DVD Burners For Newbies. Review on Tips on DVD Burners

DVD Burners work, but narrowing down your selections can be a daunting process. I hope this brief review helps as a beginner guide to those that are just now looking for one.

First there is 5 major formats to choose from. All DVD medias tout at least 4.7 gigs of recordable space, some even more. This makes them very desirable for computer backup applications.

DVD-R recordable burners have the price in their favor as far as buying blank disk to burn for it. One can get good blank disks around 2 dollars apiece(some as high as 4 dollars, some cheaper that 1 dollar if you buy in 100 packs). It is compatible with over 50% of the DVD home players(but you need to look at the original owner's manual to make sure yours will work). Pioneer and Sony both have versions that tout 4X recording speeds. 4x recording speed is about 52x speed compared to cd burners. DVD-R is one time only burn, it is not rerecordable, so you better get it right the first time.Great for recording video.

DVD-RW is the same as DVD-R format except it has the added convience of being reusable or reburnable. You can Rerecord over it. It has the disadvantage of being less readable on home dvd players since it is not'finalized'. It is higher priced too. Price per disk run on average around 3-5 dollars each(again much cheaper if you buy in bulk of 100 or more). Max record speeds of 2X.

DVD+R is another highly compatible format. The blank recording media is usually higher than that of DVD-R, but not too bad(and it is getter cheaper by the day). It is also compatible with about 50% of the home DvD players. You can go online and check your home dvd player and see what yours will play. It also can support record speeds of 4x just like DVD-R do. Blank media runs around 3 dollars a disk and cheaper if you buy in bulk. Also great for recording video.

DVD+RW is the rerecordable version of DVD+R. More expensive, but added convience of being reuseable. Max record speeds of 2X only.

DVD+RAM is the computer recording speciality. It is NOT good for recording video like both the DVD-R and DVD+R, but it is has over 9 gigs of space available. Basically doubling the space of the previous disks. It is reusable to record over and over up to 100, 000 times. Making it the king in backing up computer data. The media is sorta expensive(about 4-5 dollars each), but well worth it if you do alot of backup recording on your computers. It is hands down the best format if you don't care about video matters.

Other pointers to think about. Some recorders do just one or two types of recording. The newer Sony recorders will do 4 of the 5 formats(it will not do the DVD-RAM) so if you are not sure what format to get for your home dvd player to work, get the Sony since you can't go wrong(it will do it all video formats). Speed is another consideration, again the newer version will support up to 4x recording speeds, but remember you pay more for faster recording blank disks.

Recording your home videos is a fairly easy process. It will come with instructions on how to do it.

Now, if you are a person that wants to record copyrighted material, there is a few things you must know. These DVD recorder will not record rented DVD's without some effort and money on your behalf. The only program I have seen(and personally own) that will allow you to do this in true perfect copies is called'DVD-X Copy'. It has worked flawlessly for me, but is rather expensive at 99 dollar. Forget about getting a free copy of it, the software release code it has is impossible to get around(you have to call them to get release codes for it after buying it). There is a 15 day free trial version of it you can download though. Otherwise you are not going to copy copyrighted material with much success.

Also, DVD-X Copy is a slow process, it takes about 20 minutes to decode a small dvd, some can take up to 45 minutes to decode onto your harddrive(you better have 8 or 9 gigs of freespace too). It uses your temp windows to store the decoded dvd before putting it back on the disk. So don't expect to do this stuff in a flash.

Anyway, there is your flash course in DVD recorders. I liked the Sony for its speed and ability to record several formats. But I paid for it(close to$400 dollars). There is cheaper and just as effective recorders out there if you are interested.