want to buy a new DVD writer... suggestions plz...

If your available connections permit, make sure to get a SATA drive, not an IDE.

seekermeister said:

If your available connections permit, make sure to get a SATA drive, not an IDE.

yeah... ok :)

Myself, I've used Sony drives without any problems for many years. My latest Dell came with some no-brand drive though and it has problems with DVD-DL. Basically, apart from DVD-DL I've never had any problems with DVD writers, but this double layer stuff turns out to be tricky by some reason. Haven't tried the Blu-Ray writes though, the blank Blu-Rays are still rather expensive (as in, more than I want to pay for a blank disk).

I've had a good run with LG. I'd buy a DVD rewriter with Blu Ray reader capability.

It is tough to beat Samsung's drives, in terms of price and quality. I usually pay around $20 for a new drive whenever I need one, and they work great, often getting some of the highest review scores. That's all I use anymore.

linnemeyerhere said:

Blu Ray is nice but the cost is very high still and this is where I would go with a larger name brand.

R/W yes. Not reader only.
I recently bought a Plextor USB blu ray reader for $59.

You can get DVD R/W + blu ray readers at lower costs.

One reason that I can think of is the cost of writing BD only starts at the hardware purchase, the cost of BD media is out of sight. Personally, the only thing that I can think of that would need such a large disk capacity is writing backup images to disk, to cut down on the number of disks required, but since I don't burn them to disk anyway, and even with the reduction in disks, the additional cost is prohibitive.

I suppose that one could burn multiple movies to BD media (not sure how one would select a particular movie) to compact their DVD collection, but since legal reasons make it necessary to keep the DVD, and the cost of BD duplication is so high, I can see no point in doing so. Besides having the comfort of knowing that you could write a BD, if you wanted to, what is the actual value of paying for something that you can't use?