Video:How to Choose a DVD Burner
with Margarita CaraballoDVD burners allow you to copy and create your own DVD's from your home computer, which will easily expand your DVD collection. Watch this About.com video before you a buy a DVD burner to make sure it will work with your current computer.See Transcript
Transcript:How to Choose a DVD Burner
Hi I’m Margarita Caraballo with Geek Squad for About.com and today we’re going to be discussing how to choose a DVD burner
A DVD Burner Has Multiple Uses
DVD burners are used mainly for copying videos, music and other types of files onto blank media. DVD burners can also be used to convert home movies into DVD's so that they can be played on your DVD player.
Identify What Ports You Have Available
The very first step in deciding whether you’ll use an internal or external DVD Burner is identifying what ports you have available. The ports you have available for you will dictate whether you’ll be looking for an internal or external drive. If you know your motherboard is already having issues powering the existing internal connections, then you’re going to want to look for something external. Also, if you know your computer is already having issues with overheating, then an external one is definitely the way to go.
Internal And External DVD Burners
The difference between having an internal and external is really dependent on portability. Right now a lot of laptops, notebooks are ultra books. For example, MacBook Airs which don’t have any sort of DVD drive or optical drive…obviously you’d be looking for an external drive. If you’re looking to build your own desktop, obviously an internal optical drive is the way to go. There are some internal blue ray burners. Blue Rays tend to have a much higher capacity. External blue ray burners tend to be much more expensive. The internal drives tend to be cheaper.
Choose a DVD Burner for Your Computer
Older motherboards will not have enough power to power everything that’s currently plugged up inside, as well as some sort of external optical drive. So they have optical drives that have A.C. adapters where you would plug it into the wall and then plug in your USB cord or your fire wire port.
If you’re looking to label your own DVD’s, you might want to look into the HP Light Scribe optical drives. The Light Scribe optical drives use specially coded CD’s and DVD’s to laser etch on text and graphics. The big brand names are HP,LG, and Pioneer. You won’t find a huge bit of difference but where you will see some difference is in the software that they bring
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