[ale] OT:DVD burner recommendations

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 15:21 -0400, Scott Castaline wrote:
> Slightly off topic, but it is for a Linux box. Anyone have any
> personal recommendations for a multi-format DVD burner? My double
> layer Lite-On burned itself to death. I don't think Linux
> compatibility is so much an issue anymore except for maybe blue-ray,
> which could be an option as long as it's not too much moolah.

Just about anything will cut it; the way that CD/DVD drives are all
handled are through standard drivers these days.  The system even
supports using drives that do multiple formats; I have a drive that
reads BluRay and HD-DVD discs, and is read/write for CD-ROM/R/RW and DVD
+/-ROM/R/RW and DVD-RAM.  (Tangentially, I have found DVD RAM to be
_very_ convenient to use.)

In any case, as long as you're not looking for something that would hook
up to a proprietary interface, you're fine.  Any IDE or SATA drive will
do what you're looking for and will be supported by the Linux kernel and
userland utilities.  This should go for BluRay, as well, though I don't
know about HD-DVD (and probably won't ever, since it lost the format
war).

The drive that I purchased, by the way, which reads CD/DVD/BD/HD-DVD and
writes CD/DVD, cost just under $150 (on sale) and interfaces with the
system via an SATA interface.  It is available from NewEgg.com [1],
though that's not where I originally bought it (because it wasn't there
yet).  While I cannot burn BluRay discs for that price, it is very nice
to have.  I probably won't get a burner until they cost what CD/DVD
drives today cost, or very close to it.

	--- Mike

[1] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136133

-- 
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