Businessweek.com has an article that should answer the question; "Is it the right time to buy a DVD burner ?". In this article they take a look at two DVD burners: the HP Dvd200i DVD+RW/+R and the Sony DRU-120A drive. They were compared with the Pioneer A04, one of the most populair DVD burners at the moment.
Before testing, my hopes for the HP and Sony drives were sky high. Their ability to write to DVD+R media--billed as a potent combination of DVD+RW speed and DVD-R compatibility--was supposed to end the standards debate. |
The drives performed impressively. Both the HP and the Sony units burned DVD+RW and DVD+R at a blazing 2.4X (3.324 MBps), CD-R at 12X, and CD-RW at 10X--significantly faster than most of the speeds the rival Pioneer drive offers, though the latter's all-important DVD-R write speed is comparable, at 2.77 MBps. The DVD+RW drives also support background DVD+RW formatting in hardware to save CPU cycles, and both DVD+RW/R discs take less time than DVD-RW/R discs to finalize when small amounts of data are written.
The chief differences between the new HP and Sony drives involve their outward appearance and their software bundles. Otherwise, both units have the same controls, back plate, and performance. The Dvd200i and the DRU-120A also share the ability to read both -R and -RW discs in addition to their native +R/+RW formats. You'll find this kind of bet-hedging throughout the DVD universe, as numerous drives and players play media that they don't officially claim to have compatibility with.
Read the entire article here. All burners cost around 500 USD and in conclusion the answer to the topic is: No ! You'd better wait till there are drives that can write multiple formats.
Source: Businessweek.com
