Blu-ray / DVD / CD - Optical Drives    Aussie PC Fix    Canberra

 

 

 

Blu-ray Burners/Writers BD-RE & DVD±RW & CD-RW

USB DVD Burners/Writers DVD±RW & CD-RW

SATA DVD Burners/Writers DVD±RW & CD-RW
IDE DVD Burners/Writers DVD±RW & CD-RW

         

Contact us to replace or upgrade Blu-ray & DVD Burners/Writers

 

 

         

Sony, Pioneer, LG, Samsung, Lite-on

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DVD-RAM, DVD+R, DVD+R DL, DVD+RW,
DVD-R, DVD-R DL, DVD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-Video,

CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-ROM/XA, CD-Audio, Video-CD,
Photo CD, CD-I (FMV), CD-Extra, CD-TEXT

 

Aussie PC Fix do not sell blank Blu-ray, DVD or CD discs/media but here is some helpful information on the kinds of discs available.

 

Your optical drive needs to support the type of disc that you want to read or write:

-ROM drives will only read discs but will not burn them. These drives are called readers, e.g. CD Reader.

-RW drives will burn to -RW (rewritable) discs, as well as burn -R (write once) discs, and of course read them.

Combo drives only read in their highest support format and can write to smaller formats. E.g. A blu-ray combo drive will only read blu-ray discs but will burn DVDs and CDs.

There is also a heirarchy for the available formats: Blu-ray, DVD, CD

Blu-ray burners/readers will also burn and read DVDs and CDs
DVD burners/readers will also burn and read CDs
CD burners/readers will only burn and read CDs

There are exceptions of course! Some drives are marked as "Combo Drives". These drives will only read (not write) the highest specified format of disc, but can burn lower formats in the hierarchy. E.g. a Blu-ray combo will only read/play Blu-ray format but will burn and read DVDs and CDs. Some early generation DVD drives also had differing combinations e.g. some would write to DVD-R but not DVD+R or vice versa, and there exists DVD-ROM drives that don't burn CDs either, but most are combos.

Optical Disc Formats: Blu-ray \ DVD \ CD

Blu-ray is the newest generation optical format, each disc usually holding approx 25GB (25000MB) of data, equivalent to approx 5-6 DVDs. There are also multil-layer discs that have been shown with as many as 16 layers or 400GB discs but it remains to be seen how many layers will actually be available for consumers as writable discs. The format is called blu-ray because the optical drive uses a higher wavelength blue laser to write to the disc, in comparison to CD and DVD drives which use a red laser to write to the optical disc.

As blu-ray prices fall, the format will become more popular than DVD but don't expect DVD to disappear any time soon. Most users are happy with the size of DVDs for use and storage and it will not be until many have moved to new larger HD screens that the format will take eventually replace DVD as the main video/movie media type. Blu-ray will also be adopted by computer users because of it's high capacity for archiving and backups but pricing for blu-ray needs to drop to below the price of hard drive storage for this option to be more viable.

DVD drives and DVD discs are the most common type of optical format available. Each disc holds approx 4.7GB (4700MB) of data, equivalent to approx 6-7 CDs. DVD was originally called Digital Versitile Disc but many now refer to it as Digital Video Disc. Most DVD-Video movies released today are in DVD format (using MPEG-2).

CDs are now used nearly exclusively for music releases but we also see dozens of data CD-ROMs each week from software driver CDs and computer magazines! A CD usually holds 650-700MB of data and the abbreviation CD stands for Compact Disc. CDs can work out cheaper to produce/burn if you only need to burn a small amount of data (and were designed to hold approx 74-80 minutes of high quality music), while driver CDs ensure those without DVD readers can still read the disc.

The standard size of CD, DVD and Blu-ray is 12cm, but there are also some smaller 8cm formats available, which obviously hold less data. Mini 8cm CDs arealso quite popular for delivering software drivers for computer hardware products and peripherals.


DVD±R = DVD+R & DVD-R

There are two competing formats for write once and rewritable DVDs, called DVD-R and DVD+R (minus and plus). It doesn't really matter which discs you buy for burning except DVD-R discs are usually cheaper, being more popular. DVD-R media also has slightly higher compatibility when playing DVD movies back in standalone DVD players, but just as some of these external DVD players won't play DVD+R discs, others simply won't play DVD-R discs. Check your standalone DVD players specifications and buy a few to test with first if you plan to play your burnt DVDs on standalone DVD players (the type you plug directly into a TV!).

Nearly all computers with a DVD drive will read either DVD-R or DVD+R (there are some exceotions on older drives), but the computer will have to support the correct ± format of disc to burn to it! There is only one format of CD and only one format of Blu-ray so there are only '-' types for these discs. Sony's Blu-ray had a competitor called HD-DVD (backed by Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo and Microsoft) but this format only had a short life and was discontinued not long after release in 2008.

R \ RW / RE \ Rom

CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and BD-ROM are all pre-made factory discs with content/data pressed or burnt into the disc during their manufacture. The discs cannot be written to - but only read from by the computer or device. The ROM stands for Read-Only Memory. CD-Audio, DVD-Video and computer game CD\DVD discs for example are are all CD-ROM\DVD-ROMs.

CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R and BD-R (blu-ray) discs are all write once discs. Data burnt to the disc will fill it up and the space cannot be removed. Deleted files are simply hidden from view and still take up room on the disc. Updated files are actually re-written to a free part of the disc and the original file is hidden. Once a -R disc is full or has been finalised  then it behaves like a -ROM disc. Some older DVD and CD drives insist that a disc be finalised to read the data (usually standalone devices like HiFis and DVD players for TV playback) which means no more data can be written to the disc. This is like flicking on a write protect switch/tab but increases compatibility of the burnt disc.

CD-RW, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and BD-RE (blu-ray) discs are all re-writable discs. You can erase data from the discs and then re-use the space many times. Note rewritable blu-ray discs have steered away from convention, which is hard enough to follow at the best of times, naming their write many's as BD-RE instead of BD-RW.