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Here is a nice article (six sections) with an independent comparison of the two formats.

A nice detail - the codecs supported on both discs are exactly the same...

A quick google of "HDMI analog converter" yields several interesting links, one of which is a device that removes HDCP encryption from an HDMI/DVI signal:

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12115

Or you can try NeroLinux. A new version (2.0.0.2) has just been released that surpasses any other Linux CD/DVD burner. And before anyone complains about the look, it got a face lift!

Press info here:
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12163

Here's one you can buy as well. Get them while you can.

Anything wrong with these, or these?

Ahh... there isn't a manufacturer associated with the first one so I don't know.

But the MAM-A looks to have just came out the end of June this year.

The Mitsui (MAM) label gold CD-R's are the gold standard for archival CD-R's that have lives of hundreds of years. Time will tell for the DVD-R disks.

I also peruse cdfreaks.com and the general consensus is that DVD-R archivability seems to be measured in months and occasionally years rather than decades and centuries and that medium is still too young for disk manufacturers to have figured out what's best for archiving.

Two years ago, we got a MiniDV camcorder. I got burned on some early DVD+-R disks but fortunately had them still on the HDD. All I've been doing since then is dilligently copying files around to new HDDs. But the more events and videos of my kid that I make, the more difficult it is to keep up with HDDs.

Here's my challenge to the computing world: Find me a DOS version that supports USB hardware, and a USB storage device that can talk to DOS over said hardware, AND that I can boot DOS from if I need to, and I will consider giving up floppies.

Google search string: "dos boot usb"
http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm
http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusb stick.php
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/5735
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=141064
to post a few...

I do this all the time in the engineering lab to run DOS utilities without floppies or hard drives and still have enough room for a decent sized log file collection.

Where should I send the consulting service fee invoice? ;^)

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12061 DVD-Audio's CPPM can be got around with a WinDVD patch
Posted by Seán Byrne on 06 July 2005 - 09:50 - Source: Rarewares

When DVD-Video's encryption had been broken about 6 years back, the next generation of the Audio CD, DVD-Audio had been delayed for several months. It was originally to use the CSS2 encryption scheme, but the breaking of CSS meant the music industry no longer wanted anything to do with CSS in the new upcoming DVD-Audio format at the time. As a result, DVD-Audio took on Content Protection for Pre-recorded Media (CPPM), a much more advanced copy-protection system, which includes Key Blocks and watermarking and allows revocation (for compromised devices).

It was not long ago that DVD-Audio playback software came to the PC. For example Creative's SoundBlaster Audigy 2 comes with a DVD-Audio as well as WinDVD's DVD-Audio add-on. So, rather than try to compromise the DVD-Audio's encryption itself, someone has succeeded in making a patch that uses WinDVD to perform the decryption and playback, but instead pipes the decrypted audio output to the hard drive instead of the sound card. The patch which includes several tools requires WinDVD 5, 6 or 7 to work.

Several tools to work with DVD-Audio (read: ripping)
They require WinDVD 5, 6 or 7 installed, as they don't do the decryption themselves, and instead patch WinDVD to output the decrypted stream to disk instead of the sound card.
The tools are:

* DVD-A ripper: Intended to decrypt CPPM protected AOB and VOB files on DVD-Audio discs.
* PPCM ripper: Intended to capture Packed PCM (MLP) stream (stereo or multichannel) to .WAV files.
* DVD-A Explorer: Intended to peep&grab on DVD-Audio tracks (PCM and Packed PCM).


This tool is available at Rarewares here.

While InterVideo is likely to update its software to block the use of this patch, it appears that DVD-Audio's CPPM has been compromised at least in DVD-Audio discs up until this time or until the keys used in the current versions of WinDVD that this tool works on are revoked in upcoming DVD-Audio disc releases. However, this would also mean that WinDVD users would be forced to update their software to play future DVD-Audio discs.

from cdfreaks:
"With this step, eDonkey is now able to push more users to its network. It is almost reaching 3 million simultaneous users, and it's still growing."

How can can iTunes beat nearly 3 million simultaneous users with 1.7 million users who downloaded at least 1 track all month? True these 2 stats are difficult to compare, but it raises doubts about the iTunes article.

I use and prefer Lite-On drives. They are cheap and standards-compliant. The same can't be said for Plextor (although they have improved in recent years).

What really put me over the fence for Lite-On is the freeware (closed source) program KProbe. This works only with Lite-On drives, and is only for Windows (unfortunately). Even though it is closed source, it is a free download (unlike Plextor's commercial utility).

The program KProbe seems to perform similar functions to what these Plextor utilities do: show the true low-level bit error rates of the disc, and allow certain drive settings to be overridden as desired (minimum and maximum speeds, DVD+R booktype, DVD region, and so on).

With the ability for end users to get at this information, it becomes possible to make informed decisions when buying blank DVD media.

