HP DVD Writer Dvd400i

Author's product rating:   

Reliability	Excellent
Ease of Installation	Excellent - very quick and easy
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Fairly simple to install (sorta) .  .  .
Disadvantages:	Be careful why you want a burner .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Plain and simple. I love DVDs. I love absolutely everything about them. The quality of the picture, and sound, the extras, What more could anyone ask for? Now. After saying that you must be assuming that I own allot of DVDs. This my friend is the understatements of understatements. One of my favorite types of DVDs to purchase is boxed sets. There is no greater thrill for me than to walk in to my local DVD store of choice and buying an entire season of my favorite T.V. show. YIPPEE!!! (yes I am a proud card carrying member of the geek hall of fame thank you very much!) But as any of you who have purchased a box set know, (unless you are independently wealthy .. or Bill Gates) they are not cheap.

And another thing. If you own allot of DVDs you know that you become the DVD store with the non existent rental fees and no late charges to all your friends and family!. On most of the DVDs I own, I don’t give it a second thought. "Sure. No problem you can borrow it." My boxed sets are a different story. When they want to borrow them, I have a nervous break down till I have them home! Usually containing from 3 to 10 DVDs per set, One getting ruined, ruins the whole set. At least it does to geeks like me! With that said I get to the reason for this review.

To protect my unnaturally, obsessively, large investment, I decided that a DVD burner was what was needed. Yeah I know what your thinking and yes I OWN box sets I do not intend to make bootleg copies... cause that would be..wrong!! heh heh heh. I want to make back ups of my originals so that said originals can be hermetically sealed and saved for prosperity and also to be displayed in the museum that I am sure will be erected for me when im gone! So on with the burner search! When investing in a burner I knew that I couldn’t spend allot of money because that would keep me from buying more DVDs!! lol But I at least wanted one that was capable of the demands that I needed. Now let me tell you this. I’m not good at the specs about all this stuff. So if you decide to go purchase this burner make sure it is compatible with your computer. here endith the disclaimer!

There were allot of no name or crappy named burners I encountered on my search .Than I came across this one. TheHP DVD Writer Dvd400i. There were allot of reasons this one made the final cut. First it wasn’t painfully expensive. It only hurt a little. Kind of like pulling a band aid off real fast. It hurt for a few minutes than not so much. It ended up costing $129.00. Sounds like allot but it was no where near as expensive as some others. Another reason I went with the HP is that is what my computer is, an HP. I am a very firm believer that like brands work better with like parts. O.K. I got the burner. Now what?? Well if you knew me you would think I know an awful lot about computers. You would be wrong! I put up a good front but I know enough about computers to get me in trouble! When I opened the box I was .. oh what’s the word?... INTIMIDATED!!!! Yup that’s the word. I had no clue what to do with this little gray some what expensive box! I knew that it some how had to get INSIDE the computer. That was a start. The instructions had things on it I was sure were put on there by some smart ass computer nerd who thought me having an aneurysm was a good time. Little bastard! IDE cables Jumpers, etc WTF?!?! Who makes this crap up?
Any whoo after having said aneurysm I attempted to install the burner, and I have to admit it wasn’t that difficult. The included cd rom walked you through it step by step. It also had instructions to print out . Truly not that hard. The most difficult part was the very small screws needed to mount the burner in the case, and actually taking the cover off the front of the computer to slide the burner in place. In my computer, there were extra cables there ready for another drive to be installed. but in case there wasn’t, HP included another IDE cable with an extra connector to replace one in computers with only the one connector.
On with the burning. WHAT DO YOU MEAN I NEED ANOTHER PROGRAM TO COPY DVDS????? ARGHHHHHH!!!! Yes although the burner included three different programs to play the DVDs, copying them required me purchasing a copy of DVD xcopy express. Which I had to buy used as the ones on store shelves have been stripped of the codes required for copying DVDs.
O.K. Got the burner. Got the program. Lets do it!!
O.K. Do you remember wayyyyyyyyy back at the beginning of this review why I said I wanted a burner? scroll back and read it. Ill wait..............................

Apparently DVDs in boxed sets have too much content on them to fit on a regular DVD. So at the present my search continues for yet another program that I hear exists to compress the content on my DVDs to fit on a copy. ARRGGGHHHH!!!!

So in conclusion, this burner does work excellent. It copies the DVDs perfectly. Just not the DVDs I purchased it for. Not yet anyway!! So if you are wanting to make backup copies of your obsessively large or not so large DVD collection, This is the burner for the job. Just not box sets DAMN IT!!!!