Benq-1620/secondary slave Slap orginal in dvd-rom/blank in benq/4 clicks later I have a near perfect backup 20min-1 hr.. Add a few clicks if I reauthor and time is reduced. Very simple. Your dvd-rom will taking the heaving ripping burden off of your dvd-rw drive.I do a lot of re-rips from my backups,15 mins at 4x perfect copies using nero express. Burner on a budget? I just ordered another benq 1620 for my backup pc. Newegg.com have them on sale this weekend for $65.49 with s&h. Then you have another $10 rebate. The nec 3500/3520 usually run in the same price range. A good quality burner for the money. Good Luck
Thanks saugmon, now is Nero a necessity that I will have to shell out additional money for? Are there any recommended burners bundled with Nero? I've been trying to look at all the options on newegg but I am so new at this I'm not sure whats the most important aspect to look at when choosing...I mean whats the point of having what you are looking for bundled in if the burner will give you hassles, right? I want to make sure I'll be good to go and have everything I need when I make my purchase. This is what I currently have: Dell Dimension 3000 Pentium 4 3GHZ Maxtor 6YO8OLO 512 MB DDR-SDRAM 400 MHZ Windows XP 80 GB (I have 62.8 available right now) I also downloaded Shrink and Decrypter I'm a little bit confused about interface and how that works. I don't know if I have what I need in that respect. Thanks In Advance!!
Good To go? That is very unpredictable when you pull a dvd burner out of the box. Last november,I puchased staples's day after thanksgiving sale I/O magic 16x. This unit was built by benq for iomega.It came with nero oem that I installed in my spare pc. This burner is not up to date on firmware,but burning success rate of 98%.I have yet to find a media code that it's firmware will not recognize. 12x and 16x on many +8x media,so I have to really wathc my burn speed.I have'nt found a stand alone that wouldn't play it's backups. A couple weeks ago, I wanted to replace my spare khpermedia +8x,because of compatability in my bedroom stand alone player.I got another I/O magic 16x,but this unit was built by EMPA. wtf! Just like media,I/O changed mfgs. It came with powerdvd and nero oem. I tried a ritek-g04 off the bat,and it's firmware would not recognize it. After updating the firmware,those ritek's are burning. It's backups are far less compatable in half my pc drives and stand alones-compatability issues. I will probably ebay it, it burns great,looks great viewing them on that pc with windvd4,but below par in my book for playability on stand alones. Now I ordered another benq 1620, and hope my compatability issues will disappear,lol Meritline.com has a special on them, somewhere in the $55-$59,free shipping. If talking about the interface, The majority dvd burners are ide. If you have sata,you'll have a smaller choice of sata dvd burner drives. I am not 100% on the difference, all i know is both my pcs are ide interface, not serial ata. You can connect more peripherals on the sata system.
In my system properties I see IDA/ATAPI Controllers, then Primary Ide and Secondary Ide so I am assuming that means I have IDE (see I'm really clueless here!) I haven't purchased a DVD player yet so as for compatibility I guess maybe the burner I end up with will guide me in that purchase? Anyway I am not so worried about that right now but obviously want to have my options open when I purchase the stand alone. I found a Benq 1620 Pro on newegg. It says Nero Suite on the CD in the picture so apparently it's bundled? and it is $69.99 after a $30 rebate. Would you recommend that?
benq 1620 is a good one, just bought one for my brother a couple of weeks ago and he loves it. Price was cheap $69.00 at supermediastore.com. I personally bought a Memorex burner that came with the complete Nero software 6.0 free at $99.00 total. Very happy with my memorex burner and software.
Check out this one-benq 1620 ide-oem- on the lower right corner of the daily deals page: http://www.newegg.com Edit: woops, newegg just updated their daily deals page,so this unit is not listed on this page,sorry
Oh wow, is the only difference between that one and the one I was looking at (the Pro Bonus) the 50 disks?
Yea, they got 4 different 1620's,all specs look the same,only thing is what the extra bonus crap you get and different rebates.
Thanks for all of your help, I think I am going to go with that crackin deal. Now I just have to figure out what media to pick up with it. Sounds like 8x would be good from some of the reviews I have read. I suppose I should mosey over to the media forum though!
The 8x media seems to be a better quality. You'll catch me over there at the media forum,someone always posting whats on sale and where at. Staple's have the sony +1x-8x on sale, my benq loves them,and the ones made in japan-if you can find them-are coding as yuden000-t02. Maxell's never fail on my benq either.
Hello everyone, I had the Philips DVD8631 that I converted (Crossed Flashed) to a BenQ DW1620 Drive. I mostly use DVD-R (Nero v6.6.x.x) I am so unhappy with it, it's getting removed from my PC and I will install my LG 4040B in it for now. I will buy a new drive, but still undecided if I will get the LG 4163B (Since my other LG made me so happy) or this new Plextor 716a (SATA Version)... I'll keep reading a lot on here, but Plextors seems to be the drive of choice, even if there was a few problems by a few users...
