New universal DVD burner arriving

[xortam]

Have you heard about the new Panny universal DVD burner that's coming out in May (official release date is not announced yet)? I read about this on AVS. The info came from Nikkei Electronics online magazine. The Panasonic SW-9573 is reported to support the following:

8X DVD-R writing speed
5X DVD-RAM writing speed (accepts cartridge type DVD-RAM disc)
2X DVD-RW writing speed
2.4X DVD+R writing speed
2.4X DVD+RW writing speed

I find this attractive because of its fast -RAM speeds that I could use for PC backups. I'd also use this unit for importing -RAM from my Panny E80H DVDR and doing some more sophisticated menuing, etc.

[Elie]

Not worth it IMO, in a few months you will start seeing Dual Layer DVD burners which can record up to 8GB od DVD footage, that I believe will be the next big thing.

I personally can't wait!

Cheers,
Elie

[xortam]

... and then you'll have Blu-Ray, AOD, etc for even higher capacities. You also have to consider media costs and compatibility. I think this unit would fit the bill for my needs.

[Flying dutchman]

I don't think dual-layer DVD-RW disks can be used for backup purposes like packet writing.

The reason being that the drives can't burn the deeper layer without killing the shallower layer. The deeper layer always has to be burnt before the shallow layer. So data on the shallow layer gets lost whenever data on the deep layer beneath it is changed.

[wkulecz]

Packet Writing and Backup in the same sentance makes me laugh.

--wally.

[Flying dutchman]

That used to be so, in the CDRW days. Let me assure you that this prejudice is no longer valid for DVD+RW and DVD-RW. There's a great article in the last CT magazine about the subject.

The UDF filesystem for DVD is especially optimized for packet writing in versions 1.50 and higher, and the defect management on DVD's is much better than on CDRW. I use Pinnacle InstantCD/DVD myself and its packet writing driver (InstantWrite) rocks.

The moment I press the EJECT button on my DVD drive, the disk is finalized on the fly and has a standard UDF 1.50 file system. No sessions to close, no loss of capacity.

A word of caution: A DVD+RW or DVD-RW should be overwritten a few times before storing important data on it. The stability of the phase change layer improves enormously after a few write cycles.