Third-party DVD Burner

On Feb 28, 2005, at 8:02 AM, Lewis Jenkins wrote:

> I'm considering purchasing a dvd burner, but need one that will work
> with my
> G4. What brands and models (for a reasonable cost) will work in my
> Mac?

Toast is usually not a problem with just about any brand of burner.
iDVD 5, I have heard, no longer discriminates against non-Apple
burners, but earlier versions certainly do. There are patches out there
to help you make them work with iDVD 4, but I can't comment on their
efficacy. In general, any major brand burner will work, and most
off-brand ones will as well. My brother just picked up a Lite-On
DVD+-RW with dual layer support and all the trimmings for about $100
that works just fine with all his apps after appropriately patching DVD
Studio and iDVD.

Xlr8YourMac has a great index of user comments about various burners
and the software that did/didn't work with them. It's not exactly a
scorecard by product, but it's a great place to get started.

<http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/drivedb/post.drivedb.lasso>

--Nik

I added a Pioneer DVR-105 to my old G4 minitower last year, although
there are newer models available now. It easily replaced the existing
DVD-RAM drive and it's fully supported by iDVD. It's recognized as
"Apple Supported/Shipped".

If you want an external LaCie works great with Toast and the new ones can burn up to 16x but can run close to $200. If you want an internal, Apple was using pioneers as their superdrives so they should work, in theory all internal drives should be recognized by Idvd but I have not tried adding one internally so I cannot say if all work, but check this article which goes into more detail about upgrades to your mac:

http://www.macworld.com/2003/08/features/doityourselfmac/

Hugo