[MacDV] External FW burners + Powerbook G4

[Timothy J. Luoma]

I spent several hours last week researching external (and internal) DVD  
burners.

I have a PBG4 with Superdrive but it is 1X DVD.  (I've heard there is a  
firmware upgrade "out there" which will bump that to 2x, but that seems a  
lot of risk for a little reward, although it would be free I guess.)

I started out looking at

MCE 8X SuperDrive Upgrade for PowerBook G4 with Double Layer Support
http://www.mcetech.com/pbg4dvdr8dl.html
$200 (hrm... wasn't that recently $250?)

and

MCE Lucid-M8X 8x DVD±R/RW + 2.4x Double Layer Portable FireWire Drive
http://www.mcetech.com/lucidm8x.html
$280


Then I started looking at internal DVD drives + external enclosures and  
saw you could get a good one for about $130 (pioneer dvr-109).

But then I saw an article (1) which suggested that Dual-Layer may not be  
around for long / media may not drop much in price because Blu-Ray and HD  
DVD are fighting it out to become the next "standard" (I made the analogy  
that Blu-Ray and HD DVD are VHS/Beta and "Dual Layer" may be "Laser Disc"  
but only time will tell for sure).

So I have a theoretical question and a practical one:

Theoretical:
1) Do folks here think dual layer is worth pursuing?

Practical:
2) has anyone use the MCE 8x Superdrive?  That $200 internal version is  
HIGHLY tempting.  I am a bit concerned about excess heat in the Powerbook  
though (one of the reasons I was looking at the internal+external case).   
Is that a valid concern?

Thanks for your time

TjL

(1)  
http://cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=918&Itemid=0