The beginning of this year, I was browsing the Newegg.com online store and stumbled upon this drive, the Sony DW-D22A DVD DL+/-RW.

And at the time it was selling for only $65.00 plus shipping and tax. So I jumped on it and got this as soon as I could; even though I could have waited another week and saved another $10. But I was still happy with the deal I got. I mostly use this drive to copy (I think backup is the better word) my movie collection; I do this to share it with my family (I do not want to damage the originals that I paid close to $20 a piece for). I also use it to burn home videos and photo slideshows, and sometimes for data backups.


WHATS SO HOT ABOUT IT?
It can burn single layer DVD+/-R disks at 16X plus it has the capability to burn double layer disks at 2.4X. Double layer disks are new which allow you to burn a whole movie (1:1 ratio) to it without any compression (quality loss).


WHATS NOT SO HOT ABOUT IT?
The only problem with double layer is the price of the media itself. Since the technology is still fairly new the price it still higher than regular DVD+/-R media. I would not mind paying about a buck or two for a single disk, but $9.99 was just out of the question at the time. Fortunately, like all new technology, the price has gone down a lot (move than half) to about $4 a piece. This is still a bit on the expensive side, but now I can at least try it out.