My fiance’ has been mentioning acquiring a DVD burner for some time now and with Valentines Day right around the corner, I figure this’d be a perfect time to make sure that he gets one.
The catch is that I’m fairly broke and simply cannot plunk down 100 bucks on a Valentines Day gift this year. =(
How much should I be able to get a decent internal DVD burner for my fiance’s pc for?
Any recommended sites I should take a look at?
Thanks, guys!
Newegg is where I got my LG DVD burner. It was $90 last year. Zero problems and it reads DVD-RAM discs as well as nearly all other formats.
I’ve had no problem with my LG drive. I believe the dual-layer model, which reads and writes DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+R DL, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM, (as well as CD-R and CD-RW) is down to less than a hundred bucks Canadian.
These days, there’s no reason not to get a drive that can read and write every consumer format of recordable DVD.
I recently bought a Lite-On but haven’t tried burning anything yet.
The drive shown in your link is a combination CD-R/W burner and DVD reader, not a DVD burner. So malkavia definitely shouldn’t buy that one!
Here is a Lite-on drive that will burn regular (4.7GB) DVDs at 16x (i.e. about 4 minutes per disk), and will also burn dual-layer (8.5GB) disks, although the latter are currently still very expensive. The drive is $62 with a beige faceplate, $59.99 for black. It should be fine for the OP’s needs.
This looks perfect!
Thank you all though, I’m still looking through the other links in this thread. I really appreciate everyone’s feedback. He’ll be so stoked. =)
Here are a couple of places.
http://www.greytech.com/
http://www.logiccomputerhouse.com/
Logic Computer House is where I’ve bought the last few upgrades for my computer. They sell the LG DVD-writers (all five disc types, but not necessarily dual-layer) for as low as $80 Canadian; here’s a BenQ drive that does dual-layer but not DVD-RAM for $76. You should be able to get an equivalent price no problem.
OK very clueless here and I’m looking for the same thing. I don’t even have a DVD player 
which I have to buy too, so I really don’t know what I’m doing.
My big questions are:
Do I care about the formats? Are they readable by all or most DVD players?
Is there a way to go horribly wrong in buying a dvd burner? Anything that i should be careful of? (Other than, as mentioned, accidentally buying a DVD reader)
IN the store I saw all these video editing packages e.g. by Dazzle
Are these good for anything? Can’t I just get some shareware software to do me? I’m basically taking videos on my Sony Cybershot that end up in wmv format and would like to burn them to DVDs
I have exactly the model, I believe, and it works very well. Damn good price for what you get.
uglybeech, Standalone DVD players can be picky about which formats they read. My JVC, for example, reads DVD-R and -RW but not +R or +RW. I have a friend whose computer can write +R and +RW but not -R or -RW. Result: instant non-compatibility. This kind of cross-incompatibility is one of the most annoying things that can go wrong. It was after discovering this that I made sure my computer drive could read all formats.
Even if you have a drive that write all formats, you should really check the manual for any players, drives, and DVD camcorders you your friends have, so that when burning discs, you know what is compatible with them. You can look up many players, recorders and drives by model number at http://www.videohelp.com/ .
Most newer DVD players can read + and - discs. With older players, it varies quite a bit: some will read only + discs, some only - discs (in addition to CDs and prestamped DVD discs, of coiurse). Some DVD recorders and DVD camcorders will record on DVD-RAM. If you have one of these, or expect to deal with DVD-RAM discs from one, it’s a good idea to get a computer drive that can read DVD-RAM.
Your question three-- can you give me more details about the WMV files your camera creates? What is the resolution (pixels high by pixels wide)? They’d probably have to be converted to be added to a DVD.
There’s lots of DVD-editing software out there. I gave an bit of an overview of DVD authoring in this thread.
Go with an Apex. They play just about anything, including burned discs. Usually cost $50 at WalMart. They are the most hackable IMHO. Easy region-free hacks.
Not that I advocate doing anything to violate the DMCA, of course.
Whoops! Thanks for the catch.
Sunspace, thank you for your very helpful post. It’s exactly what I needed.
You asked what the resolution of the wmv files is - they’re 640 by 480 maximum.