How do I chose a DVD Burner?

[mike2002]

I want to replace/supplement my CD Burner with one for DVDs but, when reading reviews etc, the more confusuing it gets. The Pros and Cons are listed; telling of how burner X is good with DVD-R discs but not DVD+R, or produces too many Write errors. Most (simple) reviews just seem to favour a drive that can write at 6 seconds faster than another one.
When I do see a really good review (say from 2005), the particular make/model is either currently unavailable, or twice as expensive than the others (Plextor in particular).

Here's my criteria which, I hope, should narrow down the choice:

1) Main requirement; a burner to back up data and movie tutorials solely for PC use. I won't require the disks to run on a standalone DVD player, but the burner would have to be capable of reading my current CD-R data discs. (a big priority!).

2) Speed of burning is unimportant; to date I've never exceeded 4x burning on my CD burner.

3) Disk format; owing to the unreliability of CD-RW, I'm not interested in re-writable discs. In addition, you can throw in Double-layer and Blu-ray discs as well. Which narrows it down to DVR-R and DVD+R.

Any suggestions anyone?

[PrntRhd]

I have been using DVD-R with no issues, simply because the media is available locally at a relatively reasonable price.
Either drive should read your CD-ROMS without problems.

[jlreich]

I wouldn't bother with the high end burners. The only thing they really offer is faster burn speeds, but they really don't even have that anymore as the cheaper burners are now mostly 16x. I always stick with the $30-$40 ones. NEC, Lite-on, BenQ, Sony, Samsung... they are all quite adequate. I don't see any reason to buy the more expensive ones even if they were to last longer, standards and media change so much by the time a cheap $35 burner goes south it will be time to upgrade anyway to be able to use the latest media.

As for the media, stick with the good stuff. That's where the differences are. Personally I only use Verbatim whether it's -R or +R. There are other good brands but I have never had an issue with Verbatim so I stick with them. ;)

IMHO. :)

[mjc]

BenQ or LiteOn in the $30-40 range...there are many models and most of them will do just about everything (some even are Lightscribe drives and will read/write DVD-RAM).