Discover best deals on many top brands home electronics only available on eBay!

DVD Recorders

A DVD recorder (or, colloquially, a DVD burner) is an optical disc recorder that records video onto blank writable DVD media. Such devices are available as either installable drives for computers or as standalone components for use in studios or home theater systems. more...

Home

Amplifiers

Audio Accessories & Cables

Cable TV

DVD Players & Recorders

DVD Recorders

Apex

Go Video

JVC

Lite-On

Other Brands

Panasonic

Philips

Pioneer

RCA

Sansui

Sony

Toshiba

DVD/VCR Combo Players

Multi-Disc DVD Players

Portable DVD Players

Single-Disc DVD Players

Digital Video Recorders, PVR

Gadgets & Other Electronics

Home Audio

Home Theater Projectors

Home Theater in a Box

Radios: CB, Ham & Shortwave

VCRs

Vintage Electronics

Technical information

Originally, DVD recorders supported one of three standards: DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW, none of which are directly compatible. As a general rule, however, most current drives support both the + and - standards, while few support the DVD-RAM standard, which is not directly compatible with standard DVD readers.

Recording speed is generally denoted in values of X (similar to CD-ROM usage), where 1X in DVD usage is equal to 1.321 MB/s, roughly equivalent to a 9X CD-ROM. In practice, this is largely an issue confined to computer-based DVD recorders, since standalone units generally record in real time, that is, 1X speed.

Computer-based DVD drives

DVD recorder drives have become standard equipment in many, though not all, computer systems currently on the market, after being initially popularized by the Pioneer/Apple SuperDrive; aftermarket drives as of late 2006 can be US$50 or less. DVD recorder drives can be used in conjunction with DVD authoring software to create DVDs near or equal to commercial quality, and are also widely used for data backup and exchange. As a general rule, computer-based DVD recorders can also handle CD-R and CD-RW media; in fact, a number of standalone DVD recorders actually use drives designed for computers.

Most such devices are designed with parallel ATA interfaces; however, external drives using USB 2.0 or IEEE 1394 are also widely available.

DVD recorder drives are required to respect DVD region codes when reading a disc, but do not impose a region code on written discs unless the code has specifically been written into the disc's content.

DVD duplication systems are generally built out of stacks of these drives, connected through a computer-based backplane.

Standalone DVD recorders

When the standalone DVD recorder first appeared on the Japanese consumer market in 1999, these early units were very expensive, costing between $2500 and $4000 USD. However, as of early 2006, DVD recorders from notable brands are selling for $150 USD and £69 or less, with even lower "street prices". Early units supported only DVD-RAM and DVD-R discs, but the most recent units can record to all major formats DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD+R DL, and are now often coupled with hard-disc based Digital video recorders (DVRs) to improve ease of use. Standalone DVD recorders generally have basic DVD authoring software built in; however, the appearance of the finished DVD is very basic and usually completely under the control of the unit.