Price of DVD burner : low, lower, the lowest ....

Despite a quite active market, the price of DVD burner is currently very low, 16x DVD burner are around 35$ for the cheapest. Knowing that DVD +/-R will not be able to be burn at faster speed than 16x, improvements are only concerning DVD+/-RW and double layer burning speed.
To illustrate this information, the latest DVD burner from Pioneer, the DVR-110, can be found around 60€ vs. 45€ for the DVR-109D. However, the difference between the 100 and 109D is DVD double layer 8X support while compatible media are not available on the market yet (CD-RW 32x instead of 24x).
This war between DVD burner manufacturers might end up with only one winner, Lite-on. Indeed, after Sony burners produced by Lite-On, NEC has also transfer part of its production of DVD burner to Lite-On.
In parallel, HP has decreased the price of its LightScribe licensing, in order to attract more manufacturers to add this feature to their models. HP is expecting to boost LightScribe adoption, despite difficult and disappointing starts.
According to specialists, the war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD should not see real winner before 2007, so DVD burners will still be for quite some times the default optical drive in our computers..