Whats the big difference between brands?
Besides price?
I am asking because I need a basic duplicator to back up my mini dv collection. Nothing to fancy or expensive.

Does some duplicators not burn some dvds?
Sorry for the newbiee question.

They all seem to be about the same and none of them will copy protected material. If you're trying to copy movies that you bought you're out of luck with a duplicator.

Thanks

There is a short thread about this issue here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1183912). doswonk1 has said he purchased one of these devices, maybe he can give you some specific answers.

I did recently acquire a dedicated 1-to-1 DVD duplicator from Linkyo via Supermediastore. It's designed for making an exact duplicate of a non-copy protected DVD (or CD), and the one I got does so very well (full review to come).

Spongem's original post says he wants to make copies of MiniDV camcorder tapes, which is something you can't do with a dedicated duplicator. You need a DVD recorder for that. (Or maybe some sort of interface with a media PC, if that's possible.)

I did recently acquire a dedicated 1-to-1 DVD duplicator from Linkyo via Supermediastore. It's designed for making an exact duplicate of a non-copy protected DVD (or CD), and the one I got does so very well (full review to come).

I'll be awaiting your full review before I buy one of these. Is your's the one for $129.00 with a spindle of TY Premium Line 8x DVD-R discs included?

Here's the short summary: I toyed with getting that super basic model, but realizing that I like to have control, monitor, and tweak stuff, I flipped the extra 50 bucks for Linkyo's $179 model with a Pioneer burner and a control panel that lets you run various tests and utilities, get a readout on the progress of a burn, etc. So far I've burned about 6 discs, all from "master" discs I made on my Panasonic DMR-E85, and mostly to the same 8x Verbatim and TY Premium DVD-R media I use on the Panny. The burns have all been successful and the discs play fine on the several DVD players I tested them on. The duplicator unit itself is about 12" long and 6" wide/tall, solidly built with a metal cabinet and a heavy-duty detachable power cord--feels industrial grade. As soon as you power it up, the cooling fan goes on and runs constantly. A menu pops up on the little LCD screen, and there are 4 nav buttons that let you cycle through menu options and select items. It'll let you run a test to check the quality of the blank disc before running the actual burn, and other handy utilities. You can change settings; the default is to pop open the drawer with the new disc after a successful burn. I don't like that, so I reset it to keep the drawer closed.

It takes 11-12 minutes to burn a copy--a bit faster, I think, than the Panny (though, frankly, I've never timmed the Panny). I did burn a couple of Sony 16x DVD-Rs and the burn time was almost the same as with the 8x stuff.

So far the thing is doing what I wanted it to do: make extra, good quality copies without my having to put more mileage on the Panny's burner than absolutely necessary. Plus, I'm not being held up from doing editing and other stuff on the recorder while I'm burning duplicate copies. I only regret not getting it about 3 years ago, before I'd stressed an irreplaceable piece of equipment to get duplicate copies.

...So far I've burned about 6 discs...
I'm sorry, but I have to chuckle.:D So far, I've made around 1000 duplicates with mine. Your six seems so preliminary.:rolleyes:

I'm sorry, but I have to chuckle.:D So far, I've made around 1000 duplicates with mine. Your six seems so preliminary.:rolleyes:

When you're done chuckling, give us a report on yours.

I already did, in the other threads, here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1183912) and here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1182116). If I have something further od importance, I'll report it here. At the moment, I am just around 1000 copies, and maybe six or seven have failed to duplicate. So, my numbers are still less than 1%. In all cases, it was source disk failure (no surprise there). In one case, the Panasonic DVD recorder that I used to make the disk played it back, so I took a generation hit and made a real-time copy there. In another case, I just purchased the bad disk. So far, I have not lost anything irreplaceable. I have certainly not tested all of the copies, BUT, every copy I have tested, plays back on every DVD player I own. The duplicator is working fine.

OOPS! - Church AV guy, I posted a few questions about your duplicator, but put them in your 'data integrity' thread. Can you answer them here?

Thanks!

Church AV guy, a few questions...

Do you know where your duplicator came from?

Does it have a HDD, if so, how big?

Can you store different discs in the HDD, and call them up for duplication later?

Is it possible to do any editing in the HDD?

If anyone else has a duplicator, especially one from Supermediastore, and can also answer these questions, I'd be interested.
It was purchased from Supermediastore. It does not hve a hard drive, which is one reason it was given to me. The person who purchased it bought Microboards because he checked with other people and was told that it was the best (I think he said the closest to professional quality). I have, as I said, made around 1000 copies with it so far and it has been pretty good so far. I don't know what the actual number of copies it is rated for, but it is still working fine as of yesterday.

Thanks. I'm surprised it doesn't have at least a small HDD. Guess it must scan the original DVD, and write on the copy, at the same time?

Yes, that is correct. It reads and writes simultaneously. I may be wrong, but I believe that none of the one-to-one duplicators have hard drives. At least when this one was purchased, they didn't. Maybe they do now.

I know that the 1>5 duplicator I looked at at SMS had a 160GB HDD, for just over $500.

I don't think there's much difference between brands. I've used 3 different brands at work and all of them did the job. Shop4Tech had a special on their house-branded 1:1 copier ("SharkCopier" I guess they call it) for under $200 and I got it. Works great and has lots of options like checking media and verifying copies if desired. Dupe speed can be controlled. Be careful reading the specs, though, because some of the features in their description are available only if you add an optional hard disk--easy to miss the little asterisk in their specs.

I'm not crazy about having "Shop4Tech" emblazoned on the nameplate of the copier, but who really cares? It works.

There is going to be some differences between brands - although they may all look the same. There are three major panel manufactures that bascially everyone uses. There are subtle feature differnces between these, with serious performance differences in terms of validation and error recovery.

Beyond that, the quality of the recorders and hard drives can make a huge differnce. Some manufactures are 3-6 month warranties, while others are 2 years standard.

Care to enlighten us as to what to buy, and what to avoid? Which models have the serious performance advantage?