Samsung TS-H552U

[Brian Ellis]

Has anyone tried this DL DVD burner? If so comments (neg and pos welcomed). I can source these locally at only £37 + VAT, and that seems good value for this benighted nation, where prices are nearly always exaggerated.

[wkulecz]

Got a good review at :

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1754116,00.asp

They considered the best choice if price was important, but they liked the Sony better.

--wally.

[Brian Ellis]

The article referred to the H552B, not U. This was the 2.4 x DL version whereas the U is the 4x and has a totally different firmware which Samsung state must not be interchanged. Difficult to judge, therefore.

[wkulecz]

Sorry I didn't pick up on the U vs. B

Since the DL stuff is pretty new, not sure last year's model will be a good buy in the long run (such as it is for these things).

If current production drives are too expensive I'd suggest waiting a while to see how these work out.

DL media runs about $9-10 a disk around here when I can find it, so I wouldn't be in a big hurry to buy a drive until the media situation improves.

Compatability of burned DL media in existing players is a whole nother can of worms I'm about to open

Even amoung players that claim to support DVD-R/RW & DVD+R/RW I still see disks that glitch in the same spot everytime on one player but play perfectly thru that same spot on another.

Call me skeptical, but I doubt DL will help this situation.

--wally.

[Brian Ellis]

I've found out the difference. The B model burns DL at 2.4 x max, while the U model burns at 4 x and is more recent.

I agree DL is still an open book. There are several ways of implementing it, apparently. Some burn layer 1 from inside to outside and then layer 2 from outside in, while others do layer 2 from inside out. The buffer has to be big enough to cater for the changeover. Then there are differences between video and data formatting.

As for playback, on one of my players, there is a glitch with pressed commercial videos at the presumed layer changeover, while on my other one, I see nothing, even when I look for it. Again, I presume it's a matter of buffer memory.

Disks are cheaper here: I can get them from Germany at €3.99 each ($5.20). I'll certainly use SL for 95% of my work, though.

[jeff b]

I've been using the Sony DRU-710A for a few months, and I'm very happy with it. Since DL media isn't cheap, I've only burned two disks, but they've both came out fine. SL disks come out fine 100% of the time for me with this drive, so far. I've only used the reccommended media from the Sony website.

Jeff B

[Brian Ellis]

Picked up one of these Samsung drives this morning and slipped it in in place of the Pioneer AO3. Did a test burn on a dicey make of SL 4x DVD-R disc, using DVD-WS2 and it burnt OK and plays fine. Pas de problème! I imagine with one of my good discs, even less than zero problems! Not able to test on DL discs, as I haven't bought any yet!