I purchased this unit several weeks ago. I had been looking at the Sony model as well and they seemed to be a toss up as far as features and price. There seemed to be a slight preference for the TDK model compared to the Sony in the reviews I looked at but I would say they are both a safe bet. A Compusa sale on the TDK unit is what resulted in me getting this one.
I haven't really used it extensively since I haven't had time to put it through its paces fully. But I have not had any problems with making data backups on a DVD +RW disk using Nero InCD packet software (newest builds work with DVD RW discs). I did not install any of the software that came with the TDK unit since I have Nero and it works well for my uses. The drag and drop feature with InCD is better than the Roxio software that comes with the drive (IMHO). I burned some DVD-R discs and again , no issues. Was using TDK DVD media (also on sale at time). My primary reason for getting was for data backup and for that it seems to work well. TDK uses a NEC ND-1300A OEM drive. You should download the newest ROM patch (1.06) if you get the drive since it corrects some issues with non-TDK media and other things.
It seems to read movie DVDs fine and I have used DVD Decrypter to decrypt some test movies to hard drive and it worked fine (could do that with a cheap DVD ROM though). I haven't tried moving movies back to DVD yet, but wouldn't expect that to be an issue based on the data I have copied.
I still have a Yamaha CDR drive installed and still use that for copy protected games (using Alcohol 120% so can create virtual drives without needing disc). The TDK's ability to handle the most current SecureROM game protections is not as good (for writing, reading is fine) as most quality CDR drives but that seems to be typical of most DVD RW drive.
Anyway, such is my experience to date......
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Topic: OT - TDK 440 DVD WRITER (Read 1100 times)