Introduction

Are you still pondering whether or not you should jump onto the DVD bandwagon like what most of your peers have done? If you’ve been finding all sorts of excuses just to delay yourself from walking the path of the inevitable DVD storage solution, your set of excuses just got even thinner with the budding availability of the ‘88’s DVD-Writers. To begin with, the time factor has been shortened by a great deal. From the one-hour write time needed by early DVD-Writers that write at a painstakingly slow 1x write speed, to the current 8x DVD-Writers that can zip through an entire disc in less than 10 minutes, using time as an excuse is no longer a valid option anymore. Technology progression has even 12x and 16x writers in the pipeline and these are touted to bring write time down to 6 minutes and below – but we’re not going into that for now, that’s a story to be told in the future. For the present, we’ll have the 8x writers to fulfil our DVD storage needs.

The contestants

These latest laser wielding storage devices feature 8x for both '-' and '+' DVD format, allowing the operator now to wrap up a recordable DVD media in under 10 minutes. Prior to the release of these optical speedsters, 8x write speed was a prime card wholly held by the DVD '+' format camp. The '+' format also held a vice grip in write speed for re-writable DVD media, where a fast 4x rewrite speed overshadowed the slower 2x rewrite speed for the '-' format side. For a brief moment, the superior write speeds of the '+' format had consumers thinking that the format battle was finally over. Of course, this couldn’t be further away from the truth as with the release announcements of manufacturers wheeling out '88' DVD-Writers globally, the battle for format superiority has just been blown wide open and up for grabs once more.

These will be nothing more than wastes when we’re through with them

Being our first optical drive shootout, the 88s DVD-Writers have the honor of being featured in our inaugural optical drive mini-shootout. We took three of the commercially available drive with '88' burning capability and put them side-by-side for comparison. Besides comparing the usual write time of each drive, we’ll also be testing them for Overdrive burning ability – when a drive can burn a DVD media higher than its rated write speed. At the same time, we’ll make known to our readers the pairing media that allows Overdrive to take place. Let's take a look at the contestants first, shall we?