Witch should I buy?

[slappy_pappy]

I'm gonna buy myself an dvd burner but I'm not shore witch one to get. I'm a total n00b when it comes to dvd media, the main thing I'm going to use it for is to backup dvd movies.

Witch one of these two would you buy?

http://www.fixaren.com/index.asp?url=http%3A//www.fixaren.com/shop/product.asp%3Fcatid%3D17%26subcatid%3D148%26prodid%3D36589

http://www.memorexlive.com/cgi-bin/product_package_info.pl?id=306

And how do you backup movies? I'm guessing it's not as easy as backing up a cd because a dvd-r disk can only hold 4,7gb and that's generally smaller then most movies are.

Thanks in advance!

[anoopkumar]

I bought the Pioneer A-04 recently (I think it's the same as the 104) and it works perfectly. I was able to get it for US$350 and with a US$50 rebate, it will end up costing US$300. It comes with Sonic MyDVD, which is a DVD authoring program and a couple of other programs to let you backup hard drives to a DVD-R or -RW.

One thing to watch for with recordable/rewritable DVD burners is that there are 2 incompatible, competing formats: -R and -RW versus +R and +RW. They seem to be running about even right now, so it's hard to tell which will win out. The main reason to be concerned about which type of burner to buy is that not all stand-alone players will reliably read either format. Check here for compatibility reports about various stand-alone players:

http://www.vcdhelper.com/dvdplayers.php

However, I just read recently that in October, Sony is coming out with a burner that will write to both formats. It will supposedly cost US$350, so it's definitely worth looking into if you don't already have a burner.

http://www.sonystyle.com/home/item.jsp?hierc=9683&itemid=50044

[minibanana.com]

DVD + R/RW

I believe those drives are going to win the race because most of the big names are going with them, ie. HP, Verbatim, Sony, etc. I had both HP's, the 100i and the 200i but switched to a Pioneer DVR-104 because DVD-R are the most compatible and I need it for backing up movies. I just hope they bring the size up to about 9.4 gig since most movies don't fit in the under 4.7 gb dvd's.