Alera Technologies LCC, a company that makes optical recording solutions, has cut the price of its DVD+R recorder solution by US$100. The street price is now US$499.
Though the external DVD Recorder comes with USB 2.0 connectivity, it can be connected to a Mac via an optional US$99 Macintosh FireWire Connection Kit. The kit includes a FireWire cable and Charismac Discribe, software for DVD and CD mastering, and AudioScribe, a direct-to-disk recording utility that lets you record vinyl, voice, or tape to hard disk in AIFF format. Discribe runs on Mac OS 8.6 and higher, including Mac OS X, but AudioScribe is Mac OS 9 only.
The DVD+R Cruiser is based on DVD+R/+RW technology with DVD Write and ReWrite speeds. It also reads DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD Video, DVD-ROM, CD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW discs. The DVD+R Cruiser can use either DVD+R media for archival purposes or ReWritable DVD+RW media. It also writes CD-R and CD-RW.