Choosing a DVD recorder is, in many ways, just like choosing a CD recorder. It has a variety of speed specifications, certain types of media it can handle, and will probably eat at least one or two perfectly good blanks before you get everything working right!

The first thing you'll want to consider when choosing a drive is the type of media it can handle. DVD media comes in three types: DVD-R/W, DVD+R/W, and DVD-RAM. DVD-R's advantage comes from its relatively low cost, and can be bought inexpensively and in bulk. DVD+R's advantage comes from somewhat higher write speeds, particularly when re-writing a DVD. DVD-RAM is mostly used for backing up data, and is not supported by most DVD-ROM drives or set-top DVD players, so we won't be discussing it here.

The first spec you'll want to look at is write speed. All DVD recorders have a specified DVD write speed, and DVD+R drives also list CD write/rewrite speeds when they have this capability. Most current DVD recorders write at 4x speed. (Just so you know, when you see "x" in a DVD burning speed, it really means 1.38 megabytes per second. So 4x is really 4 times 1.38MB/s, or 5.52MB/s.) 4x is the top writing speed of current DVD recording technology.. DVD-R and DVD+R once wrote at 2x and 2.4x, respectively, but both specs now have drives writing at 4x speed.

The next thing to look for is re-write speeds. These can range from 1x to 4x, but are generally 2x and above is the norm. If you're mostly going to use your drive to make backups of important files, re-write speed is going to be a very important spec for you to take notice of.

Other specs that might be important, depending on your intended use of the drive, would be the drive's CD writing speeds and audio rip speeds. Most DVD drives that support DVD+R will also support CD writing and rewriting, at speeds as high as high as 32x and 16x, respectively. A drive's audio rip speed is a measurement of the rate at which it can read audio data from a CD. This could be of particular importance if you're looking to convert a lot of music to digital form.

The final issue you'll want to consider is internal versus external drives. Internal drives are generally less expensive, sometimes as much as £100 cheaper than a comparable external drive and you can perform editing etc.. External drives, however, do not require you to open your computer in order to install them; you just connect them with a cable to a Firewire or USB 2.0 port on your computer. Some drives even offer you the option to use either type of connection, giving you more flexibility.