Comments on: Build a $50 DVD burner

By: Elwood

Elwood — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 01:14:06 +0000

I’ve done a search for exturnal cases with a built in power supply such as the one you said to look for, but found none under $60. What sight did you get your exturnal case from and what was the make and model number. I’d like to check it out on the web.

By: Robin Harris

Robin Harris — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 18:33:23 +0000

All,

Good questions.

I’ve never used the audio cable, so I never thought about it until people asked.

The audio cable goes to a mini-jack, so it is an analog output. The digital output goes through the FireWire or USB cable to the computer.

The burner must be connected to a computer to control it. Since I listen to digitized music through iTunes, the headphone jack doesn’t buy me anything.

I’d like to hear what people use the headphone jack for.

Elwood,

All I meant is that a SATA drive won’t work in a case with an IDE/ATAPI connector. If you have an IDE case, you have to have an IDE burner.

Robin

By: Elwood

Elwood — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 00:50:12 +0000

In your video you said that IDE and SATA drives can’t be mixed, so does that mean if your computer is using IDE hard drives then the external case should have IDE components also or visa versa if your system has SATA drives. Say my system has SATA hard drives, wouldn’t an IDE orEIDE hard drive/ CD rom work on the system anyway if its in an external case.

By: Paul Covington

Paul Covington — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 16:57:31 +0000

Frank, the audio cable has four slots which fit snugly on the left side of the rear panel. You may have three or four wires coming out of the connector, one of the wires will be red. I plug in the connector so the red wire is to the right. In most systems this puts the right channel audio to the right speaker. Enjoy your new external player!

By: Frank C.

Frank C. — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 16:35:48 +0000

If you want to hook up the audio how do you do that? I mean if you already have a burner inside the computer case and this external burner is a 2nd burner. The burner inside the case is already hooked up to the audio connector.
Thanks, Frank.

By: millso

millso — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:57:10 +0000

couldn’t find the video here either?

By: Graeme

Graeme — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:42:28 +0000

Playing with official players on Windows may not always work, thanks to the media cartels’ DRM. However, a cross platform solution like VLC should work fine to play DVDs from these kind of burners, since it just uses tools like DeCSS internally to crack the DRM and play the content.