Sony DRU510-A

I have been into computers for a few years, and people regularly bring me their computers to fix. I bought the Sony DRU510-A DVD Recorder in the summer and paid around 270 for it. D*mn expensive (compared to those cheap $100 dvd burners), but remember... you get what you pay for... and Sony makes quality drives. It also comes with an 8MB buffer (which was one of the selling points, in my mind). Physically, the drive has run like a champ... I have nothing to complain about there. The "Veritas" software bundle did not impress me that much though, but it does what its supposed to do, I guess. The "Sonic" software it came with was rather disappointing. When you compress a movie to prepare for DVD, it takes forever... and I mean forever (my computer is a good one too, hand built with the best). Also, when its done, and you have burned it to DVD, you will notice that the sound will begin to lag behind the video. My suggestion, don't use the "Sonic" software... and spend the extra money on DVD-RW's... after all, you can re-burn them if you ever get tired of what you have burned, or something goes wrong when you burn. Finally, it comes with "Power-DVD" software. Now this stuff is the best software that the drive came with. It has codecs that will play almost all other movies and video files on your computer (downloaded?!?!?!. hehe).

Here's Sony's website for the drive :

http://sony.storagesupport.com/dvdrw/dru510adwn.htm

(working as of 3/12/04)