DVD burning has been around for some time now and became widely accepted for its superior storage capacity over its little brother the CD. While we see single layer formatted 4.7GB discs now getting into the 12-speed writing range, the real action is dual-layer burning. By raising the storage limitation to 8.5GB, DL media then becomes the next best thing to a portable hard drive and a viable storage medium for both home and business use.

There are a few drawbacks to the technology though; firstly, although the disc promises 8.5GB of available space, we were unable to write over 7.96GB during testing. Secondly, achieving a maximum 2.4x (3240KB/s) CLV burn will have you churning out DVDs at the less than blistering pace of 45 minutes per disc, roughly 7 times slower than the six minute overhead for a single-layer DVD+R we encountered while testing.

Refocusing the laser to burn through to the second film of dye recording layer requires additional time. While the DVD Forum has not yet released DVD-R/RW dual-layer writing yet, we expect it fairly soon to keep up with the competition. Until then, we suggest you hold off and wait for both players to get up to spec and increase the burn speeds. For the space hungry early-adopters who need it today, start your burn, put on some coffee and come back in half an hour. For the rest of us who like it a bit faster, hold off and wait for the technology to develop further. At this price however, it's hard to say no to future-proofing your hardware.