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The Ulltimate DVD Burner? 194

Posted by chrisd from the take-my-sony-to-the-sony-to-pick-up-some-sony dept.
prostoalex writes "The DRU500A by Sony burns DVD-R/-RW, DVD+RW/+R, and even CD-R/CD-RW discs. The price sticker is relatively high, but for those worried about the compatibility issues of DVD burners this one looks like a solution." FYI: I recently ran a poll on this very topic.
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The Ulltimate DVD Burner? More

The Ulltimate DVD Burner?

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  • So now.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by nigelthellama ( 563606 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:16PM (#4284004)
    you can piss of both the MPAA and RIAA at the same time. Simply beautiful!
  • Some MPAA lawyers just had a sudden unexplained sense of euphoria and their eyes turned to '$'s.
  • what about people (like me) that have two DVD players that do not play CDRs, CDRWs, or burned DVDs (both DVD players in this apt do not have this capability).

    So I not only have to pay steep prices for the burner, I also have to pay for a new DVD player? Bah humbug!

    Am I the only one?
    • Go buy an Apex at WalMart that plays almost everything (if not EVERYTHING) for $69.
    • get a $60 apex @ wal-mart, it plays just about anything, i'm thinking of replacing my first gen RCA RC5215P w/ one

  • All fine and good... (Score:5, Funny)

    by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:17PM (#4284010) Homepage
    Yes, yes, but does it come with implosion functionality built in?

    If not, I'll stick to my Pioneer drive, thank-you-very-much.

  • Yes...it's all that and a bag of chips...but... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cutriss ( 262920 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:17PM (#4284012) Homepage
    Does it explode discs at high-speed writing sessions [slashdot.org]? :D
  • But does it make julian fries?

  • But it's Sony (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ma$$acre ( 537893 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:18PM (#4284027)
    I love their monitors, but their drives? Worse than Western Digital. Their support truly sucks but the drive will be successfull and will trigger a flood from other manufacturers. So, wait it out for 2-3 months when other offerings at cheaper prices will abound.
    • Fast Forward to 3 months from now:
      So, wait it out for 2-3 months when other offerings at cheaper prices will abound.

      • Re:But it's Sony (Score:2, Interesting)

        by rat7307 ( 218353 )
        Fast Forward to 3 months from now:

        > So, wait it out for 2-3 months when other offerings at cheaper prices will abound.

        Hehehe... A guy I work with has been waiting for 2 years for a resonable priced digital camera, but the problem is he keeps waiting for the better models to get to his proce range, but then when it does he notices the newer cameras and waits for them to get to his price range...
        in the mean time i've purchase 2 cameras and had had good results from them both....and he's still waiting....

  • How fast? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:18PM (#4284033) Homepage
    I don't own one and i dont know anyone with one, how long does it take to burn a full DVD, is there a difference in between the standards, what's the write speed, average time, etc?
    • And just a reminder, that a 'full' recorded DVD is only half the size of a normal DVD movie (4.7 GB instead of 9.4 GB).

      Although there is software that lets you rip DVD movies to your PC and shrink them to fit on one DVD+/-Recordable disc, you can't make direct disc-to-disc copies of your favorite movies.

      • Re:How fast? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Nogami_Saeko ( 466595 )
        It's worth noting that not all "full" DVDs use 9.4gb dual-layer media, infact many will fit just fine on 4.7gb media (cheaper to master).
    • I don't own one and i dont know anyone with one, how long does it take to burn a full DVD, is there a difference in between the standards, what's the write speed, average time, etc?


      I dont own one of these, but i do own a HP100i (i got screwed, and should have waited for the 200i)

      but i can burn a full dvd (2 hours) in approximately 20 minutes. im sure this burner is comparable.

  • Sounds good... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by shr3k ( 451065 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:19PM (#4284039) Homepage
    Looks interesting. $350 isn't that bad considering what you're getting. But I want to wait and see if Plextor will make a similar drive. Plextor, from my experience, has always had a quality, albeit a little more pricey, showing with their drives.

    I hope that they are working on a similar product. This type of thing sounds like it would be right up their alley.
    • Lets see... my experience with Plextor

      - Two dead 4x SCSI burners
      - One dead 16x burner
      - One dead 12x burner

      Not the pinnacle of reliability, and a one year warranty to boot.

