I ordered the LG GSA-4040B and will get it on Monday. $165 US from www.mwave.com. The price is too good to be true but We will see. I did a google search and came up with a review on cnet. Some comments from review and spec, 4xDVD-R+R 3XRAM, does not burn at 1x. Ram can not be in cart. software is Bgold 5.0 but does not include movie album. Overall review was positive. Has anyone used this product yet?
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CaptainKrunch

These LG DVD Drives are even cheaper were i live, they are on Sale here in Canada at Future Shop For $199 Canadian which is Like $145 US..I haven"t heard a Lot about these Drives so I don"t know how good they are But for that Price it is worth it to Try, I just got a Dual Format Sony DRU-500A Burner 2 Months ago and I paid close to $400 Canadian, Makes me wish I waited a Little While and I could have gotten 2 of these drives for the same Price..If you get one Let me know how well it works....Cheers

Captain..... Was doing some reading myself today.There's quite a few threads in the forums on both of these sites:

www.cdrlabs.com and www.dvdplusrw.org

Apparently this burner is a 2 Sheep burner. I have no clue what that means, but everyone in the forum seemed pretty excited about it!

Tim

Picked up mine today at our local Future Shop. Price is $299.99 + tax - $100 mail-in-rebate for a total of $244.99CAN which is about $180US including taxes. According to the manual, it does burn DVD-R at 1X,2X and 4X , not just 2X and 4X as their website shows. I won't get a chance to install until tomorrow since it's our anniversary today and I don't think I'd live to see tomorrow if I shuffled off to my video room for a few hours..... Will post findings as they're available.

Tim

Some observations on 4040b
Installing:
first uninstall nero and other burners
install hardware then install B's Ram driver software from the cd like an application from the banner page menu.
I was so paranoid about the B's software that I tried to install the ram driver by doing a update driver from device manager and pointing to the inf on the cd. It looked like it worked and said to restart. Then device manager could not see the drive after restarting. So to avoid grief install Ram driver from menu on cd autostart.

Now I have Ram and burner Logical drives and installed Nero 60015 and it all works as advertised. As the previous post stated, It will burn at 1x. I have 75 Khypermedia dvd-rs that burn and play well at 1x but burn and don't play on standlone at 2x using Nero6.

Has anyone got SpruceUp to burn to this drive directly?
The DVD reader is supposed to be quite fast for ripping but I have not tried that yet. I read one post on DVDrhelp that a user did a dvd backup of a movie using B's Gold but a lot of posts did not like B's Gold. I am tempted to try it. I understand it is the standard in Japan.

Any comments or inputs on gold or in general would be appreciated.
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CaptainKrunch

The firmware upgrade to A300 was painless, although it still is pretty picky about 4X -R media ( Princo white-tops) There is supposed to be another firmware release soon to address the 4X -R media issue - we'll see.4X +R don't seem to have the problem.
DVD Movie Album won't work with this drive - not the older version 2 that came with my Panny 1X RAM drive, which is unfortunate. Can still open any files on DVD-RAM from my DMR-E30 with Womble from this drive so that's a plus and makes Movie Album not really required.
Ripping speed is fast, the drive is virtually silent and seems well built. Burns my old 1X DVD-R's at 2X, so that was like getting some 2X media for free! HAve yet to test -+RW functionality.
So far, a great buy IMHO at $199CAN for a burner that really " does it all ".

Tim

Tim:
What is the name of your 1x media that works at 2x? My khyper will burn at 2x play on computer but not standalone. What burning program are you using and should I go to a300 or just wait for the real fix?
"All the Best"
CaptKrunch

Captain,
Mine is the " ACCU " 1X media from Meritline.com. It would be pretty tough to get the same stuff, since they are just overruns of non-branded media being sold as " ACCU " .( At least that's the way I figure it, since sometimes they are Sonys, Riteks, Maxells - never have gotten the same discs twice.
As to the firmware,it's up to you. I just did it because I only have a 15day return policy from the store I bought it from, so I wanted to make sure the unit worked properly.Plus I'm going to put the drive in a USB2 enclosure, and you can't load firmware unless it's actually connected to an IDE cable,so I'd have to keep ripping it out of the box to do firmware upgrades.

Tim

Captain.... I really wish we could edit posts!!! I'm using Nero 5.5.10.50 and the standard " DVD-VIDEO " template with Joliet unchecked. They work in my Panny DMR-E30 ( which is VERY picky) and my Apex no problems.All the software that came with this drive is pretty much crap IMHO. Have you tried B's Gold? Forget about selecting a bitrate for your video....it's good,better or best! Gee thanks for allowing me so much control! Didn't buy it for the software though, I'm sure you didn't either.

Tim

Is the 3X Ram media different from regular Ram?
Also I was able to able to burn with nero 6015 and A300FW 4X data with Fuji up to 4x ten pack. They are TYCO1 on sale at bestbuy $15 US.

Tim, send me your email address to talk about the double blinking light and MA3. posbo72370@aol.com

Capt.... Did you get my e-mail?

Tim

Tim:
No I did not. I am going to get my Brother-in-laws Pani standalone recorder in about 2 weeks to help him get started on converting his vhs and 8mm tapes before they die. I hope to use MA3 with the 4040b and would all so like to talk about that. Of course all of this is based on DVD-Ram. Send me another Email
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CaptainKrunch