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Every computer system needs an optical drive: Without one, there'd be no way to install Microsoft Windows (or any other software, for that matter). But CD burners are so yesterday. DVD burners are hot--and may be all you really need when you're buying a new PC, or upgrading an old one.

All Indicators Point to DVD

Everyone, from computing neophytes to savvy enthusiasts, talks about burning DVDs. According to a recent study by IDC, 11 million households will likely buy a DVD burner for their PC in the next 18 months. That's nearly twice the number of households IDC estimated would gravitate towards DVD in a similar study released just nine months earlier.

What accounts for the unexpected surge in interest? Well, for one thing, DVD remains a golden technology in the consumer electronics world. Sales of prerecorded DVDs continue to blast through records. And nearly 70 million DVD players are already in living rooms, dens, and bedrooms across America, with sales this year running ahead of what they were last year.

It follows, then, that consumers would eagerly turn to the next big thing in DVD: namely, DVD recording. This became especially true once aspiring do-it-yourselfers realized that they could make their own movie discs--thereby preserving treasured memories currently stored in various aging recording formats such as VHS, Betamax, VHS-C, and 8mm.

The idea of DVD burning is attractive to users, notes analyst Wolfgang Schlichting, author of the IDC study. "The highest ranked reason to purchase a DVD burner was to have the latest technology--a typical thought of a PC user, who often wants to have the latest and greatest technology on their PC," says Schlichting.

The same IDC study notes that getting a DVD burner is a conscious decision for consumers: Barely 2 percent of respondents indicated that they only planned to get one because they were buying a new PC, and most PCs happen to come with a DVD burner. People know what they want, and they know why they want a DVD burner. The leading reasons continue to be focused around video-centric activities, including recording televised content, transferring content from previously recorded videotapes, and creating and preserving home movies.

Schlichting isn't surprised that users' intended usage of DVD burners is driven by video. After all, he says, "DVDs are thought of as video technology, more than a data technology."

On a Fast Track

Considering the red-hot nature of the DVD market, it's no wonder that vendors are gearing up for big sales--and pushing the technology further, faster than originally expected.

For example, a representative for Plextor, maker of the June 2004 top-rated drive, the PX-708A, says that by the end of 2003, its business was split evenly between CD-RW and DVD burners. This year, the company expects the split to tilt to 70-30 in favor of DVD. Manufacturers are pushing 16X DVD+R drives to market this summer, several months ahead of schedule--and at least six months ahead of 16X media's anticipated mass-market availability.

"I think there's more incentive for component manufacturers [to bring out 16X], because there's a large market of users out there, ready to [buy] DVD drives," says Schlichting.

Plextor Vice President of Sales and Marketing Howard Wing credits the surge in demand with a drop in prices: "DVD prices have come down dramatically over the last year. There are more and more manufacturers who are building components--which in turn drives prices down." In July 2003, the average price of an internal drive on our Top 10 DVD Drives chart was $266; this year, the average price is $152, just $60 more than a top-of-the-line CD burner.

And that's another reason why people are flocking to recordable DVD. Wing notes that for a small incremental cost, you can purchase a DVD burner instead of CD-RW drive--and still get fast CD burning. Plextor's PX-708A drive, an 8X DVD burner, is one of several on our chart to support 40X CD-R writes, and Plextor's just-shipped PX-712A, a 12X DVD burner, is the first to market with 48X CD read and write speeds. With speeds like that, who needs a dedicated CD-RW drive?

The Two-Drive Two-Step

PC vendors tell me all the time that buyers of pricey power systems want, and expect, to have two optical drives (the second one is typically a CD-RW drive). Indeed, the advantage of dual-optical drive configurations is a long-held perception among PC users. After all, when you have two drives, you can copy a disc directly from one drive to the other, without first copying the disc to your hard drive.

Sure, that process seems convenient: You don't have to swap discs, and you can leave your PC unattended while the disc copy is in progress. However, as Plextor's Wing observes, there's no significant time savings to be had by copying a disc from one drive to another, as opposed to copying the disc to your hard drive and then burning that copy to another disc in the same drive. And what savings there is will depend largely on the combination of drives you're using.

Consider the example of my three-year-old home system, and my experience when copying content on a CD from one drive to the other. I'd added an 8X DVD burner alongside my ancient 12X CD-RW drive. The read speed of that CD-RW drive was rated at 32X, less than the DVD burner's 40X CD burn and read speeds. Between the slower disc read speed, and the fact that most software programs perform a disc-to-disc copy by first transferring the original disc to a cache on the hard drive anyway, the CD disc-to-disc copy seemed sluggish.

Copying disc-to-disc wasn't tangibly faster than when I ripped the content from my DVD burner to my hard drive (either by copying the content, or by creating an image of the disc), and then burned it from the hard drive to a DVD. And this gave me the added benefit of being able to archive that disc's content on my hard drive. If I ever need to make another duplicate, I won't have to copy the content again--a particular advantage with discs that have a high likelihood of getting scratched while in use, such as audio CDs.

CD-RW Still the Corporate Choice

Dedicated CD-RW burners will still have a place, according to Wing: "In corporate America, they're buying rewritable CD burners, and I don't see that changing, regardless of the price of DVD."

And the concept of dual optical drives remains a valuable one--if you supplement your fast DVD burner with a DVD-ROM drive instead of a CD-RW drive. This way, before sending a disc you've just burned to Grandma, you can make sure it works on a drive other than the one you burned it in.

Disc compatibility remains an issue with DVDs, especially considering the twin complexities of different media formats (+R, +RW, -R, -RW) and DVD authoring software. But while the era of the single optical drive is here, it's still in its infancy. For example, not all of the forthcoming 16X DVD burners have the same speedy specs for CD-RW; so if fast CD writing capabilities are important to you, check on that feature before buying a burner.

Have a question or comment? Drop a line to Melissa J. Perenson.