External Double Layer Dvd Burner

REVIEW: Plextor PX-LB950UE

Blu-ray is an optical storage medium that was initially developed to host High Definition (HD) content. Its main use is storage of HD video, HD games, archiving and storing data of any kind. Blu-ray is regarded as a key optical storage and archiving media, not only for professional archiving in optical libraries or offline storage, but also in private usage―photos, videos or financial records.

For consumer and semi-professional usage Blu-ray offers big storage capacity with a low-per-gigabyte price tag comparison to DVD and CD media, resulting in far fewer discs being required to save large volumes of data. Many laptops are already pre-equipped with a Blu-ray Combo drive (BD player, DVD/CD writer) or even a Blu-ray writer, but various companies such a Plextor offer external Blu-ray writers for upgrading older computers to the new standard. Let’s see what the company’s latest flagship drive brings to the market.

Features

Plextor’s PX-LB950UE (from £117 ) is an external drive that offers speedy Blu-ray playback and recording (or BD-R). Hooked up to a Windows computer via USB 3.0 or eSATA, the wholly black drive isn’t the most attractive model on the market, but its plastic housing and detachable stand are relatively robust. Its biggest selling point, however, is support for double-layer Blu-ray discs, giving the drive a maximum capacity of 50GB (single-layer 25GB) per disc―the equivalent of 10 regular DVDs, 72 CDs, or over 9 hours of HD video.

For videographers or prolific shutterbugs, the benefits are obvious. However, you must remember that BD-R discs supported by the PX-LB950UE can be written to only once, unlike BD-RE (Blu-ray Disc Recordable Erasable) discs that can be erased and re-recorded multiple times. This makes the PX-LB950UE more suitable for archiving and sharing data than as a daily backup solution.

Externally there’s very little going on with the PX-LB950UE. Exuding a feeling of practicality rather than engineering excellence, the PX-LB950UE is a product priced for the mass market. Encased entirely in high-gloss piano black plastic which soon becomes littered with fingerprints, the drive is furnished with some appealing silver highlights and an eye-catching “Blu-ray Disc” logo printed in blue. There’s no external audio output connectors, nor is there a HDMI port for hooking up to a HDTV―the PX-LB950UE is strictly for computer use.

External Dual Layer DVD Burner Fits People Looking For Blazing ...

External dual layer DVD burners are great for those who need to use their DVD burner on more than one PC and because these burners can burn to dual layer discs you will not only get more storage, but also get quicker and more accurate reading and writing. The majority of external DVD burners being sold on the market today however are single layer burners and the external dual layer DVD burner is in fact, a relative newcomer.

Double Storage Capacity

However, the advantage to opting for an external dual layer DVD burner is that it will solve most problems that users face when trying to record to DVDs. The storage capacity of an external single layer DVD burner is only half that of an external dual layer DVD burner and in fact with dual layer DVDs you will never have any problems with burning entire movies – unlike in the case of single layer DVDs.

The popular brands manufacturing the external dual layer DVD burner include names such as Sony, ASUS, Pioneer as well as Samsung and Memorex. Each of these brands make external dual layer DVD burner that support Read/Read-Write as well as +R/+RW operations which means that you can write to both layers of the disc or on just a single layer.

The advantage to choosing an external dual layer DVD burner of course is that it enables you to enjoy greater portability as well as compatibility and you are also able to choose any kind of rewrite format to suit your needs.

The only downside to using an external dual layer DVD burner is its price which, because of the difficulties being faced in the manufacture of standardized external dual layer DVD burners, leads to wide variance in pricing of such devices.

If your main concern is to get optimum DVD burning speeds, then you should consider buying an external dual layer DVD burner such as the SONY-DRX840U that has 12x maximum DVD dual layer burning capabilities. It also boasts of good looks and will adorn your workspace very well. It may not be totally compatible with MAC OS 10.4 though at the same time it does provide 20x burning speeds.

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