Burn baby, burn

Stan Beer
Monday, 26 September 2005 10:00

Your IT - Entertainment

BenQ launches fastest burner

BenQ DW1640, $119.95, www.benq.com.au

Burning a DVD on your PC is now as common as burning CDs was a couple of years ago. And just as CD burners increased their write or burn speed every few months, the same has happened with the DVD burner.

DVD burning also changed when dual layer DVD discs became available. As opposed to single layer DVD discs that stored 2 hours of DVD quality video or 4.7Gb of data, the new dual layer DVD discs store 4 hours of DVD quality video or 8.5Gb of data.

While these discs started life at around $15 a pop twelve months ago, they're now available for less than $9 each, and less when purchased in bulk. This price is still far more expensive that single layer DVD discs which cost well under $1 in bulk, but as with all things tech the price of dual layer DVD discs will fall further, and hopefully sooner rather than later.

BenQ's new internal DVD burner for PCs increases the burning speed of dual-layer DVD+R discs to 8x, faster than any other drive at the moment for this format, with previous speeds being 4x and before that 2.4x, and before that probably 1x.

Burn speeds for other discs are very fast too, with standard single layer DVD±R record speeds at 16x. The other 'new' type of dual-layer disc, in the DVD-R format, burns at a respectable 4x, DVD+RW speeds are 8x, DVD-RW speeds are 6x and CD-Rs burn at 48x.

BenQ uses a new 'dual cooling system' to reduce the potential for over-heating during high-speed reading and writing. BenQ's own 'QSuite' recording software bundle is included and the drive is separately available with either a black or white front panel.

Give the competitive price, this is a solid competitor to other drives on the market with the fastest dual-layer DVD+R recording speed available.

ALEX ZAHAROV-REUTT