If only these low-level functions were standardized, *sigh* -- it would be great if mainstream DVD and CD-burning software could use them to check disc reliability, and the OS could even inform the user if a disc were about to fail.

With more and more people storing home movies and other keepsakes on DVD these days, this will become more important. The ability to see this low-level info has saved me from losing data several times due to cheap media: beware "Great Quality" from Fry's!

Now, if only KProbe were open source....

I use and prefer Lite-On drives. They are cheap and standards-compliant. The same can't be said for Plextor (although they have improved in recent years).

What really put me over the fence for Lite-On is the freeware (closed source) program KProbe. This works only with Lite-On drives, and is only for Windows (unfortunately). Even though it is closed source, it is a free download (unlike Plextor's commercial utility).

The program KProbe seems to perform similar functions to what these Plextor utilities do: show the true low-level bit error rates of the disc, and allow certain drive settings to be overridden as desired (minimum and maximum speeds, DVD+R booktype, DVD region, and so on).

With the ability for end users to get at this information, it becomes possible to make informed decisions when buying blank DVD media.

If only these low-level functions were standardized, *sigh* -- it would be great if mainstream DVD and CD-burning software could use them to check disc reliability, and the OS could even inform the user if a disc were about to fail.

With more and more people storing home movies and other keepsakes on DVD these days, this will become more important. The ability to see this low-level info has saved me from losing data several times due to cheap media: beware "Great Quality" from Fry's!

Now, if only KProbe were open source....

DVD Decrypter is dead, as well, thanks to a C&D from some company as yet unnamed.

Story @ CDFreaks

These are sad times...

The original source of this story is this thread on the CD Freaks Plextor DVD Burner Forum. I guess the comments in that thread tell a lot about what long time customers of Plextor think at the moment.

Who's got a list of format's not hacked?
- PSP UMB
- N Gage
- DVD
- Audio CD
- DVD Audio

all have been visited by hackers

Yep, these are the guys who proclaimed that "home taping is killing music" back in the 1980, and killed off DAT in the 1990s. The MPAA cried bloody murder when VHS hit the market, but amazingly the global film industry is still quite robust.

What really cracks me up is that the RIAA had their heads so far up their asses that they had *no strategy* whatsoever for online music sales until Jobs came along and offered them a way out. Now that they have a path away from stupidity, they're trying to jack prices up again, the same way they did with CDs.

It's like they're fundamentally unprepared to realize that the landscape is changing and that they can't make the same margins they used to make per song. They have to shift their entire way of doing business, but they're so fat and happy that it's like Jabba the Hut doing the long jump.

Apple gets 3 times as much money as musicians from each sale. Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale. Of this, major label artists will end up with only 8 to 14 cents per song, depending on their contract

Sites in the US typically sell tracks for 99 cents each. The wholesale price is currently 65 cents per track

The wholesale price of a track is thought to be around 65c, but the success of Apple's iTunes online music store, which to date has sold more than 200m songs and accounts for some 65% of the download market, has raised the eyebrows of music executives

In the United States, online stores typical sell music downloads for about 99c per track. The wholesale cost of these tracks (that the shops pay) is about 65c."

The majors are asking and getting about 65 cents per download from each 99 cent download from Apple

with Apple paying the record companies an average of 65cents per track...[from a FORTUNE article]

Apple gets 3 times as much money as musicians from each sale. Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale. Of this, major label artists will end up with only 8 to 14 cents per song, depending on their contract

Sites in the US typically sell tracks for 99 cents each. The wholesale price is currently 65 cents per track

The wholesale price of a track is thought to be around 65c, but the success of Apple's iTunes online music store, which to date has sold more than 200m songs and accounts for some 65% of the download market, has raised the eyebrows of music executives

In the United States, online stores typical sell music downloads for about 99c per track. The wholesale cost of these tracks (that the shops pay) is about 65c."

The majors are asking and getting about 65 cents per download from each 99 cent download from Apple

with Apple paying the record companies an average of 65cents per track...[from a FORTUNE article]

Apple gets 3 times as much money as musicians from each sale. Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale. Of this, major label artists will end up with only 8 to 14 cents per song, depending on their contract

Sites in the US typically sell tracks for 99 cents each. The wholesale price is currently 65 cents per track

The wholesale price of a track is thought to be around 65c, but the success of Apple's iTunes online music store, which to date has sold more than 200m songs and accounts for some 65% of the download market, has raised the eyebrows of music executives

In the United States, online stores typical sell music downloads for about 99c per track. The wholesale cost of these tracks (that the shops pay) is about 65c."

