Looking to move from a single to a dual layer DVD burner - 4.7GB just isn’t enough any more.
Any recommendations? I’ll be shopping at Gonghua, my preferred location for tech.
I’ve seen the Sony ones. Pricey but never had any problems with their computer peripherals.
I bought an Asus DRW-1604P last week. It’s excellent, whisper quiet and can burn DL at x4. SL burns up to x16, and I’ve had no problems burning x8 Genuine branded disks at x16. I gather it’s actually a Pioneer unit. It comes with a full OEM version of Nero 6, too.
Getting DL media is still a problem. The cheapest disks I’ve seen were NT$300 each. 
Some rave about LiteOn drives, but my experience has been otherwise. The first LiteON CD burner I owned stopped working after 6 months. This year I bought the LiteOn 1812s DVD burner, and it’s hopelessly unreliable, regardless of firmware or media type. It’s going out with the trash!
Thanks guys. Prices on dual layer burners?
The Sony one I think was about $5000-5500 for internal. The external ones were more than $6000.
Good grief, in Australia you can get an entirely reasonable dual layer burner for a little over $3,000. 
But that’s Sony. How about a brand like NEC, LG, Liteon or MSI? :s
Pioneer’s new DVR108 has gotten high reviews from Anandtech and others. It currently sells for about US$83 in the U.S., which is around NT$2750. If you know someone who is taking a trip for Thanksgiving, you might be able to get one brought in. ( www.newegg.com is the mailorder shop that has it for around that price.)
I saw a Sony DL burner in 3C family for NT$4000. Prices for the other brands ran from 3-4,000 in the same store. Some of the older LiteOn drives can burn DL just by updating the firmware.
The ASUS 1604p is the same drive as the DVR108. I paid NT$3500 for the Asus.
Thanks for the tip. I’d rather just have a look around Gonghua. I’m sure it will be there. 
Fortigurn wrote[quote]Good grief, in Australia you can get an entirely reasonable dual layer burner for a little over $3,000. [/quote]You’re shitting me right. According to this artice written in April http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/hardware/storage/0,39023427,39143599,00.htm, the Sony burners were going to be priced at $A303! when then eventually arrive later this year. That’s $NT7 555. The day Australia offers technology cheaper than Taiwan is the day Taiwan offer cereal cheaper than Australia.
No I am not.
You are talking about Sony burners. I am not. I said that you can get an entirely reasonable dual layer burner in Australia for a little over $3,000. It isn’t going to be a Sony burner, because Sony burners are not ‘entirely reasonable’.
I give you the following:
That’s Australian dollars. Works out to NT$3,378.73. You can find it here. Similarly priced burners in Australia may be found here.
That is why I confidently expect to find an entirely reasonable dual layer burner in Gonghua for around NT$3,000. It will not be a Sony burner, because Sony burners are not ‘entirely reasonable’.
Damn, interesting. Well I suppose that’s one thing I can cross off my list before heading home. Thanks amos.
No probs. Like your avatar by the way. Cute. 
Before you look at buying a dual layer drive, see these two threads:
[DVD+R9 disc availabilty?
[Pioneer DVR-108 DVD*RW drive available here?
The information there is a bit out of date now, but is still mostly valid. Bottom line is that in my opinion dual layer media is too expensive to be usable now. My guess is that it will be around Feb-March timeframe next year before it is affordable. Right now affordable, quality media is 4X and 8X speed single layer only. The dual layer drives are coming down now, so you can get them under TWD4000 now, but until the media comes out of the stratosphere, it’s no better than an 8X drive of which you can get a good one for around TWD2500.
As for brands, Pioneer has been producing DVD burners the longest of anyone, and they put out really quality products. I’m on my third Pioneer drive and they have all performed quite well. The Lite-On drives are popular because they can be used to test media quality because they will report error rates on playback. There are also a lot of groups putting out hacked firmware for them, so you can do things like upgrade features through hacked firmware. I have one Lite-On drive and it is pretty decent as well. As mentioned earlier, there are OEM versions of the Pioneer drives, such as done by Asus, where you can get the same drive as the Pioneer just with a different logo on the front.
One thing to keep in mind for any drive is to make sure that the company does decent firmware support. Each company that brings out new media needs to get license approval before a drive will recognize it at full speed. Companies that don’t update the firmware for your drive may result in you not being able to get new media to work in your drive at full speed.
Thanks for the advice jlick. What I need right now from DVD is large and reliable storage. Even at only 8 times, dual layer gives me exactly what I need. I only need a couple of discs for archival purposes, so media cost isn’t much of an issue.
And I need it pretty quickly, because I’ve reached the storage limits of 4.7GB DVDs. So I’m thinking that a Pioneer DVR 108 would be good. I’m sure the firmware will be updated later so that it can burn at 16x.
[quote=“Fortigurn”]Thanks for the advice jlick. What I need right now from DVD is large and reliable storage. Even at only 8 times, dual layer gives me exactly what I need. I only need a couple of discs for archival purposes, so media cost isn’t much of an issue.
And I need it pretty quickly, because I’ve reached the storage limits of 4.7GB DVDs. So I’m thinking that a Pioneer DVR 108 would be good. I’m sure the firmware will be updated later so that it can burn at 16x.[/quote]
Actually dual layer burning is only capable of 2.4X or 4X speed depending on the drive. And because of the reflective properties, you need to do a complete burn of both layers to get a usable disc. The DVR-108 is already 16X, but only at single layer and only does 4X at dual layer. What I meant is that because dual layer media costs TWD250-300 currently and single layer media faster than 8X is hard to find, buying a dual layer and/or 16X drive now is little better than buying an 8X single layer only drive. If you’re only going to be making a couple of archival discs, why not just split things across discs?
If you’ve really got money to burn, look into Blu-Ray drives. The drives cost USD4000 and the media USD50, but you get 25 gig per side.
[quote=“jlick”]Before you look at buying a dual layer drive, see these two threads:
[DVD+R9 disc availabilty?
[Pioneer DVR-108 DVD*RW drive available here?
The information there is a bit out of date now, but is still mostly valid. Bottom line is that in my opinion dual layer media is too expensive to be usable now. My guess is that it will be around Feb-March timeframe next year before it is affordable. Right now affordable, quality media is 4X and 8X speed single layer only.[/quote]
Thing is, though, at least from what I’ve read, 16X is the limit for DVD. So by buying a 16X drive now, you avoid buying what will be a technically-obsolete drive in five months (your timeframe of Feb-March).
25GB for Blu-Ray sounds nice! But the price/performance is just too high. You’re quoting 50X the cost for 2.6X the storage, not to mention that unless/until other people buy the drives, you’re going to be the only one on the island with that drive, and can’t share the media around (which may or may not be a consideration, depending on your application – I just made some Morphix CD-R’s for someone last night).
Take these things with a grain of salt. I’ve variously read over the years that 12X was the limit for CD-R, DVD-R would never be affordable, dual layer DVD+R was impossible, and the Sun revolved around the Earth. These prognostications are sometimes right (CD-R has topped out at 52X and modems at 56K), but just as often are wrong.
Yeah, at the moment.
Suits me.
That’s all I need for now.
I already have an 8X single layer only drive.
I hate splitting files. Call me unreasonable, but I don’t trust it.
I don’t have that much money to burn. 