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Hardware Sony Announces 18x DVD±R Drives
Anh Tuan Huynh (Blog) - September 19, 2006 4:01 PM

16 comment(s) - last by xsilver.. on Sep 20 at 10:19 AM

Sony DRU-830A

Sony DRX-830U/830UL-T

Mainstream 18x DVD burning for all

Sony has announced its new DRX-830 series of DVD multi-format DVD/CD burners. The new 830 series arrive in three different models—the internal DRU-830A, external DRX-830U and Macintosh and PC compatible external DRX-830UL-T. All three drives are capable of burning DVD±R media at 18x, a slight speed increase from current 16x drives. While DVD±R media is burnt at 18x, DVD±R DL media burning remains at 8x. Other supported media formats include DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, CD-R and CD-RW. All three drives are equipped with a 2MB buffer and feature Sony’s Power-Burn buffer under-run protection technology.

The DRU-830A is an internal IDE burner and is PC compatible. A black replacement front bezel is included with the DRU-830A to color match with black cases. The DRX-830U features a USB 2.0 interface for external connectivity. The PC compatible DRX-830A and DRX-830U include Nero 7 for burning tasks. Sony’s DRX-830UL-T is Mac and PC compatible. It sports a USB 2.0 and Firewire 1394a interface. It includes Nero 7 for PC burning and Roxio Toast 6 Lite for Mac burning tasks.

Sony’s DRU-830A is shipping now and will be available from retailers for $90. A $20 mail in rebate is available for the DRU-830A though. The external DRX-830U is expected to ship in October while the DRX-830UL-T won’t arrive till December. Pricing for the DRX-830U and DRX-830UL-T will be $130 and $150 respectively.

Plextor also released its 18x DVD±R earlier this year while Liteon released its 18x DVD±R last month, with 20x drives expected in the near future.

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Serial Optical Drives.....

By sarvic on 9/19/2006 4:50:44 PM , Rating: 5

So are we ever gonna have any other serial ATA optical drives coming out other than Plextor??
Why are we still using IDE?

RE: Serial Optical Drives.....

By Garreye on 9/19/2006 4:56:21 PM , Rating: 5

Because the companies are cheap...it costs them money to develop and produce SATA parts and it doesn't improve performance over PATA...its basically the same reason why most companies are still produce PCI cards and not PCI-E

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RE: Serial Optical Drives.....

By imaheadcase on 9/19/2006 5:42:29 PM , Rating: 2

Well to be fair, some hardware still does work better on PCI for latency. Creative said they would not make a PCI-E soundcard cause of problems with latency. Not sure if thats more creative smoke though. hehe

I read some other hardware has problem to can't think of what offhand though.

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RE: Serial Optical Drives.....

By PrinceGaz on 9/19/2006 6:51:04 PM , Rating: 3

Given the problems many X-Fi owners are reporting about crackling sounds seemingly caused by PCI bus issues, and the problems Creative had in the past with the SB Live cards (the forerunners of the Audigy series), the reason Creative has not made a PCIe soundcard is because they need at least two attempts to produce a properly working PCI soundcard.

I wouldn't want to imagine the troubles facing any purchaser of Creative's first PCIe soundcard.

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RE: Serial Optical Drives.....

By toyota on 9/19/2006 10:40:13 PM , Rating: 2

How does Dell get companies to make sata optical drives for them??

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RE: Serial Optical Drives.....

By dice1111 on 9/20/2006 1:25:42 AM , Rating: 3

By being able to pressure the companies with buying bulk products. Anyone will do anything for the right price.

(I don't have a dell, so I have no real idea why, only speculating)

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RE: Serial Optical Drives.....

By The Blue Moose on 9/20/2006 12:57:53 AM , Rating: 3

Actually, most (if not all) SATA optical drives that have been released so far (including Plextor if I'm not mistaken) are actually PATA units with a SATA adapter mounted on the rear. Remove the adapter and you find a standard PATA interface. Hence, there is no performance advantage.

There really isn't a performance-based reason to switch optical drives to SATA. Even the fastest drives don't come close to hitting an IDE-imposed performance barrier.

The only real reason to switch is to hasten the demise of the ribbon cable. Ditching the IDE controller would also mean fewer chips and/or less silicon needed for motherboards. Hopefully shaving a couple of dollars off the price.

I'm all for an all-out conversion to SATA. But, let's not dilude ourselves into thinking it will mean a big increase in optical drive performance.

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RE: Serial Optical Drives.....

By xsilver on 9/20/2006 10:19:43 AM , Rating: 2

Actually, I think the real problem is that the newer mobos are reducing support for PATA channels.
965/975 chipsets only have 1 pata channel which will spell trouble for many users that have 2 optical drives and and older pata hdd.
May have to dig up an old pci IDE card to solve things in the future.

if you're asking the question of why having 2 optical drives is nessessary, ask why not? they're so cheap and the convienience!

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RE: Serial Optical Drives.....

By OrSin on 9/20/2006 10:07:54 AM , Rating: 2

IDE is stiil used becasue all OS supoort it natively. When Vista out they might start going more SATA. Have you even tried to setup a system with no ide hard drive. Image how bad it would be with no ide CD for the OS. Its jsut to big a hassle wiht no gain at all. Plus all MB still have IDE so why not use it.

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Samsung's SH-S182D is only $30...

By therealnickdanger on 9/19/2006 4:47:32 PM , Rating: 2

... and is available now. How can Sony justify even a $70 after-MIR price?

RE: Samsung's SH-S182D is only $30...

By plewis00 on 9/19/2006 5:05:08 PM , Rating: 4

Well to be fair, $70 is the Retail box price and not the OEM price. It also looks quite nice. I thought Sony drives were now all built by Liteon?

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Wow! 2X more speed!

By frobizzle on 9/19/2006 4:49:01 PM , Rating: 2

It'll be heart stopping! (I wonder what sort of DRM code is hidden in the firmware?)

RE: Wow! 2X more speed!

By PurdueRy on 9/19/2006 5:05:22 PM , Rating: 3

Actually it's .125x more speed

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Looks like a wii

By Esquire on 9/19/2006 5:00:54 PM , Rating: 2

copy cats

Power-Burn buffer

By codeThug on 9/19/2006 11:23:57 PM , Rating: 2

"All three drives are equipped with a 2MB buffer and feature Sony’s Power-Burn buffer under-run protection technology. "

Ahhh Power-Burn buffer...

So that's where they are stuffing all those recalled batteries of late.

sata? are you kidding this is antiquated Sony we are talking about

By FXi on 9/19/2006 11:51:19 PM , Rating: 1

Sony will be the very last vendor ever to move to sata. Progressive might refer to scanning tv's but certainly not to company philosophy.

LOL, however Plex has yet to get rid of enough of its stock of 755SA's so they feel they can start selling the 760SA outside of Europe. So folks, hurry up and buy up those 755SA's ok?

Thanks!