DVD Burners are used to create DVDs that are readable by your home DVD player or Computer

DVD Burners are similar to DVD Readers except they use a different laser to create the pits that make up a DVD. The pits on a DVD burned on a DVD Burner are really tiny opaque areas created by a special high intensity laser hitting a layer of dye on a disk. The opaque areas do not reflect the laser light coming from a DVD Reader. These tiny opaque areas become pits on a DVD disk when they are encoded with reflective bumps onto the disk. When arranged in a certain organized format these pits and bumps create a digital pattern that can be used by a DVD Reader(ROM) for playing back a movie or reading your computer data.

The parts of the DVD Burners are basically the same as the DVD Reader, all expect an added laser for burning the opaque pits on the DVD disk. The parts are:

• A drive motor to spin the disc - The drive motor is precisely controlled to rotate between 200 and 500 rpm, depending on which track is being read.
• A laser and a lens system to focus in on the bumps and read them - The light from this laser has a smaller wavelength (640 nanometers) than the light from the laser in a CD player (780 nanometers), which allows the DVD laser to focus on the smaller DVD pits.
• A tracking mechanism that can move the laser assembly so the laser beam can follow the spiral track - The tracking system has to be able to move the laser at micron resolutions.
• A high intensity laser to create opaque areas of dye on a recordable DVD disk

An important thing to understand about DVD Burners is that they require a specialized DVD disk to write to. These special disks are called DVD-Rs or DVD+Rs, They are like normal DVD disks except that they have a couple extra layers of dye that are burnt by the high intensity laser. Both disks are physically different and may not be compatible with your home DVD player given that you choose the wrong one. So check with your DVD home player manual or manufacturer to determine which type of disk you need to buy. The good news is that DVD Burners can create exact backup copies of your DVD movies with the right software.

Another important thing to consider is DVD Burning software. That is software that uses your DVD Burner to create and format that DVDs that you desire. DVD Burning hardware and software are often confused as they are both called DVD Burners by some reviewers. Our software reviews often refer to DVD Burning capabilities. We are refering to the software's abiltiy to format and create DVDs with your hardware DVD Burner. To create a DVD disk at home you need both a DVD Burner and software that can drive that burner.