      JOhn

      • How many disks did you burn with each drive before they died? The lasers used for burning do have limits on their lifespan. My old HP, for example, churned out around 500-800 CDRs before it died (2 years), but my Plextor 24/10/40A has burnt over 800 already and is still going strong.

        With the number of drives you've used, I have to wonder if the same burnout isn't happening in your case.

        Aside from that, you are the first person I've heard mention having multiple Plextor drives fail. Out of a few dozen owners at different sites with different Plextor models, I've only heard of one failure -- and that was after 2500 CDRs had been burnt with the unit.



        • about a month over a year of minimal use, my 16x plextor died. (right before summer). Whenever you insert a disk the red light just blinks. I cannot return it either. :(

          -metric
          • I have a Plextor burner and I get the same, but only on some brands of blank disk, on others, varying from Verbatim to No-Names, it works perfectly but slowly. I understand that the burn power is adjusted relative to the media, perhaps mine isn't putting out enough.
      • We have a CD tower at work with ten Plextors (just CD-ROM, not CDR) in it. Even though it gets little use half the drives have failed.
    • Plextor has only recently come out with DVD-ROM drives, and no burners. They seem to be slow to get into DVD burning, perhaps in part due to the lack of a uniform standard.
      • *shrug*

        They were also late to the CD-R party, waiting until media was less than $5/ea, and drives fell down to the few-hundred-bucks range.

        If history is any indication, this is about the right time for them to move in on the market.

        [an FYI: I paid >$400 for an 8x SCSI Plextor CD-R within the same week that it actually started shipping. It has made thousands of discs in the few years that I've had it, and doesn't mind being kept busy at near 100% duty for days at a time. I doubt I'll ever need to buy another CD-R drive.]

  • Fnck that (Score:5, Funny)

    by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:19PM (#4284040)
    I'll wait for the DVD+r+RW+CD-RW=CD+RW=R-Z+DVD-D burner.

    THAT's what I really want. If they manage to innovate the rest of the alphabet in there too, hot damn.

    aside: the acronym situation is totally out of control. It's an RIAA ploy. When we can't tell what we're buying anymore, suddenly the piracy will stop...

  • "The price sticker is relatively high" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by briglass ( 608949 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:19PM (#4284047)
    Yet it is one hundred dollars cheaper than the very first 4-speed CDR burner I bought.

  • Pricey? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Green Light ( 32766 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:20PM (#4284059) Journal
    The supplied link leads to a Sony-page with a $349 (USD) price tag. I'm not sure that is "pricey". If it really reads/writes all of the formats, then this is just what many people are waiting for, at a decent price.

    Plus, this drive may be so new that they have tested it with high-speed media, and it will not burst into flames [slashdot.org] 8^)

    Being from Sony, though, I would be cautions about any DRM features that the drive may have hidden deep inside that firmware...

  • Compatibility (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:21PM (#4284073) Homepage
    Compatibility isn't just about what I can read on my device(s), it's about what other people can read on their devices.

    Sure, maybe I can write a DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, etc. etc. etc. but if I don't know what my contacts can read, it won't help me any unless I want to send them redundant copies in every format I can think of.

    It'd be nice if they could just come up with one standard and make it universal, or at least compatible with other standards.
    • It's not a standards problem, though. It's a problem with the end manufacturer not using the best quality lasers and readers (wrt burned DVDs) and not including a certain amount of flexibility in the decoder (wrt SVCDs and VCDs). The video discs you write with DVD-R is standards compliant. The laser your DVD player uses to read the disc is the issue.

  • Call me the wet blanket... (Score:5, Informative)

    by d.valued ( 150022 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:25PM (#4284107) Journal
    However, don't expect it (or the available software) to be either as simple or as nice as the iDVD interface and layout.

    (One thing the Macintosh people have down pat is interface. My GOD! it's easy!)

    Linux comaptibility is most likely trivial, though, on the upside. Just treat it as a CDRW that has a 4.7 GiB capacity and write to it in UDF packets instead of a Rock Ridge or Joliet stream, it should work.

