Sony DVD burner skirts PCs

Sony unveiled on Tuesday a new DVD burner that can be connected to a camcorder or VCR for transferring taped footage directly to a DVD, without using a computer.

DVDirect can also be attached to a PC, the company said. Sony will supply software for video authoring, as well as the creation of data, music and video DVDs and CDs.

Sony said the $300 burner is set to begin shipping next month.

The device can burn up to 12 hours of MPEG-2 video onto compatible double-layer DVDs or up to six hours onto standard single-layer DVD+R or DVD+RW discs, using its real-time video-capturing and MPEG-2-encoding capability. The machine supports dual-format, double-layer burning when attached to a PC with a USB 2.0 connection, and has maximum recording speed of 16X.

DVD writers that can burn higher amounts of data on discs are catching the fancy of technology companies. Data storage maker Iomega released a double-layer DVD writer in July.

[Thomas, David]

Ummm .... get a mac

i think my subject line speaks for itself. If you are into
downloading, authoring and compiling video, and audio tracks,
why continue with the gadgets? Get a powerbook, in the long
run (for the professionals a very very short run), you save time,
aggravation, and money.

But that is just an opinion