Save yourself a lot of grief and forget about the DVD burner for your computer. Buy yourself a DVD recorder - the current Sony model with the firwire input is a good choice - and save yourself a lot of misery dealing with software glitches, on-line manuals written by people that flunked college english, downloading drivers, etc.
With the exception of "authoring" type DVD burners (that cost several thousand dollars) - ALL of the current consumer grade DVD burners are identical to the ones used in standalone DVD recorders. And just as important, unless your DVD drive is properly grounded and shielded, it will create discs with unwanted audio and video noise.
The nice feature of the DVD recorders is that they can be used to replace your VCR. All of them have tuners - usually of better quality than in your VCR - and can not only write on one pass DVD-R or DVD+R discs - but can also record to re-writeable DVD-RW and DVD+RW discs that you can use just like a tape to record TV shows on. Also, they can serve as a backup CD player and DVD player in a pinch.
The price of recordable DVD-R & DVD+R discs continues to drop - with the latest batch my studio bought costing less than $2.50 a disc for top of the line Maxell DVD-Rs. Take it from someone who makes discs for a living - DVD burners are considered as strictly "amateur hour" in my industry.
With the exception of "authoring" type DVD burners (that cost several thousand dollars) - ALL of the current consumer grade DVD burners are identical to the ones used in standalone DVD recorders. And just as important, unless your DVD drive is properly grounded and shielded, it will create discs with unwanted audio and video noise.
The nice feature of the DVD recorders is that they can be used to replace your VCR. All of them have tuners - usually of better quality than in your VCR - and can not only write on one pass DVD-R or DVD+R discs - but can also record to re-writeable DVD-RW and DVD+RW discs that you can use just like a tape to record TV shows on. Also, they can serve as a backup CD player and DVD player in a pinch.
The price of recordable DVD-R & DVD+R discs continues to drop - with the latest batch my studio bought costing less than $2.50 a disc for top of the line Maxell DVD-Rs. Take it from someone who makes discs for a living - DVD burners are considered as strictly "amateur hour" in my industry.