OK... so up till just a few hours ago I believed that it was impossible to buy a DVD Burner for less than 200 dollars... then I found a few on www.newegg.com that cost around 150! So now I have fallen behind on the format wars, and what is the standard in burning speed, etc. etc. What I need to know is... A) How long will a 4X burner take to burn an entire Video DVD? B) DVD-RW vs. DVD+RW, I believe the format issue has yet to be resolved, so is my best bet to go with a multi-burn drive that does it all for the extra money? C) What is the best software for taking my AVI's that I've created and making them into DVD's that can be played in a DVD player? D) What format does that use? E) Why can't you buy a DVD Burner in the stores for less than $250 ? Feel free to answer all, some, or just one of the questions. - Thanks a million in advance - TR

"A) How long will a 4X burner take to burn an entire Video DVD?" depends on the length of the video but at 4X you might save jobs like that for over night burning. "B) DVD-RW vs. DVD+RW, I believe the format issue has yet to be resolved, so is my best bet to go with a multi-burn drive that does it all for the extra money? " the DVD+RW(cheaper) is said to be about 75% compatible with DVD-RW. If you want compatibility with all DVD videos and other computers a multi write is the way to go. "C) What is the best software for taking my AVI's that I've created and making them into DVD's that can be played in a DVD player?" That's up to you (most DVDrw's come with this software) but if you need to take a tape and convert it to DVD, you'll need a converter between the tape machine and your computer. "D) What format does that use? " it varies, there are a few depending on the media you choose cd disks use CVD (i think) among others. DVD media and hardware typically use MP3 but again there are others. As with any formay you have to have the CODEC(coder/decoder) to process it. "E) Why can't you buy a DVD Burner in the stores for less than $250?" Economics. wait until the blue laser DVD drives come out in mass. prices will drop like a stone. Sorry about the vague answers but DVD technology is like that. For my own purposes i have a DVD+RW that i can use for data backup. It writes like writing to a floppy. will other computers DVD drives read the disk? probably. but since i use it for backup it's little consideration for me. the nice thing is aprox 4GB of data space on a single sided disk. I've also had success playing rented videos on it as well.

Here's something to chew on, The DVD drive compatibility list