    Don't expect any firmware cracks for this beast either. Sony hardware is pretty hard to crack (Techtronics, probably the best site for getting modded DVD players, has to go and do chip replacement and other nasty-level cracks on standalones.) Besides that, I would presume (since Sony is one of the core members of DVD Forum) that this will automagically region code any video-format DVDs' you create, unless such coding is already required in the writable DVD specifications.

    It sucks that for DVD's there won't be a company that can readily capitalize on the market and the product like MP3.com did with music.. then again, music is easier to forge than movies are...

    • Region coding? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by yerricde ( 125198 )

      Besides that, I would presume (since Sony is one of the core members of DVD Forum) that this will automagically region code any video-format DVDs' you create, unless such coding is already required in the writable DVD specifications.

      Each DVD Video title contains a set of flag bits that determine whether to block playing the title on a particular region. If your encoder software requires you to specify a region set, tell it to encode for the following set of regions: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}.

      unless such coding is already required in the writable DVD specifications.

      DVD Video is an application of DVD. I don't think the writable DVD specifications say anything about the applications, except that the Key Area (used to hold digital restrictions management keys) shall be burned with 0 bytes during manufacture.

      It sucks that for DVD's there won't be a company that can readily capitalize on the market and the product like MP3.com did with music

      That's because the price of producing a feature film still hasn't fallen to consumer level. (Music arrived when 16-channel trackers [modplug.com] and wave editors [sourceforge.net] came out.) Very few Flash movies you can find on the Internet are feature-length.

      • No DVD burner out there enforces WRITING region codes on stuff you burn yourself. It's always region 0 (no regioncode).

        Infact, I don't think any consumer (DVD General) drives can make discs that are region protected. It's possible to do it through some command scripting in most high-level authoring packages, but not terribly useful.

        You also can't enable the Macrovision bit or the CSS encryption on consumer drives (although it may be possible to at least macrovision your stuff with a bit of hacking).
      • Each DVD Video title contains a set of flag bits that determine whether to block playing the title on a particular region. If your encoder software requires you to specify a region set, tell it to encode for the following set of regions: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}. ...otherwise referred to as Region 0.
  • It seems to me that anything made by Sony would have some sort of DRM (you know, digital restrictions management) built in so that it would not be able to burn movie DVDs...

    If it has no such restrictions (or they are easily circumvented by using non-sony provided software), this is something I would definitely think about purchasing, but if it has some sort of restrictions on what I can do with my 0's and 1's, I ain't gonna buy it...

    Just my $0.02 worth... (and you get your money's worth...)

    -RickTheWizKid

  • More Burning Options (Score:5, Funny)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:26PM (#4284118)
    The DRU500A by Sony burns DVD-R/-RW, DVD+RW/+R, and even CD-R/CD-RW discs.

    At $349, you'd be wasting your money. I paid only $249 for a Sunbeam Gas Grill. At 40,000 BTU/hour, it will easily burn DVD-R/-RW/+RW/+R/ROMs, CD-R/CD-RW/CD-ROMs, floppies, Zip disks, Jaz disks, books, magazines, motherboards, DVD/CD drives, keyboards, hotdogs, steaks, dead rodents, old shoes ... just about anything.

    And if you get tired of all the burning, you can choose to turn it down a bit and go with golden brown.

  • "but for those worried about the compatibility issues of DVD burners this one looks like a solution."

    It's from Sony. I'm more concerned with their possibly crippling the device in one way or another, possibly with DRM crap.

  • Not news... (Score:2, Funny)

    by WetCat ( 558132 )
    A cigarette lighter burns everything! CDR, CD-RW
    even ordinary CDs!

  • Not that expensive...at first... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cowboy junkie ( 35926 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:32PM (#4284168) Homepage
    $349 is not terribly expensive by DVD recorder standards. But having recently bought a recorder, one thing I'd really caution folks about is buying one to create video dvd's without really researching it. Most software that comes with burners is complete crap. MyDVD, which came with my Pioneer and is also bundled with the Sony, is a good example of this. It is incredibly limited in terms of adding basic functionality like chapters or even customized menu design. So if you don't want to create something that looks like 'Bobby's first DVD', you are quickly looking at software packages that cost more than the recorder itself (and they still don't have a lot of the functionality you'd expect at that price). Add to that the fact that you need heinous amounts of hard drive space and CPU to work on this stuff, the total price tag quickly jumps way beyond the initial investment.
    • You're right, doing anything that looks halfway professional with computer-based video isn't cheap or easy.

