Mac-compatible dual layer DVD burner?

gizzmonic · July 9, 2004 9:12AM

I've noticed that Sony and NEC have come to market with surprisingly cheap dual layer DVD burners (starting at around $99)

Has anyone tried plugging these into a Mac? Do they work with Mac OS X, DVD Studio Pro, and/or Toast?

Also, when doyou think Apple will start shipping dual layer DVD burner Superdrives

altivec_2.0 · July 9, 2004 9:43AM

I've also noticed them around. I don't doubt they will work if there in this Mac connection catalog in front of me, but the thing is I don't think dual layer media is avalible yet. Looking through some mac cat's I can't find any....

Althought I'm talking about external drives, not internal.

Just checked:

Pioneer does have a dual layer model, Next revision iMac's and PowerMacs will have this, no doubt

masscableguy · July 11, 2004 10:00AM

Go here: http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10032

LaCie provides a DVD+-RW DL, External AND internal.

Good ole LaCie! Always taking care of the Mac...

brandnewfatboy · July 13, 2004 7:51AM

Good spot with the Lacie

Here's Roxio's press release

Can't see anything about a stock toast update to enable DL - plan to use with cheapo NEC dual layer burner (2510)

Not that we can find any media here in the UK. some floating around for £6 a disc. allegedly

-----------

London weather: not as sunny as it was

Now playing: Eric Dolphy

live4ever · July 14, 2004 8:27AM

The new A08 will come sometime this fall.

16X +-R

4X +R DL

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/10114

tigerwoods99 · July 15, 2004 2:49AM

any will work on a Mac if you have Toast

rhoq · September 7, 2004 10:15AM

I am seriously considering the purchase of a Pioneer 108. I can get (an internal) one on E-Bay for about $100. Both Best Buy and CompUSA have them in stock, but want $179 for this burner.

I guess my question is should I get an internal drive (to replace one of my Combo Drives) or the external FireWire drive? I know it sounds like a dumb question, but I'm really torn (I love Pioneer's case design for the external model).

eugene · September 7, 2004 5:07PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Rhoq

I am seriously considering the purchase of a Pioneer 108. I can get (an internal) one on E-Bay for about $100. Both Best Buy and CompUSA have them in stock, but want $179 for this burner.

I guess my question is should I get an internal drive (to replace one of my Combo Drives) or the external FireWire drive? I know it sounds like a dumb question, but I'm really torn (I love Pioneer's case design for the external model).

What Mac do you have? If you don't have a Power Mac G5 or have a MDD Power Mac with all the ATA-66 channels occupied, stick with FireWire. I tried using my DVR-108 internally on my QuickSilver 2002, but the controller wasn't fast enough.

rhoq · September 7, 2004 8:44PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Eugene

What Mac do you have? If you don't have a Power Mac G5 or have a MDD Power Mac with all the ATA-66 channels occupied, stick with FireWire. I tried using my DVR-108 internally on my QuickSilver 2002, but the controller wasn't fast enough.

I have a 1.25GHz G4 MDD Tower. I currently have 2 Combo Drives occupying the optical drive bays. I was thinking about replacing one of the combo drives with Pioneer 108.

kenneth · September 7, 2004 10:51PM

Quote:

Originally posted by TigerWoods99

any will work on a Mac if you have Toast

According to the Toast Titanium 6.0.7 release note..

http://www.roxio.com/en/support/toas...history6.jhtml

Quote:

Burning has been verified to work with the following DL recorder mechanisms:

NEC 2510A, 3100A, 3500A

LG GSA-4120A

Sony 700A

Teac DV-W58E

Logitec LDR-HA125FU2/M

Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-108

Lacie d2 series

Discs burned with the NEC 3100A, NEC 3500A, LG GSA-4210A, LDR-HA125FU2/M and Sony 700A currently only play back in PCs and set-top DVD players, but not in Macs. This is due to the fact that, at present, the Mac OS Finder does not recognize DVD+R DL as a valid disc type. The NEC2510A and TEAC drive set the disc type as DVD-ROM, which the Finder does accept. Apple is aware of this issue, and a future update to the Mac OS should recognize these discs correctly for playback.

michael · September 8, 2004 8:32AM

We just bought an NEC 2510A at the office, got it off CDW for $85 (they cut us deals for our corporate account), but even retail right now is $96.25, not bad, but shipping estimate is 2+ weeks (ours took almost a month to get here after we ordered it). We dropped it into my old sawtooth G4, which became our scanning / auxilliary burning station after I got upped to a G5.

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/def...spx?EDC=661608

Installation took all of five minutes, and everything works great with Toast 6.0.7, which was not included with the bare, bulk drive. I did have to use PatchBurn to get it to show up in some of the iApps.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/feedback/..._feedback.html

it seems like a great DVD burner so far, nice and fast, Just wish DL media was cheaper.

michael

rhoq · September 8, 2004 10:30AM

It appears that Pioneer has the DVR-108, which is the OEM model. It can be found on E-Bay for the average price of $100.

The retail model is the DVR-A08, which I saw at Best Buy over the weekend for $179.

Aside from the more attractive face, user manual/documentation and bundled PC software (which as a Mac user, is useless to me) - what advantages, if any, does the retail model offer over the OEM version of the Pioneer 108?

eugene · September 8, 2004 4:23PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Rhoq

what advantages, if any, does the retail model offer over the OEM version of the Pioneer 108?

