Panasonic DVD-RAM/R Drive

Rewritable DVDs give you far more backup capacity than CD-R/RW discs but the cost has been so prohibitive that few have taken the plunge and bought a DVD burner. Panasonic's new combination DVD-RAM/R is touted as being a drive for retail customers, but its $600 price tag (for the ATAPI internal version) is still pretty prohibitive. The DVDBurner includes DVD video recording/editing software and is backed by a one-year Panasonic warranty. In addition to reading from and writing to both DVD-RAM (rewritable) and DVD-R (write-once) discs, the multifunction DVDBurner provides the functionality of the DVD Forum specifications for DVD-RAM and DVD-R General, including compatibility with DVD video players, recorders, and DVD-ROM drives. By switching between 650 nanometer (nm) and 780 nm wavelength laser strengths and one objective lens, the DVDBurner can write to and read from general-purpose 4.7GB DVD-R discs and 2.6GB/5.2GB to 4.7GB/9.4GB DVD-RAM. Other features include the ability to play back DVD video, DVD-ROM and DVD-R discs and 24X CD media read performance. Using 4.7GB DVD-R General media, the Panasonic DVDBurner provides a transfer rate of up to 11.08 Mbps. Seek times are 75ms for DVD-RAM and 65ms for DVD-R, DVD-ROM and CD media. It all sounds cool, I just wish it were cheaper.