      But do most people care? Considering that they can barely edit at all with a tape-based medium and that most home movies I've seen have a good 4-5 minutes of an extreme close-up of some guy's crotch and "IS THIS FUCKING THING ON?!?!?!?!?!" coming over the speakers, I'd bet that just being able to snip shit out and stick it straight on DVD without the animated, made-in-hollywood DVD menuing is good enough for most people.
    • Ahhh iDVD [apple.com]. Go Apple!
    • Well, the same can be said for the software that comes with CD burners. Mine came with some really crudy Adaptec software. But I use it anyway. I'm not a producer of fancy multimedia products, I just need something to copy CDs, create archive disks, and send software to friends who don't have the bandwidth to download it. For these purposes the Adaptec software serves. It's a pain to use, but not enough pain for me to buy a commercial alternative or research an open-source one.

      DVDs would be more of the same. Most DVD burner users just want to save their family movies or transfer their VHS collection to a more stable medium.

    • I recommend pinnacle studio. The new verion is version 8 and it now understands DVD's with menus (even with motion). I don't know that it supports this drive (yet), but it does a pretty good job of editing your video. It's easy to use (which I can't say of the high-end stuff like adobe premiere), and it has all the codecs built in already to do mpeg1/vcd, mpeg2/scvd and dvd. It can even do windows media and real media, not that I've ever used them.

    • Easy (Score:1, Troll)

      by Rader ( 40041 )
      Sounds like someone needs to download and burn a pirated copy of Adobe Premiere. Need a copy?

  • Bah! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rayonic ( 462789 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:33PM (#4284183) Homepage Journal
    Where is my dual layer support? Until I can write a full 9.6GB standard DVD, I'll be wary of buying any DVD±RW drive. I don't know what I'd put on a 9.6GB DVD right now, but I want it just the same.
  • $349.99
    as low as $10.40/42 pmts
    Financing Details

    I have bad credit! Crap.

  • Add to Cart and Get Availability... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kammak ( 222362 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:34PM (#4284193)
    Availability: On or before 11/01/2002

    Can't wait... it'll save me a drive bay!
  • OK, so it works on windows. Any word on Mac support?

  • Wrong compatability issue (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TFloore ( 27278 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:39PM (#4284234)
    I don't care about being able to record in every writable dvd format available.

    I care about being able to burn one disc, and have it usable in every dvd reader I come across.

    This is not a good thing. This is simply a less-bad thing while we wait for these bozos to decide on a single recordable dvd format. Unfortunately, I don't really believe that will happen, so this may be the least-bad option available.

    Adding to the bad side, as has already been commented, it's a Sony. What kind of restrictions does it come with, anyway? Simply by putting the Sony nameplate on there, you know it isn't your hardware. It belongs to Sony, they are just letting you use it in a few restrictive ways for a little while.
    • You are absolutely correct - it is the wrong compatibilty issue. From what I've read DVD-R's work on slightly more players than DVD+R - an 80% compatibility was claimed - I'm seeing closer to 20% :-). Has anyone seen a stand alone DVD player that accepts DVD+Rs and NOT DVD-Rs? If not then it's kinda pointless.
  • I can just imagine the conference call with the heads of sony pictures and sony music bitching at the head of sony electronics. How are the poor bastards gonna pay for the yacht with the heli-pad with all the stupid consumers wrecking thier business model?
  • Etymology: Medieval Latin ultimatus last, final, from Late Latin, past participle of ultimare to come to an end, be last, from Latin ultimus farthest, last, final, superlative of (assumed) Latin ulter situated beyond

    Damn! I knew I should have bought a burner before the MPAA made 'em illegal...

    • Etymology: Medieval Latin ultimatus last, final, from Late Latin, past participle of ultimare to come to an end, be last, from Latin ultimus farthest, last, final, superlative of (assumed) Latin ulter situated beyond

      Damn! I knew I should have bought a burner before the MPAA made 'em illegal...

