Optorite DD0203 or Pioneer 106 or Sony DWU-10A

[bbzidane]

Hi all,

I'm a newbie here but have been reading the posts in the forum for awhile.
I have been tempted to get a dvd burner for quite a while, but since I have nearly run out of hard drive space, and since dvd burners are at a nice price point now, I will take the plunge relatively soon

So before I take the plunge, which out of the three burners I mentioned do you guys suggest

Optorite DD0203 Retail i think (~$305 CDN + shipping)
Pioneer 106 OEM (~$308 CDN)
Sony DWU-10A OEM (~$284 CDN)

From what I have gathered from the board, it seems that people either like the sony one or hate it. and there seems to be some ppl that have their sony burner die after a period of use. This is an old version, but it has the same burn speed (after a firmware upgrade) as the other two drives

The pioneer one is relatively new but there have been issues with this drive as well, hopefully, since it is new, new firmwares going to come out and make the drive better

Optorite seems like the best choice as on the whole, I read people had relatively no issues with the burner, except some problems burner dvd-r with recent firmware

I personally don't care for the HD-burn feature on the optorite drive. it is nice, but only being able to read the cd on that one drive limits its usefulness

I'm just wondering out of the 3 drives, which one would i have the lease problems with. I plan on using riteks, tdks dvdrs (maybe optodisc if its some what reliable)

I will be doing a fair of both data backup as well as burning movies.
Since I will be doing quite a bit of data backup, I want good quality burns, and I heard Pioneer is pretty good at burning quality dvds.

I'm mainly undecided between Optorite and Pioneer
Sony is basically my last choice

Any suggestion is appreciated

thanks

[dodecahedron]

i would choose the pioneer.
can't say as i have very good reasons explaining this...just an overall feeling that it's a better drive.
just a personal choice.

[Telstar]

In the US, the Optorite DD0203 is at least $40 cheaper than the Pioneer 106. If these two are in the same price range, then I'd definitely get the Pioneer 106 because it probably has the best DVD-R writing performance among all the dual format burners on the market. Since you are planning to use mainly DVD-R discs, the Pioneer 106 seems to be the best choice.

[stricklando]

Personally, I would go with the pioneer. I had a sony RW that died after 3 burn sessions- Since then- no sony. I have a pioneer slot DVD drive that I absolutely love. No problems- 1.5 yrs ad counting! Optorite- Never heard from them. My usually thought is stick with name brand- less headaches- If you stray, you might have to pay. ( for something else or suffer lots of headaches!) Good luck.

[Noua]

Well, i don't know if this is what you want to hear but... I f you're thinking to use only -R, why not get the A05 instead?
There's a firmware that unlock speeds for dvd rips (dual layer I think) as well as allow 1x media to be burned at 2x.

You mustn't forget that there's a lock on the rip speed of 2x that manufacturers have implemented in their drives. The A05 being a single burner is also cheaper... And the of course the A07 is comming ou by the end of the month so maybe will see another price drop...

just some thoughts...

[bbzidane]

I actually plan on using mainly which ever media (dvd-r or dvd+r) I can get cheaper.

Right now, it cost roughly the same, so I might be going with dvd+r since it is suppose to have better mechanism to ensure better quality/reliability.
This is somewhat important to me when I am making data backups as I do wish to keep the data with me for a good number of years, before another media is available (ie blu-ray dvd ~36 gigs or something)
For dvd movies, I might be going with dvd-r since it is suppose to have a better compatibility with dvd players.
I currently have a pioneer dvd-rom in another computer, and a pioneer dvd player that I plan on playing the movies with.

Please correct me if I am wrong.


I did consider getting the 105/a05 burner, about $40 CDN cheaper, but like I said, if dvd+r can give me slightly better quality, I don't mind getting another option.

Also, I'm just wondering, where did you hear that pioneer will have a 107 coming out in a month or two? I did hear a while back that pioneer do plan on having a 8x dvd burner out this year, but I haven't heard much about it lately.

8x dvd burners are tempting, but I can't imagine their initial pricing is going be that competitive with 4x dvd burners, and with no 8x media out, it is just for bragging rights for a while before it is actually useful


thanks for the help

[Noua]

Well, I read about the A07 on a forum and on a website, but when I tried to find something on it I got nothing. I heaven wrote a post here but got no response...
I heard that it was goanna be a 8x burner on –R but I didn’t had more details... Nothing about dual burner capacity or anything else...

Has for media, in Portugal, the –R rules by ages. It’s a lot cheaper and it seems to be the one that gives fewer problems with electronic equipment... Well, I don’t know... +R might even be better, but here it’s goanna have a lot of problems to get into the same level tan –r... Will see....

[Noua]

Ok I found something.

"In the winter we can then expect the next Pioneer burner the DVR-A07
DVD-R 8x
DVD-RW 4x
Pioneer has indicated that this might be the limit because 16 speed has a to fast rotation speed."

took this from http://www.cdrinfo.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9407 so if you want to check it out...

It doesn't say much but this is the first time I actually hear 8x burning speeds on -R. i had already heard on +R... W'll see where this ends...

[The Belgain]

Is this going to be a dual-format drive or not then?

[pants]

There is another 8x DVD-R multi burner just coming out on the European market right now.

http://www.plextor.be/English/products/PX708A.html
http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/k.asp?ck=1& ... fo&p=38507 or
in Euros

Not that there is any 8X media yet , but it is a way faster CD burner than all the other multi-drives @ 40/24/40 On the otherhand it will be 20-40% more expensive than all these other multi-drives.

Got a DVR-106 myself and I'm pretty happy with it