* Not so long ago, the big news was high-speed DVD writers that offered 12x or even 16x writing speed. Now there’s a new generation of dual-layer writers on the market. Dual-layer DVD holds twice as much data (a huge 8.5Gb) as a single-layer disc. There are two types of dual-layer discs and both are recordable (write-once) discs - ie the data cannot be erased or modified. This makes them ideal for archiving large files such as high-resolution digital images and video. There are DVD-RW (dual layer) and DVD+RW (double layer) discs on the market and two new writers. Both the Sony DRX-810UL and Pioneer DVR-110D can read and write on to almost every type of recordable and rewritable DVD and CD at up to 16x speed (although neither can record on to DVD-Ram discs). www.sony.co.uk

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