Their review findings weren't very surprising, only real cons in the drive were in copy-protected audio extraction and replication, which shouldn't be a big deal for most of the users anyway.
Only real annoyance is the fact that is happening secretly around the world nowadays -- virtually all new DVD drives, manufactured in 2002, are capped so that the DVD ripping can be done only at max 2x speed. Thanks to MPAA.. This holds true for virtually all major brand drives built in this year -- so, if you go and buy a DVD writer, don't throw your good olde DVD-ROM out of the window just yet, if you don't want to spend half an hour ripping a movie. But the drive itself seems to be rather nice, supporting 4x DVD-R burning (that's around 15mins per full DVD-R disc for you, who don't know anything about DVD writing speeds) and 2x DVD-RW burning.
The price of the retail package should be around €349 in Europe. The retail package includes one blank 4X DVD-R disc, one blank 2x DVD-RW disc, Sonic MyDVD, CinePlayer, VOB Instant CD/DVD v6.5, manuals and cables. The OEM price will be slightly lower (==just the drive).
According to DVDWriters.co.uk, the drive will be released in the UK 20th of November.
Read the review from here.
Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 9 Nov 2002 7:45
