Up 'til recently, I haven't found much need to burn DVDs, but now I find I need to burn a whole bunch of them. What's the state of the art in these things? Way back when, Sony released its DVD +/- R/RW universal burner. Do others sell equivalent ones now? Do they all offer good audio CD ripping? Is the answer to shell out the (presumably) bigger bucks on whatever Plextor is selling these days?

Plextor does indeed sell dual format DVD burners too now. They sell an 8x and a 12x model. The 8x model is more than adequate for the moment, especially considering there is almost no 12x media available.
Get a Plex. You won't be dissapointed !

I wouldn't get a Plextor at any time, but I definitely wouldn't get one now when dual layer burners are readily available for less.

I've got a NEC ND-2510A and its working great. No dual layer media yet though so I can't tell you how well that works.

CD Freaks has a good collection of reviews. Good place to start, anyway. I personally have this drive, but it's a little old now. I'd probably look at getting one of the newer dual-layer burners.

Edit: Damn, that's what I get for typing a reply and walking away before submitting it.

I've got a generic I/O Magic 8x drive (hey, I figured for $70 after rebate, what the hey!) and it works fine. If I was really going for a nicer product, I would probably grab up a Sexy Plexy or a Lite-On. Just be sure to pick up some decent media. The first no-name discs I purchased only burned at 2.7x and worked in about 1/2 the players that I tested them in. The next batch was Fujifilm brand that was rated for 4x, but they burn at 8x very nicely and work in all the test machines.

Agreed on the Fujifilm quality. Picked some up for my first burns on my PowerBook and they've worked great. Now if i can just find a good price on a 50pk 4x. Where do you guys buy media from? (as i go off and search 'cause i know this has been covered before)...

All Media Outlet usually has good prices.

I second All Media Outlet. The Xtreme brand 4x DVD-Rs from there have been great for me. Really inexpensive too.

I have a Pioneer DVR-106

If you order the NEC, you're getting a bare drive and no software. Any thoughts on what you need to flesh the thing out? My main use of the drive will be writing out computer backups (pictures from my camera, etc.), so I'd need a tool similar to Roxio's Easy CD Creator that I'm using now. Do I need to buy a copy of Nero?

It would be nice to have some kind of fancier DVD-Video authoring solution, but it's not critical. I've got a Mac at home (I'm buying this drive for my work machine), so I can presumably just get the latest version of the iLife tools and have a better/cheaper authoring solution than what I might otherwise get on the work PC.

I'd recommend Nero over Easy CD Creator. Nero is more powerful and doesn't mess about with your system like Easy CD Creator does. It could be all fixed now but when I've tried it before, it did funny things to the ASPI layer. The changes would break other software that needed low level access to the CD drive.

I use my drive mainly for backing up so I've not tried to burn a DVD video disc so can't really give any recommendations for that.

I use Nero to burn DVD-Video disks, but not very familiar with authoring software, as my main use is backup.

Also note that most software that comes with burners is usually somehow restricted to that one model of burner. So if you ever think you might get another, it might be a better idea to buy a real copy that can be used with any hardware.

Or you could just use mkisofs and cdrecord.

I've got a nec nd2500a (non dual layer).

However a mate has just got the LG 4120BA, which apart from doing dual layer, also writes dvd+r at 12x, dvd-r at 8x and dvd-/+rw at 4x.

yummie

There are firmware hacks to put the ND-2510A firmware onto the ND-2500A. It alledgely gives you dual layer but testing has been rather limited due to the lack of dual layer media. A couple of people have tested it but with prerelease media.

After much hair pulling, I decided to get the Plextor 708. It's got DVD +/- R/RW at 8x speed. After mail-in rebate, it's $115 from Newegg. The main reason I chose it over the competition is that it comes loaded with all kinds of useful software (Nero, Pinacle Studio, etc.) which would have cost me much more to buy at retail. Yeah, it doesn't do dual layer, but all the cheap media is single-layer right now. I can always get something fancier later on.

I'm pleased to report that the new Plextor drive is working well. I'm annoyed to report that the software I got, which is the standard U.S. distribution, doesn't include nearly as many toys as the European distribution that was described in CDFreaks. My bad. U.S. people get the Roxio Easy CD/DVD Creator, version 6.

My first burn was a coaster, but after that it seems to be working fine. (I think I ejected it too early or something.) The speed difference between the 8x and 4x media is impressive. I burned about 3.8GB of pictures for a friend, and the difference is 5 minutes vs. 10 minutes. Still, 4x media is much cheaper than 8x media, so by the time I burn through my current box of 4x, the 8x stuff should be available and cheap.

As I stated before, the Fujifilm 4x media that I picked up from Office Depot burns very nicely at 8x.

8x media at a 4x price...yum.