Not only is DVD not dead yet, but it’s cheap – about a third of the price in some instances. And it stores plenty of data for people who don't do anything uber-extravagant with their computers. You can get about 9GB on a double-layer DVD, which might not touch the 25GB you can get on a Blu-ray disc, but is still very decent.
With new formats in the shops, there is of course the little matter of DVD nearing the end of its life as far as manufacturers are concerned. They reckon it'll be a ghost by 2012 – or possibly even as early as 2009. But when you consider that tape is still the cheapest storage option and CDs still haven’t been made redundant by DVDs – well it may be around a lot longer than they expect.
Their predictions seem to be based on Blu-ray going mainstream in 2009, with prices coming down to more reasonable levels. However, by 2012 we could be into the realms of sci-fi storage, such as holographic drives holding 500GB on a single layer.
Meanwhile, the manufacturers have squeezed about as much as they can from DVD. And there’s some debate whether they will bother to stretch the portable drives to work at speeds faster than 8x. You'll certainly have trouble finding 20x blank media for the 20x drives featured in this review.
But if a portable drive is what you are after, then DVD is the thing to buy right now. Prices have come right down and – even if you can get your hands on a portable Blu-Ray drive – standard DVD makes better economic sense.