Saturday, July 17, 2004
DVD Burner Prices Crash - Great for Consumers!
Posted by Jason Dunn in "HARDWARE" @ 03:29 PM
I've been reading about the dropping prices of DVD burners, but I didn't realize how low they've been getting until I went out shopping today. I've been testing out Snapsteam's Beyond TV3 loaded onto a Shuttle ST62K, and it's very cool. The Beyond TV3 software is excellent, but the "circle of life" so to speak isn't complete because I have no method of getting shows from the Shuttle to my TV set upstairs. The Hauppauge card that came with the Snapstream bundle doesn't have TV out, and I'm waiting to get the Samsung DLP until I integrate a computer-based PVR in with my main entertainment setup. Anyway, all this is to say that I wanted to put a DVD burner in the ST62K and burn DVDs so I could watch them upstairs.
I went shopping for one today, and was surprised to find an LG 12x burner that also had dual-layer writing abilities - I wasn't expecting to see a DL burner in Canada for several more months. It was selling for $199 CAN (about $154 USD) - only $50 more than I paid for my 8x LG burner I bought a mere two months ago. It wasn't until I hit local vendor Memory Express that I found proof of DVD prices falling through the floor. I picked up my first BenQ product: an 8x DVD burner. In this world of 12x and 16x burners, that might not seem very exciting. But here's what made it killer: the drive was only $94 CAN ($72 USD), and the drive is hardware DL compatible! There's a sticker on the box stating that by September 30th, BenQ will release a firmware update that will make the able to burn dual-layer DVDs. Under $100 CAN for a DL burner? It doesn't get much nicer than that. Things have gotten to the point now where it doesn't make much sense to put a regular CD-R in a computer - this is truly the year when DVD burners will become standard issue on computers (are you listening Dell?).
I went shopping for one today, and was surprised to find an LG 12x burner that also had dual-layer writing abilities - I wasn't expecting to see a DL burner in Canada for several more months. It was selling for $199 CAN (about $154 USD) - only $50 more than I paid for my 8x LG burner I bought a mere two months ago. It wasn't until I hit local vendor Memory Express that I found proof of DVD prices falling through the floor. I picked up my first BenQ product: an 8x DVD burner. In this world of 12x and 16x burners, that might not seem very exciting. But here's what made it killer: the drive was only $94 CAN ($72 USD), and the drive is hardware DL compatible! There's a sticker on the box stating that by September 30th, BenQ will release a firmware update that will make the able to burn dual-layer DVDs. Under $100 CAN for a DL burner? It doesn't get much nicer than that. Things have gotten to the point now where it doesn't make much sense to put a regular CD-R in a computer - this is truly the year when DVD burners will become standard issue on computers (are you listening Dell?).
