‘Affordable’ DVD recorder from Panasonic
By Ian Burley
24th August - 2001
The ‘DVD Burner’ is what Panasonic calls its new DVD-R General drive, the LF-D311. This is a write-once DVD-R recorder that is also DVD-RAM (rewritable) compatible. Panasonic also describes it as ‘low-cost’ - the price is £549 inc.VAT.
Now that some CD-R/CD-RW drives are approaching the £50 mark, £549 doesn’t seem cheap, especially as Panasonic’s DVD Burner can only read CD-R drives and not write them. However, until recently a recordable DVD drive, apart from DVD-RAM, would have set you back a couple of thousand quid.
The drive is capable of storing up to 4.7GB of data per side of either DVD-R or DVD-RAM media. It’s also compatible with older 2.6GB per side DVD-RAM media.
DVD-RAM, which the drive supports in both read and write modes, is good value, but suffers a major handicap in not being compatible with many DVD ROM drives. DVD-R General discs should be compatible with all DVD drives.
Panasonic has been the main proponent of DVD-RAM over the last three years and the platform remains the sole volume offering in re-writable DVD. The DVD+RW re-writable DVD format that is designed to be compatible with ordinary DVD ROM drives is being promised for autumn delivery this year by Hewlett Packard, for one. However, DVD+RW players have been promising such drives for as long as DVD-RAM has been shipping, which is around 3 years now.
The Panasonic DVD Burner is an interesting combination of DVD-R and DVD-RAM. It’s just a shame that Panasonic and its ally, Hitachi, haven’t been able to make more ordinary DVD ROM drives DVD-RAM compatible.
www.panasonic-industrial.com/dvdburner
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