The famous Zazonz's NEC DVD burner driver

Hi.

I own a Thinkpad T43 and as it does not come with good DL DVD burners, I'm going to get a external one.

Zazonz, I've found a lot of recommendations from you about the NEC drives. Could you please summarize their qualities that make you consider them so good? Specially regarding the media, does it accept most of them? Have you really extensively tested it to burn DL discs? What media have you successfully used? Where is the best place to buy DVD media online?

Thanks a lot!

 

They burn faster using the correct media and offer very good burn quality, though still not as good as a good desktop drive.

My NEC, the 6500, will burn a full DVD in about 10.5 minutes using Taiyo Yuden discs. That is about 2.5 minutes faster than any other laptop drive I have seen and I have seen quite a few.

If you scan the burned discs using Nero CD-DVD Speed, the disc quality is high and the error rate is low. My old Mash!ita drive was practically off the chart at the end of the disc. I did have playback issues with the Panasonic burned discs which I have not with the NEC burned discs.

I would recommend TY discs as they are the best. You can get them at places like Rima.com and FujiFilm discs marked Made in Japan are TYs if you prefer to buy locally. You have to be careful buying online as there are fakes around.

The only issue I have had with the NEC is with burned CDs. When burned at 24x, they sometimes have skipping issues when played back in my car. If I burn at 16x it usually works well. I usually buy the free after rebate CDs from OfficeMax or OfficeDepot so the quality of the discs is not real high. I only use them in my car for a few days and throw them out so I don’t need the best. TY also makes very good blank CDs if interested.

I have not see the newest NEC, the 6750, but the 5500, 6500, and 6650 I have were all good. Good Luck.

 

Thank you very much for the info, Zazonz.

Just one doubt: when you say a "full DVD" do you mean a "DL (double layer) DVD", as I mentioned? Is these Taiyo Yuden disks DL?

I'm particularly concerned about thise matter because my main reason to get the DVD burner is to make backups for my movie DVDs (which are normally DL, as far as I know).

About the "fakes" issue. How can I be sure that they are original?

 

When I say full disc, I mean a full 4.7GB single layer disc. The 6500 burns DL media at 2.4x. A full disc burn comes in around 45 minutes. The newer 6750 burns DL discs at 8x. I would expect a full burn to come in around 25 minutes. You are probably better off using single layer media as they are much less expensive. DVD Shrink can do the job.

You might want to check over on CDFreaks for information on fake TYs. There is lots of good stuff over there.

 

Thanks again, Zazonz.
I'll probably follow your suggestion and get one of them with the external enclosure.
Let's see what my experience will be...

 

Also, if you are going to burn a DL disc, I would suggest Verbatim discs as most other DL media is inferior.

 

MY RULE OF THUMB =

Burn everything @ 12
Burn DVD @ 4

Works fine I use generic disks found from good old bestekpc!