I am thinking about purchasing an I/O magic burner. What is the difference between 8x and 4x-what are the advantages/disadvantages to each? Also which speed media would work best with either? Roxio software is included with the burner but from what I have read, it is better to us DVD shrink and decrypter.Why should the Roxio not be used? I am just learning the basics and reading through the guides,but want to make sure I understand everything so I can explain it to my husband. Thanks so much!
Burning at 8X takes about 7-8 minutes, you need to use 8X media or have a burner like I do (Pioneer A-07) with hacked firmware, and burn 4X -R media at 8X.
4X burns take about 14 minutes.
Your quality may suffer at high burn speeds with cheap media. I use Ritek G-04 or Verbatim.
Your media needs to be rated for the particular speed you want to burn at, ie 4X media for 4x or slower burn speeds.
Roxio has been known to conflict with other programs, notably Nero.
Shrink and Decrypter are popular because they are free, easy to use and lots of support is avalible.
Thanks for your reply. Another ? I have is that the product specs for the 8x states that it burns DVD+R at 8x and DVD-R at 4x. Why does it write at different speeds for + or - media? I plan to use -R media so should I purchase the 4x burner instead? I hope I make sense with my questions but this is very confusing to me.
That I/O magic burner, like most 8X burners, is built to burn at 8X to 8X rated media. Only 8X +R media is avalible, although 8X -R media (Sony?) should be avalible sometime, if it isn't already.
What happens is that the manufacturer would possibly provide a firmware upgrade to allow the burner to use this media once it became avalible. I don't know how much support you can get for this burner:
Consider the Pioneer A-07, great support, easy to upgrade the firmware or use the hacked (void the warranty) firmware that I use for 6-8X burns on Verbatim and Ritek G-04 -R 4X media.
So now you know that if you put in a 4X rated +R disc in your I/O Magic burner it will burn it at 4X max. A 4X -R disc will burn at 4X max. An 8X +R disc will burn at 8X. High quality 8X media is expensive compared to other high quality 4X media.