      Because you had to open your mouth all future posts on this thread can only aspire to be penultimate in pedantry.

      • Etymology: Medieval Latin ultimatus last, final, from Late Latin, past participle of ultimare to come to an end, be last, from Latin ultimus farthest, last, final, superlative of (assumed) Latin ulter situated beyond

        Damn! I knew I should have bought a burner before the MPAA made 'em illegal...

        Because you had to open your mouth all future posts on this thread can only aspire to be penultimate in pedantry.
        That should be "the penultimate in pedantry," you dimwit!

        Speaking of pedantry... [goats.com]

        • hat should be "
          the penultimate in pedantry," you dimwit!

          LOL! I take it back!

          Actually, since I was using penultimate as an adjective, it was legal. Try thinking of "...can only aspire to be secondary." That sentence is legal, and it is an adjective the same as "penultimate in pendantry" is an adjective phrase. Now, if you put a "the" in front of "secondary" it takes on a different meaning and "secondary" becomes a noun. It is like the difference between saying "he is slow" vs. "he is the slowest."

  • Huh? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by nedron ( 5294 )
    Shouldn't this have been titled "the ultimate optical recording drive", since it burns DVDs (DVD-R and DVD-RW), non-DVD high density optical discs (DVD+R and DVD+RW), as well as "low density" CD-R and CD-RW.

    I'm tired of people whining and moaning about how there is no standard for writeable DVDs when it is in fact documented on the DVD Format and Logo Licensing site (http://www.dvdfllc.co.jp) - the standard formats are DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM. That's it. Nothing else. There is no other DVD writeable format available. Anything else (DVD+R, DVD+RW) is simply similar to DVDs, though not properly DVDs.
    • DVD-RAM has built-in hardware error checking and a 30 year shelf life. Its also 11 bucks for 9.4 gigs at compusa. I wouldn't use other RW fomats just because they are marketed better- they can't go the distance (-RAM has 100,000 rewrites,-RW jsut has 1000) Another neat thing- linux thinks its a standard harddrive, you can do scheduled backups with a 1 line cron job. An overview on the formats is here
      http://www.toshiba.com/taissdd/products/docs/dvdra mwhitepaper.shtml

  • Yes, but what about DVD-RAM? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:43PM (#4284268) Homepage
    Forgot about that one, didn't they?

    My, how quickly they forget.

    And if it DID burn DVD-RAM, I'd ask whether it can handle both Type 1 and Type 2 DVD-RAM. (Don't ask...)
  • Once the 4.7g DVD wars are over the next format of "Blue DVD" will emerge. Then I can get Titanic in 1080 HDTV on a home player.
    Then we'll all have to buy new burners.

  • great site for DVD+R/+RW info (Score:3, Informative)

    by DeafDumbBlind ( 264205 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:50PM (#4284332)
    http://www.dvdplusrw.org/

  • An in-depth article about the formats and the Sony drive is over at news.com [com.com].
  • According to The Register [theregister.co.uk], the Pioneer drives are actually the ultimate DVD burners, burning DVDs more thoroughly than any other drive... (Oh yeah, and there's only one l in ultimate)

  • hmmm (Score:3, Funny)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) <mark@nosPam.seventhcycle.net> on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @05:50PM (#4284886) Homepage
    I wonder why my firewall always asks permission for SonyDmcaSpy.exe to access the internet whenever I try to burn a CD.

    I click yes. It's okay, really.

    I'll just tell them when they come to my door that hardly anyone considers what I like to be music.

  • Jebus, I can't believe I'm the first one to mention this, but: ULLtimate? For crying out loud...
  • "FYI: I recently ran a poll on this very topic."

    Thanks for posting the link to that poll, chrisd. I was going to buy this drive until I saw that the /. masses think that using "CowboyNeals photographic memory for all my data storage needs" is the way to go.

  • Not that there will be a better one a few weeks down the road, right?
  • Being able to burn all those formats is great, but who really needs it?

    You may need to READ all the formats from different sources, but unless you're going to know exactly what your receipients use, you'll prolly just end up burning to CDR.

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