DVD burners and software questions

[whitelightening]

I am looking at buying my first DVD burner for my PC and I'm not sure exactly what to look for in terms of specs and brand as well as software. Now, I know that the DVD-X software (or something of that nature) was taken off the shelves last year because it obviously allowed people to rent DVD's and copy them exactly. Is there any software out there now that still allows you to do this? Of course, being the law-abiding citizen I am :roll: , I would never think of doing that to Hollywood :wink: :wink:

I would like to stay within or hopefully under the $125 barrier if possible. By the way, I'm running XP Home on an Athlon XP 3200+.

[Ael]

I don't know brand name specifically, you can look them up on Dell...but this is what I do know...

I currently have my Dell Inspiron 600m laptop equipped with the most up to date dvd burner...it's an 8x DVDRW/CDRW burner...meaning, it burns several things...

burners right now burn two different kinds of dvd discs...the double layered 8.7GB discs or the single layered 4.7GB discs...the only difference between a single and doulbe layer, is the double layer has data written on both sides of the dvd...

With that said, which size disc are you using? If you want to get the 8.7 GB (this stuff JUST came out a few months ago) then you should get the 8x dvd burners that burn double layered discs...I don't know how much those run on desktop PCS, I know laptops cost like 200 bucks to add the option for a single drive.

the double layered burners write at 8x speed while the single layer ones burn at 4x speed...it's not the same as 4xcdrw speed, it's actually pretty fast considering ur writing to an 8.7 gb capacity disc.

As for software - My SonicDVD, Nero Ultra Edition are your best bets...if you want something really simple, sonicdvd, if you want something with a lot more control, Nero Ultra Edition is really good.

Hope this helps....