Sony 500A vs. 510A

[homenetman]

OK...I have to admit it. Despite the research I did before buying my Sony DRU-500A, somehow I missed that the 510A was coming. I was waiting for the 500A price to drop and when I found a near perfect open box buy at BestBuy for $314 I bought the 500A last month. Now, I wonder if I should return it (30-day return window is about to close) and pay full price for the 510A ($349). Can anyone tell me what the REAL TIME difference in burning a full DVD between 2.4x and 4x on +RW media would be? It seems to me, particularly when burning video DVDs, that the actual write time is only a part of the equation. All of the audio/video encoding is what really takes time.

Also, do you need special 4x RW media and, if so, what the price difference is?

Thanks.

[Justin42]

4X DVD+R takes about 15-17 minutes to burn, and a little less time to then verify. 2.4X DVD+R takes around 25 minutes to burn.

So I'd assume 4X DVD+RW would be very close to 4X DVD+R. The only problem is no 4X DVD+RW media exists right now, so no one knows. I have a feeling that even once it becomes available, it's going to be a while before it gets cheap enough to really consider buying more than 1 or 2 pieces to test it out...

Plus I have a sneaking suspicion (which may be proved wrong!) that someone will figure out how to hack a DRU500A with a 510A's firmware. We'll see. All I know is my DRU500A is quite flawless and I'm really happy with it.

[tazdevl]

DVD +R, full disc, takes 14:50 to burn with RecordNow that comes with the 510A. I just backed up my AVI file on 25 4X DVD+Rs and can attest to that time.

510A was the same price in Best Buy as the 500AX when I looked a couple days ago, so it was a no brainer.

510A has 4X +RW, I believe the CD RW speed is faster 16X vs 12/10X and the DVD read speed is faster as well 12X versus the 500AX.

Would I upgrade? If you don't mind spending a few extra bucks, I'd go for it. Mainly for the faster speeds, I'm sure a FW upgrade will enable 4X -RW when media becomes available or the spec gets hammered out. Having a 4^4 burner is very worthwhile.

There are some hardware differences between the 500 and 510, so I don't think you can upgrade to the 510's specs by trying to flash a 500 series drive.

If you want price differences, I suggest you go to best buy or check out a few online shops. If you don't know of any, do a search of the forums. Taking the initiative is always a good thing.

[Morpheus]

I was planning on buying a DVD-Rom drive for now ( replacing my 52x CD-Rom drive ) and at the end of the year get a dual DVD burner. Well after a 2 month wait the DVD-Rom drive I wanted did not come in ( retail version not available ), I decided to get the DVD burner now. I just started to do research this past week and found out Sony now has a new drive - 510A.

I found a website which lists dual DVD burners in a chart form so you can compare the stats. The only differences I could find between the 500AX and the 510A are:

1) max CD-RW HS write speed - 16x ( up from 10x )
2) DVD+RW max write speed - 4x ( up from 2.4x )
3) DVD-Rom speed - 12x ( up from 8x )

I'm suprised on how many dual burners there now are. Checking their stats and comparing them to the Sony 510A - the Sony looks like the BEST Dual DVD burner. The only thing the Sony lacks is:

1) its CD-Rom speed is 32x vs 40x which most of the other drives have
2) it does not support MT. Rainer which some of the other drives do

I don't understand how Sony can increase the DVD-Rom speed from 8x to 12x but leave the Cd-Rom speed at 32x. Does any one know whether MT. Rainer can be added to the 510A in a firmware update?

[tazdevl]

MRW is one of the outstanding questions for a lot of drives. IMO it's a nice feature, but not necessary. Most other drives on the market don't support it as well, so I wouldn't say this is a deficiency of the drive.

Regarding the CD ROM speed, if you really sit down and think about it, does it really make that big of a difference? If you're talking about installing an app or somethng similar, the actual difference in time between 32X and 40X is minimal... maybe 10-15 seconds.

No one here is a product manager for Sony and can give you an actual reason why they made the decisions they did with the drive. Being a product manager myself, I can tell you it probably boiled down to a cost/benefit reason.