Digital Trends

Sony DRU-700A September 1st, 2004 | by Ian Bell

Compatibility

Although we saved this section for last, it is probably the most important. Dual Layer DVD's are new so you are probably wondering how compatible this new media is with stand alone DVD players. First of all, Dual Layer media is still very expensive and incredibly hard to find in most cases. With a price of at least $10 per disc, most people cannot afford to make a mistake while writing to the Dual Layer discs.

We were able to get our Dual Layer DVD disc to be read in the Pioneer DV-563A and Sony DVP-NS575P/S stand alone DVD players and in our Plextor 708A DVD writer, but not in our HP DVD 400I DVD writer. We searched the web to see if we could find other players that are incompatible and found that ExtremeTech was unable to get their test DVD to work in the Sony DW-U10A and Teac DVW58E DVD recorders. We recommend that you search the web or post in our forums to find out if the DRU-700A will create discs compatible with your DVD player. Because the Dual Layer format is still relatively new, you should expect to run into some incompatibilities with this media unless you own a relatively new player. You should also be safer if you stick with Sony equipment too.

Conclusion

The Sony DRU-700A Dual Layer DVD writer improves upon the DRU product line by offering a better software package and faster write speeds than its predecessors. We found the DRU-700A to be a reliable and consistent drive throughout the testing process, trailing the Plextor PX-708A and Sony's own DRU-530A drives by only a few seconds.

We would like to have seen Sony include a dual layer disc with this drive as well as Apple OS support to polish off the overall package. For those of you looking to jump into the new Dual Layer DVD arena, we recommend that you do research to see if your DVD player is compatible with this new format, if not then you may be in for a larger purchase than you had planned. You'll also want to make sure that dual layer media is available to you for a reasonable price. Now available for under $150 dollars, the DRU-700A is a very good value, but Sony is already replacing it. For only about $30 more you can find Sony's new DRU-710A, which burns DVDs at 16x speeds.