Mac App Superbundle incl Roxio Toast 11 - $49 US

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macsuperbundle.com

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  roughana on 18/04/2012 - 23:04

  Mac OS X 10.5 or later
  Toast 11 (1GB RAM)
  Hallmark Card Studio (1GB RAM)
  Disk Drill Pro
  Musicbox
  Panorama Maker 5 Pro
  Font Explosion

  Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
  RapidWeaver 5 (1GB RAM)
  Houdah Tembo
  Compartments

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  greenie4242 on 19/04/2012 - 00:25

  Yay, Roxio Toast - the best way to make DVDs that won't play on most DVD players!

  I used to use this software to distribute training DVDs, but people regularly complained they couldn't play the DVDs I gave them. I'd been using it for months without ever trying to play the DVDs myself. I tested one or two occasionally but only in the one DVD player at work. When I actually tried to test the DVDs in a larger selection of players, the DVDs created with it played on only one out of the four DVD players we had in the house, and only about one in four of other DVD players I tested them with. It wasn't the media or the burner - if I used other software to author the DVD then burnt the .ISO onto the same media with the same computer, the DVDs played on everything. But Toast authored extremely incompatible video media.

  Lucky I found this out, otherwise the entire company I was consulting for could have gone down the toilet, as DVD distribution was a big part of their business at the time! After the twenty or so staff took the DVDs that we'd been handing out home and tried playing them, only four of the staff had success, the others all just found their DVD players at home ejected the disc or sat with a blank screen.

  Support emails to Roxio simply returned generic "Our DVDs are certified Red Book compliant" which was pretty funny considering they didn't work on the majority of DVD players. Funnily enough, the players most likely to play the Toast-created DVDs without issue were the no-name brand ones. Sony, Samsung, Toshiba had issues. After buying a cheap PC for the office, it did all the authoring work with freeware that worked without issue. The half a million dollars worth of Mac computers in the office couldn't be used to make DVDs.

  Granted this was about seven years ago, maybe things have changed. But it's a warning in case people actually want to purchase software that WORKS. I know people will flame me saying 'I've used Toast for YEARS and never had a problem!' but can you honestly say you've tried playing back the DVDs you've created in many different types of players? Maybe they've fixed the software since, but I wouldn't be surprised if it still doesn't work but nobody complains (or they simply don't realise their 'archived' family videos won't be playable in a few years)

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  greenie4242 on 19/04/2012 - 01:03

  Just wanted to add - Toast has a fantastic interface and is very easy to use. It's great for making data CDs and DVDs. It's very easy to make dual-format DVDs that show different content on different systems, and fantastic for making audio CDs. It's very easy to make ISOs and burn them later. I still prefer to use Toast instead of other DVD burning software, as the interface is so much better.

  The above message was just a warning to not necessarily trust it for making video DVDs, as my results were far less than encouraging.

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  roughana on 19/04/2012 - 11:04

  Roxio email me frequently and I've just received the latest. There is a coupon for 40% off everything on their site for use until April 22nd: ROXIO40OFF
  I checked the RRP for Toast 11 and it is showing as $179, or $149 for the upgrade from Toast 10. So this deal is a good one if you are after Toast 11.
  Toast includes the TiVo software for Macs too.