I've narrowed it down to a BenQ DW1640, DW1655, or LG4167B.

Anyone have experience with them? From what I've read, the 1640 is one of the leaders in reliability and quality but can be dependent on media especially for dual layer recording. The LG is a solid unit plus faster writing to DVD+-R DL and has DVD-RAM support but doesn't have all the bitsetting features of the 1640. There's not much I can find about the 1655.

Is there much reason to want the DVD-RAM support? They're supposed to be more durable than RWs. I intend to make DVD videos for my set-top player hooked to my TV, as well as the usual data backups. I may eventually get a digital video camera but by then the HDD ones might be more economical.

Not going to be a lot of help here but these are my views:

Brand name: heard good things about LG stuff before, just got a BENQ TFT screen and i can't fault it in any way so far... (ok, it's not a DVD burner but my TFT seems extremely solidly made so far)
For other brands, i've owned/used many Lite-On CD-RW's / DVD-RWs, i'd happily reccomend them any day.

DVD-RAM: As far as i can work out it used to be very popular on older DVD writer drives but is becoming an extremeley rare thing nowadays. Can't comment on the media much for DVD-RAM (never used a drive that supports it) but you'll really struggle getting hold of any media anyway...

EDIT: If your set-top DVD player doesn't explicitly state it has DVD-RAM support it won't play them. DVD-RAM disks come enclosed in a plastic casing (like larger scale minidisks), so most players won't even accept the DVD-RAM disk in the tray.

Thanks for your comments. I have an older LG CD burner and that's been reliable so far. Plus I can score the LG for only $47, so I guess I'll go with that.

It looks like RAM disks don't need the case anymore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-RAM Even if I don't use it, at least I get a bit more speed on DL writing.