buying a new dvd burner

[cyborg]

my old pioneer dvr-112d will not burn cd-rs but burns dvds fine i am looking at a sata drive should i buy the Pioneer 218 SATA or get something else

[Ian]

I don't own one, but from what I've heard the new Mediatek based drives like the DVR-218 aren't nearly as good as the old NEC based ones.

I'm a big fan Sony Optiarc drives. For the price, you really can't go wrong with one of those.

[SithTracy]

While I agree that the Optiarc are good for DVD buring, I'd look at something else if you have CD-R burning needs. I've never been pleased with Optiarc/NEC based drives for CD-R burning... but I burn so few.

[Dartman]

Well burners are s cheap now get a 7260 and a LiteOn or whatever that burns CD's well and you should have all your bases covered plus you can test disks with most of the LiteOn drives.
If all you want to do is mainly DVD's the Optiarc drives are great. I haven't really worried about how the few CD's I burn turn out as long a they pass the verify afterwords and play I'm happy anymore, but I do have 7 burners in here