Sony to offer DVD burner for Mac

Sony on Tuesday announced plans to release a new dual-format DVD burner that's compatible with Macintosh computers.

The external double-layer DVD drive, dubbed the DRX-710UL-T, is designed to record up to four hours of MPEG-2 video or up to 8.5GB of music and images on compatible DVD+R DL media, the company said.

The DVD burner will begin shipping next month, Sony said. The device will cost about $230.

In March, Sony unveiled two double-layer DVD burners. Double-layer DVDs are single-sided discs with two information layers that can be independently recorded to and read from. Both layers can be accessed from the same side of the disc. Other companies, including Hewlett-Packard, have launched similar drives.

Sony said the drive will come bundled with Roxio's Toast 6 Lite for Mac compatibility and software from Nero for compatibility with Windows 2000 and XP.

Sony said the new drive supports i.Link and USB 2.0 digital interfaces, plus multiple reporting speeds and formats, including 2.4x DVD+R DL, 16x DVD+R, 8x DVD-R, 4x DVD+/-RW, 48x CD-R and 24x CD-RW.

iTunes?

Can I still burn audio cd's in iTunes? If I can, then I'm definetly picking one of these up.

[Earl Benser]

Why bother????

Any existing DVD or CD burner can make your iTunes CD. There
are no dual layer CD's. (I don't know if there are any of the
exisitng DVD players can handle dual layer MP3 DVD's.)

[Earl Benser]

Too Little, Too Late....

with dual layer Blu-Ray DVD burners almost here with 35 GB
capacities, this is hardly a product to spend money on. SO wait
for Sony's Blu-Ray model. It may take a year or so to get here at
a comfortable price, but with cheap blank DVD disks and cheap
single layer DVD burners everywhere, it's the best way to go.

Earl...

the internal cd-r in my imac broke and i just assume get an
external replacment that can not only burn cd's like i used
to, but back up my hard drive on an entire disk. i have a
credit for the sony store and just assume use it on this as
long as i can still burn cd's through itunes like i always
have.

[Earl Benser]

Go for it...

Buy the basic Sony dual layer DVD burner with the IDE interface,
ie, as for an internal mounting. Then put it into a Firewire box
from ADS (~$90). Then you'll have a kicking external Dual Layer
DVD burner. I'm runing 2.5 TB of hard drives plus two Pioneer
DVD burners all with ADS boxes on the Firewire Bus. Works
great!