HP widens scope of DVD drive
Written: May 03 '03
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Pros: Firewire and USB 2.0 compatible
Cons: does not support Apple Firewire-ready computers, burns to DVDplusR/RW only and hence limits compatibility
The Bottom Line: HP's DVD200e is not such a great choice due to DVDplusR/RW incompatibility. I recommend Pioneer's DVR-A05/105 or better still the Sony DRU-500A which supports both DVD-R/RW and DVDplusR/RW.
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| ozgamer's Full Review: Hewlett Packard DVD Writer Dvd200e DVD+RW Burner |
The hot ticket of PC peripherals at the moment are DVD-recordable drives with big names such as Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Ricoh and Pioneer launching new PC-based recorders in recent times. HP's new external DVD200e burner comes not a moment too soon.
The company's original DVD100i internal drive could not write cheap DVDplusR discs, only the more expensive DVDplusRW discs, which left many DVD100i buyers in the United States disgruntled. HP was forced into a face-saving move, offering US DVD100i owners a $US99 upgrade to the DVD200i, which supports DVDplusR.
The DVD200e is quite a good drive, sporting recording speeds of 2.4X on DVDplusR and DVDplusRW discs, 12X-speed on CD-R, 10X-speed on CD-RW discs plus the ability to read CD and DVD-ROM discs. Because the drive can record up to 4.7Gb of data onto a single disc, a high-speed data interface is needed if the burning process is not to take days.
And here, HP does the job right, not only including a high-speed 400Mbps Firewire (IEE 1394) port but also the new even-faster 480Mbps USB 2.0 interface. USB 2.0 is backward compatible with standard USB 1.1 found on just about all PCs and notebooks produced in the past three years but the high-speed support really is needed to make the burn process work.
But despite having Firewire on board, the DVD200e does not support Apple Firewire-ready computers. One of the obvious applications for a DVD-recordable drive is to create personal DVD movies. However, the DVD200e(as with all DVDplusR/RW drives) has one problem - incompatibility)
There are two major DVD-recordable formats slugging it out for market dominance DVD-R/RW and DVDplusR/RW. The problem for DVDplusR/RW is that it is the least compatible with standalone DVD players. Neither format is perfectly compatible with every DVD player ever made but DVDplusR/RW is the worse of the two. In fact, DVDplusR was created to improve its compatibility but no one can say just how compatible the new format is.
From experience, users are likely to find the lower-cost, Chinese-made, no-name DVD players have better compatibility than the big-name brands but should check first.
The DVD200e also comes with a good range of software to cover everything from burning discs to creating DVD movies, backing up your hard disk and playing DVD movies.
HP borrows Veritas' RecordNow as its burning software and uses Sonic's MyDVD to create DVD movies captured from Arc-Soft's Showbiz video-editing/capture software. To play those discs back, PowerDVD is the tool of choice.
HP's SimpleBackup makes this drive well worth a look as a portable storage-archiving system and, provided the computer has a compatible drive or player, the DVD200e does
the job when it comes to DVD movies.
But if wide-compatibility is important, it is better to look at Panasonic's DVD Movie Studio kit or Pioneer's new internal DVR-A05/105 DVD-R/RW drive instead.
On the plus side, the DVD200e was the first burner available that was USB 2.0 compatible. Sony's external DRX-120L comes with FireWire only, so in terms of application the DVD200e is a better bet but at $400 it is not cheap and there will be faster and more compatible DVD burners released not long from now.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 400
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
ozgamer
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Member: Setzer
Reviews written: 60
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