Can i Burn Dvd's with my Powerbook G4

Question

Can i Burn Dvd's with my Powerbook G4

Hi,

I have a Powerbook G4 Running Mac OS X Tiger it has a Matshita cd-rw cw-8123. I was under the impression when i bought my powerbook that i could durn Dvd Movies with it, as i thought it was standard with any Powerbook G4.

Please can someone assist with the following.

1 - Should i be able to burn Dvd's
2 - Can i get the software added to Durn Dvd's

Posted on Oct 30, 2005 7:23 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Oct 30, 2005 7:28 PM in response to Simon Furnish

Simon,
From your description your answers are No and No. It is not software. It is hardware. There are two optical drive types in late model Macs. One is a Combo drive, which plays DVDs and burns CDs. The other is a Super drive, which burns DVDs and CDs. Yours is a Combo drive. You can buy an external Firewire DVD burner for around $150-200 US that will do what you want to do.

Reply

Answer 2

Oct 30, 2005 7:44 PM in response to Silly rabbit

Hi,

Thanks for the quick reply. Can you recommend a good External DVD Burner, so i can put it on my father xmas list (as he's real you know).

Thanks

Simon

Reply

Answer 3

Oct 30, 2005 9:07 PM in response to Simon Furnish

Hello Simon,
I use a LaCie Firewire optical drive and I find it burns very quickly compared to the Pioneer internal drive of my iMac. I would recommend LaCie, but other people have different preferences. The most important thing is to make sure it is Firewire and not USB2. You will also need to install iDVD. To my knowledge, it won't have been installed on your machine as it comes pre-installed on machines that have an internal DVD-R/W drive. If you have the iLife 05 install DVD it won't be an issue.

Reply

Answer 4

Oct 31, 2005 10:12 PM in response to Silly rabbit

Hi,

I already had iDVD installed on my powerbook, when i open it up, it said that i will be able to do projects but not burn them to Dvd as i do not have the Superdrive. Can't see the point of it already being installed on my Book.

Will look into buying the LaCie.

Thanks

Simon

Reply

Answer 5

Nov 15, 2005 11:58 AM in response to Simon Furnish

Here's one for you to look at. I've never tried this model - but it features Lightscribe and is dual layer. It also goes at 16x which is 16 x faster than any stock TiBook Superdrive (standfast the firmware fix).LaCie

hth

mrtotes

Reply

Answer 6

Nov 16, 2005 8:02 PM in response to Simon Furnish

Simon -

Earlier versions of iDVD and Panther did not allow you to burn directly from iDVD to an external DVD burner. With the current version of iDVD and Tiger, you can. You just have to select the external burner. However, you can also burn your DVD as a Disc Image to your hard drive, and then burn the contents of that Disc Image to your DVD using Dragon Burn or Toast. Finally, there is an Easter Egg available that will work with Panther, enabling you to burn directly from an older iDVD and Panther to an external drive.

I wish I could be more specific and offer more step-by-step instructions, but it's been awhile since I did that. But, here are some links that you will find to be more helpful than I can be:

http://homepage.mac.com/geerlingguy/macsupport/mac_help/pages/0015-burn_idvdother.html

http://homepage.mac.com/geerlingguy/macsupport/mac_help/pages/0015-burn_idvd-faq/idvd_hackfaq.html

Reply