Well, for what it's worth:
I'm putting off buying a dvd-burner as long as humanly possible (which, believe me, is getting pretty hard after seeing that $117 price tag that tonyk pointed out!). I don't follow the DVD-/+R scene
too closely, so forgive me if I'm mistaken here, but it's my understanding that there's an 8x burner (by Plextor) that just recently hit the market, and that more 8x's are expected in November. I would think that this should help push prices on 4x models even lower. So personally, I'd try to wait at least a couple more months and see where the pricing is. I used to be an early-adopter in some respects, but my pocketbook (and some long forgotten common sense
) convinced me to be a bit more patient when shopping for the techno goodies these days. "If it's not broke, don't fix it." If only I heeded that motto more often.
I also recall reading that 16x is expected to be the maximum attainable burning speed for the DVD-/+R formats. Judging by how quickly we've seen 4x and now 8x emerge, surely 16x burners can't be
too far off in the distance. I'm of the mindset that I'd rather wait 'til the 16x drives come out a year from now. By then, any remaining "kinks" in these burners should be worked out fairly well, and I'd also be getting what should theorhetically be the top of the line for the foreseeable future (at least until blue-ray dvd comes out...or whatever other stepping stone supplants dvdr). I've also heard too many horror stories from early-adopters of dvdr/rw about dvd-player compatibility woes, shoddy dvd media, and burning software issues...it seems like somewhat of a crapshoot to figure out what combination of those puzzle pieces will work on any given dvd player, especially older models...this isn't so much the case with cdr/rw. Plus dvd media isn't dirt-cheap or even free yet like cdr media...for that matter, top of the line 52x cdrw burners can be had for as little as $20 or even FREE sometimes after rebates!
If there's one thing that our KVCDs should prove to all of us, it's that CD-R/RW is far from being a dead/obsolete format. If it weren't for KVCD, I too probably would have blown a wad of cash on the first 1x dvd-r burner that came out...and a few months from now it'd probably be sitting on a shelf collecting dust next to the old 2x CDRW burner that I paid nearly $400 for back in the good ol' days (more like "the bad old days"!
).
But by all means, to each his own
. New toys certainly
are fun to play with
In the meantime....
-d&c
