Need recommendation for a Firewire DVD burner for PC and Mac

Needs to work with Toast on the Mac, and Nero (or some other) burning
software on windows.  It would also be great if it also worked with
iDVD 3 on the Mac.

Looking for something inexpensive.  Hoping to pay under $200.

The DVDs will be played back on consumer DVD players, so compatibility
with the consumer DVD format is critical.

It would also be great if it worked with DVD X Copy 1.5 on the PC.

thanxs in advnce

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Clarification of Question by sherpaj-ga on 23 Mar 2004 21:15 PST

Getting close to needing to buy something.  help!

Looks like something that would work with iDVD4 on the Mac, will be a
requirement.  I don't know how well that program does with non-appple,
firewire burners, but I heard there was a hack or something to make it
work.

Hello.

When cross-platform OS and DVD player compatibility is an important
factor and when you need to ensure that your burner will work with
most (if not all) of the good burning apps out there, you want to buy
a mature product rather than one that's brand new, offers loads but
will take another year to be fully supported and have its bugs ironed
out..

The recordable DVD format has proven to be quite tamperamental,
especially with the huge variety of discs and burners out there.

One burner that has steadily performed well with almost every kind of
recordable disc and offers good results on most players is the Sony
DRU-500A.

It is still available for sale either as an internal or external drive.
If you buy it, go here:

http://www.sony-cp.com/it/dvd/support/downloads/firmware/500a10f.zip

and download the Firmware Upgrade Version 2.0F (not H) as this is
known to be the best and most compatible version so far.

Ritek, TDK and Intenso discs are cheap and good for burning. Prefer
the blue-coated ones.

Hope this helps.

Regards

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Request for Answer Clarification by sherpaj-ga on 08 Apr 2004 14:54 PDT

if i get the Sony DRU-500A  from azazon or somewhere, where do i get a
case, firewire, and what kind.  I have had poor luck buying firewire
cases and putting them in raw HDs and getting them to consistantly
mount on the mac (even os10.3).

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Clarification of Answer by mantrac-ga on 09 Apr 2004 05:15 PDT

Hello.

You can either buy a firewire case as you suggested (Lacie are very
good at that - http://www.lacie.com ) or buy an external Sony drive
such as the Sony DRX510UL which is very similar to the one I
suggested.

Look here for detailed specs and pricing.
http://www.digitaletc.com/go/item/3462

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Clarification of Answer by mantrac-ga on 23 Apr 2004 03:12 PDT

If there is anything else I can be of help with, please let me know.

Regards

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Request for Answer Clarification by sherpaj-ga on 23 Apr 2004 11:43 PDT

do you think it will work with iDVD 3 on the mac side?

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Clarification of Answer by mantrac-ga on 25 Apr 2004 04:24 PDT

iDVD3 should record onto it too.

If you have however another superdrive on that machine as well, (the
original superdrive that came with the Mac), don't forget to do the
following so that iDVD3 can see it...

Under the iTunes prefs, under Burning set the burning drive to
whichever you want to use (the Sony in this case) so that all other
burning-aware iApps are amde aware of this. I found this little trick
to work every time with my iMac and iDVD3.

Just a heads up.

Sony has announced a Firewire/USB2 External DVD burner that burns to
BOTH layers of a disc's recorded side.  This provides 8.5GB of storage
on a single side of a disc.  (This compares to "4.7GB" capacity of
current single-layer burners.)

The external model DRX-700UL is scheduled to be available at the end
of June at an initial price of $330.

Might be worth the wait.

http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-5174122.html

This CNN article notes that the external drive should work with Mac and Windows.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/03/22/dvd.burners.ap/

It does not currently appear in Nero's supported drives page, though
this Sony press release says that Nero will be bundled with the
drives.  The next article indicates that Nero will be the first to
support Dual-Layer burning.
http://news.sel.sony.com/pressrelease/4532
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/9258

I didn't post this as an answer, because I presume that you are
looking for a model on the market now.  But, I at least wanted you to
be aware of this development since these drives should hit the market
in the next two months.

(In the midst of a standards war, let's not even worry about the 27GB
BluRay or HD-DVD burning until the end of 2005... though Sony already
has a BluRay video recorder in Japan.)

snapanswer-ga, thanks hugely for your comment.  as usual, you are
beyond super helpful. If I could wait and get this, I would.