People's thoughts on external dvd burners and linux.
 

i want to get an external dvd burner for two reasons:
1. My computer is getting old and not worth putting an internal one in.
2. Im buying a laptop off my friend in a bit i can use it with.

I'd like to know if people have had good experiences or bad experience with external dvd burners with linux that would help me when shopping for one. Are they something on the easier side to setup or does it require a lot of tweaking? Any replies would be appreciated.

also on the same note:
I'd like to use burner so i can put home movies on dvd. Is there any program for linux like iMovie for mac that lets you set up the menu and scene select?

This is my opinion. Wait to get one. The DVD burners are in a state like the VHS vs BETA wars of the eighties. There is not a set standard yet. So it is possoble that what you get today may not be compatible in the future.
I could be wromg, but the last I read was that their is still a battle going on. just get a DVD reader for the time being.

DVD +R and DVD-R are accepted standards. The only real difference between them is a flag on the media (in fact changing that bit is called bitsetting). In practical use they're nearly identical. Just pick a drive that can deal with both formats.

The war azbaer is referring to was raging ~3 years ago and now even Sony, a big DVD+R proponent, supports all the standards, including dual layer.

Now the real debate is: what is the next generation optical media going to be: blu-ray or is it going to be something with even higher density? In any case those devices won't be available at consumer-level prices for quite a long time so just buy a DVD+/-RW drive and be done with it, and when you need media, just buy whichever is cheapest. The only caveat is: if you are authoring video DVDs for STB use, go with DVD-R because some older DVD players do not know how to deal with the DVD+R bit.

Kim's last point is an important one, and if plan on watching the DVD's that you burn on your regular DVD player (as in an entertainment center) it would be worthwhile to verify that it can indeed handle + and/or - formats. My DVD player is pretty old, and just as Kim described it can only cope with DVD-R, not DVD+R. -- J.W.