Best Deals and Advice on DVD Burners

A DVD burner is a big step up from a CD Burner. With a DVD burner, you can record a whopping 4.7GB worth of data. That is about 7 times the capacity of a 74 minute CD!

DVD burners have advanced, but there is still some uncertainty with the DVD disc format. There are two recording formats that are competing with one another: DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW. Some drives support only one format while others support both. My advice is to go with a drive that supports both. This will cost you more than a drive that supports only one format, but having support for both formats will extend the life of your drive just in case one format overpowers the other. It will also allow you to exchange data in either format.

So what exactly is the difference between DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW formats? Well, the DVD-R/RW was the first standard to come out so it tends to be supported by more DVD players. However, DVD-RW in particular does not support lossless linking which means you have to reformat the whole disc if you want to make a change or add content. DVD+RW, on the other hand, does support lossless linking so you can add content without starting over. However, I have read that the capacity DVD+R discs is 8MB smaller which would prevent copying a completely filled DVD-R. There are some other minor differences, but, like I said, if you go with a drive that supports both formats, you can choose the best disc type for the job.

Want to see what DVD burners are popular? View the top 10 CD/DVD burner drives.