As well as being the first company to launch EIDE DVD burners into the mainstream IT marketplace, Pioneer is the company behind DVD-R and DVD-RW recordable media formats. In the last couple of years, it has fought hard to stave off competition from Philips' rival standard, DVD+RW, and until recently buying a DVD recorder meant locking yourself into one standard over the other.

In order to control distribution of movies and prevent piracy, many most DVDs are region protected to ensure that they cannot be played outside of their region of issue. In short, this means you can't play American DVDs on an Australian player and vice versa. To further complicate the matter, PC and notebook DVD drives are locked to the least region set with DVD drives correspondingly locked after five changes of region code by the user.

Always the enthusiasts favourite optical drive, Lite-On delivers as expected with its new range.

Although similar products have been available (with much controversy) in the US for a few years, the Samsung DVD-H40A is the first Personal Video Recorder (PVR) to reach our sunny shores.

Uleads DVD Workshop (DW) is a pared-down digital video editor, designed specifically with DVD fans in mind. Its able to work natively with both MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, as well as AVIs and even QuickTime movies.

It may be early days for the technology, but it's still interesting to look at Sony's Blu-Ray drive under the microscope.

HITACHI DZ-MV208E

A hint of things to come, but the first HD DVD and Blu-ray combo drive is very expensive.

Ulead has often been quick to respond to market demand and DVD Movie Factory is no exception.

The future of storage is expensive, for now. That aside, how do Blu Ray drives compare to DVD drives?

Add high-definition reading and writing capabilities to your PC with a Blu-ray drive, or save money with a plain DVD writer

A high end DVD-based camcorder for quick and clean shooting.

When everything from your movie collection to your photo album is digital, why would you want to watch it all on a tiny monitor with tinny speakers while your big television and surround sound sits idle in the lounge room?

After conducting our DVD burner labs last month and seeing the emergence of cheap high-speed single format drives such as the Labs winning Ricoh and BenQ models at a mere $299, it's hard to go back to the $499 price tag of the Iomega drive.

The difference between 'plus' and 'minus' DVD writers comes down to features. Despite some headway being made by the companies pushing DVD-RW, DVD+RW is still a more flexible format for those interested in creating movies and storing data.

Like the Panasonic LF-D521U, this DVD-RW drive is a generation behind the newest ones on the market. As such it lacks a lot in burning speed – in fact most of the newer models on the market are twice as fast.

According to analysts at IDC (International Data Group),DVD is now the fastestgrowing consumer electronic technology ever.

Blu-ray takes another tentative step towards the mass market, but is now the time to buy?

As DVD starts gaining ground on CD burning as the optical storage method of choice, 4.7GB DVD has some competition at the hands of the newer 8.5GB dual layer format.

Despite the fact it's aimed at professional users - corporate and event videographers and advanced home-video enthusiasts are the target market - Ulead DVD Workshop 2 retains many of the ease-of-use features for which the company has become known.