It's supposed to be a bit quieter to do the design of its shell and maybe some electronic magic. I have the Pioneer DVR-108 since I originally planned to install it internally, but was forced to use it over FireWire as my Mac's optical drive ATA controller was not able to keep up with the drive.

I'd be interested to see how well it performs in an MDD Power Mac. From lead-in to lead-out, a 12x burn should take 7 minutes and a 16x burn should take a few seconds less...

rhoq · September 19, 2004 12:57PM

I went ahead and purchased the OEM Pioneer DVR-108 from a vendor on E-Bbay. The seller appears to be very Mac-friendly and although I could have bought the drive cheaper ($89) through a different auction, this seller offered the full retail version of Roxios's Toast & Jam 6 (MSRP $199) along with the DVR-108 for $149. Not a bad deal at all.

Hopefully it will arrive either tomorrrow or Tuesday and I'll be able to give details of my experience with this drive installed in my PM G4 MDD Tower.

rhoq · September 20, 2004 7:44AM

The DVR-108 still hasn't arrived, but I do have a quick question.

Apple recommends setting the drive to "Cable Select". Is Cable Select truly the most appropriate setting, or should I have set as a "slave"?

jido · September 20, 2004 10:19AM

I ordered the Nec 2510A OEM for £49 inc. shipping.

I will use it in an external FireWire enclosure connected to my Cube. I could not believe the price! It is just £15 more than the LiteOn Combo drive, which is already good bang for the buck.

eugene · September 20, 2004 2:46PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Rhoq

The DVR-108 still hasn't arrived, but I do have a quick question.

Apple recommends setting the drive to "Cable Select". Is Cable Select truly the most appropriate setting, or should I have set as a "slave"?

Cable Select should work as long as both drives on the cable are using it. I still manually set my drives to Master or Slave though.

jido · September 21, 2004 11:23AM

Okay, as planned I put the Nec 2510A in a Prefect FireWire enclosure.

It is totally silent afaict.

I didn't do many test yet, but I found out that the drive is recognised as a DVD reader by MacOS X. Disk Utility doesn't support the drive for burning. I can burn a CD with FireStarter, it works fine using the generic raw driver.

I didn't do any performance testing yet.

rhoq · October 6, 2004 8:24AM

My Pioneer DVR-108 finally arrived.

I received it last week, but it was damaged. I had to wait for a new replacement drive.

I installed the DVR-108 last night into my PowerMac G4 1.25GHz MDD Tower. I tested it out by burning 2 commercial DVDs that I "backed-up" (got to love the Fair Use Act) using DVD Back Up and DVD2One (I haven?t been able to find any DL blank media, yet). I then burned the DVDs with Toast 6.

The first DVD was a full disc copy (all Menus, Bonus Features, etc.) and the second was a Movie-Only copy (just the movie, the 5.1 and DTS audio and English subtitles). I really have to credit the makers of DVD2One, the technique they use to compress the video is quite impressive. The loss of picture quality is really at a minimum and pixilation & artifacting is barely noticeable. Both films looked almost as good as their retail originals on a 57? Widescreen set.

I do have a few questions?

#1 ? I know that Pioneer has issued a few firmware updates. I am interested in getting the update that allows 12x burning on certain types of 8x certified media. It looks like all of Pioneers firmware updates are PC-only. Would I be to do it via VPC?

#2 ? Has anyone seen Dual-Layered blank DVDs in stores?

#3 ? Is iDVD capable of handling .vob files? If not, how can I convert .vob files to .mov files? Are there any alternatives to QuickTime Pro?

londor · October 6, 2004 8:48AM

Quote:

#1 ? I know that Pioneer has issued a few firmware updates. I am interested in getting the update that allows 12x burning on certain types of 8x certified media. It looks like all of Pioneers firmware updates are PC-only. Would I be to do it via VPC?

At the moment you need a PC or VirtualPC to update the firmware but soon you will be able to do it from OSX http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=28944

Quote:

#2 ? Has anyone seen Dual-Layered blank DVDs in stores?

http://www.rima.com/Merchant2/mercha...duct_Code=1790

http://www.supermediastore.com/dvd-p...r-section.html

Quote:

#3 ? Is iDVD capable of handling .vob files? If not, how can I convert .vob files to .mov files? Are there any alternatives to QuickTime Pro?

ffmpegX http://homepage.mac.com/major4/

eugene · October 6, 2004 10:48AM

Best Buy has 3-packs and the "Solution Kits" with eight 8x DVD+R, one 4x DVD+RW and one 2.4x DVD+R DL.

You'll want to upgrade to firmware 1.14, as it drastically improves 12x and 16x write quality on discs that can burn at those speeds.

Verbatim 2.4x DVD+R DL burns at 4x with great results.

Verbatim 8x DVD-R and +R burn at 12x with great results.

Fujifilm 8x DVD-R marked as "Made in Japan" are made by Taiyo Yuden and burn at 12x.

Apple 8x DVD-R are maded by Maxell and burn at 16x, though I don't know how well they burn. They are great at 12x.

Ritek 8x DVD-R burn reasonably well at 12x.

Memorex 8x DVD-R are TERRIBLE at 12x.

Mac-compatible dual layer DVD burner?

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