Home DVD Burners
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The prices is coming down to rock bottom. You can actually buy-in for under $200, but there are some factors you have to fully understand.

First is that not every piece of software is compatible with every DVD burner. You may actually have to buy a $350 burner instead of a $200 burner if you already own software, because it won’t see the $200 unit!

Most low cost DVD burners are “re-labeled” generic units. Ask for the manufacturer and the model number of the DVD. Then check the internet to see if your software is listed or write your tech support for the capture card and software to see if they know of compatibility problems.

See if you can return the burner if you take it home and it won’t work. Let the store know you’ll simply come back and get another brand until you find one that works. Otherwise pay to let the store install the DVD burner and make sure you tell them it has to work with your software otherwise you want free software or another burner!

There are two basic types of home burners: DVD-R which are fairly compatible with most DVD players. DVD+R which is not, however many DVD+R burners are also supposed to make DVD-R disks.

Don’t expect your DVD-R disk to play in every DVD player, either. Many people have first and second generation home DVD players and most of these will not read DVD-R disks, just like early CD players would ready the CD-R disks back in the 1990’s.

DVD-R disks also don’t work like professional DVD-ROM disks. You don’t get “authoring” or those menus with options like you find on a theatrical movie with music playing in the background. You also don’t get the full capacity of the double layered DVD9 disks.

In order to get these bells and whistles you have to go to a Macintosh DVD rig or add-on over $1,000 worth of special burner and software to your PC unit. These probably are compatible with DVD5, which is the original commercial process. This means for longer movies you will have to make two disks as you will only get 4.5 Mb instead of 9 Mb they get using the doubling chip found in the higher quality professional DVD9 burners.

Authoring uses a different header file and smaller size track width. This is another reason why DVD-R don’t play in some players, although most of the reason is the same as with older CD-R units, the reflection properties of your DVD-R disk is different than a professionally replicated DVD.

Many DVD-R disks will, however, play in most modern home units and computer DVD-ROM drives. They will just automatically show your movie with no bells and whistles, which is good enough for most uses.

You also can’t generally replicate from DVD-R. To mass produce use need to make a digital tape of the program material using a compatible digital back-up tape unit in a format acceptable to the pressing plants.

Finally in these plain label, no-name, close-out price burners you can’t expect support, compatibility with all software, hardware, upgrades and repairs. These units are, for all intents and purposes, disposable units. They break you have to go buy another unit for $199.99.