The majors are asking and getting about 65 cents per download from each 99 cent download from Apple

with Apple paying the record companies an average of 65cents per track...[from a FORTUNE article]

Apple gets 3 times as much money as musicians from each sale. Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale. Of this, major label artists will end up with only 8 to 14 cents per song, depending on their contract

Sites in the US typically sell tracks for 99 cents each. The wholesale price is currently 65 cents per track

The wholesale price of a track is thought to be around 65c, but the success of Apple's iTunes online music store, which to date has sold more than 200m songs and accounts for some 65% of the download market, has raised the eyebrows of music executives

In the United States, online stores typical sell music downloads for about 99c per track. The wholesale cost of these tracks (that the shops pay) is about 65c."

The majors are asking and getting about 65 cents per download from each 99 cent download from Apple

with Apple paying the record companies an average of 65cents per track...[from a FORTUNE article]

More tech details, etc: Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD

In the UK, you can just cross the channel for your Duty Free P2P.

A french appeal court ruled yesterday in favour of somebody who downloaded about 500 movies, on the ground that those were private copies, and that he didn"t redistributed them, and that a tax was payed on blank media

source: http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/11493

Yay! One more company to support the technically superior (see http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/186 for technical details) BD format! :) Apple's market share might not make that much of a dent in the HD-DVD vs. BD war, but Apple does carry a name recognition and "cool factor" that might help. And Pixar, too.

you could have said the exact same thing about atrac3 as there weren't any music available in it except music that you ripped yourself

Inaccurate

Also note that the author of this story is SharePro, the guy behind EarthStation 5. A man who lies, cheats, and resorts to underhanded tactics whenever he percieves a way ahead, including threatening a man's life (RandomNut, whom you may have known as the man behind K-Lite K++).

As the originator (as far as I can tell) of this "hack" (I wouldn't call it that), it is absolutely amazing how quickly this got around. 4 weeks from post on cdfreaks, to worldwide news, and an article on slashdot. Yay to me.

Click here to see the original post I made on this

Anyhow, I hope you all are enjoying it. I merely wanted to transcode the files I had bought (3207 and climbing....) so I could load them on a non-WMA-aware MP3 player like any other piece of music I own. I certainly didn't intend for Napster to start a 14-day free trial, nor did I expect this method to get "out into the wild" (although, posting on the internet is no way to keep anything secret.....). I would like to take this moment and kindly remind you all that unless you actually *buy* some tracks, Napster loses money. Napster loses enough money, they'll fold shop. The artists will then get reamed by iTunes. Don't let it happen guys, lets at least try to be honest.

/Just sayin....

--warlock1711 of club cdfreaks.

For decades they conspired on prices and you claim they "paid the price"?! The price they paid was to give a bunch of crappy CDs to libraries. As far as I'm concerned giving away crap that didn't sell in the first place is hardly punishment.

... Which is why the companies like Macrovision want to install malware on your computer to prevent you from ripping CDs.

This project sounds like it will need a screen like Sony's upcoming black screen that allows for viewing of projected images with lots of ambient light. Of course, the Sony screen might be a bit bigger than what this little projector can handle.

Honestly though, do you think Microsoft would leave such glaring and obvious evidence if they DID steal source from Mozilla?

Well, considering that they DID leave something so glaring an obvious as an identification string from a pirated audio program in WAV files installed on every user's machine, it is POSSIBLE. Whether they did it or not is an open question- and there are at least three reasons given elsewhere in this discussion as to why the word "Mozilla" might appear in the browser identity string that have NOTHING to do with Open Source or GPL'd software.

Older discussion: Say Goodbye To Your CD-Rs In Two Years?

afterdawn had a discussion on CD-R brands a while back. In short, go with Taiyo Yuden. And to identify Taiyo Yuden?

Does it tag .wav files? If so, and the program says they're infringing files, which leads someone to delete them, Windows might not be too happy about that...

What on earth would make you say that?

I didn't feel like waiting for a response from the grandparent and googled for it. I found this thread on cdfreaks. Apparently there is credence to this claim, and there's a poorly formatted correspondence 8 posts down that describes the issue in detail. This seems to be a worst-case it-might-happen scenario since I couldn't find any reference via google to someone actually having a CD go bad as a result of the solvent from sharpies or other permanent marker, but it might just be overlooked as the cause. I suppose a fair experiment would be to extract the ink from a few dozen sharpies and rest a burned CD data-side up in a shallow puddle of it (possibly apply heat, as the post in that link talks about heat being a catalyst) and see if anything makes its way through.

But whose choice is that to make? Your choice (or the peoples)? What gives you the right to decide how much Brittney Spears and her organizations want to charge for their own creation?

This has been done at least once before (something called Yamaha DiscT@2): http://www4.tomshardware.com/storage/20020927/. This time though, the etching is not done on the burned side: http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/8847. I doubt it will take off, but I must admit it would be interesting to try out.

FWIW, I find that ProtoWall combined with Blocklist Manager is a good combination. ProtoWall installed with 5931 IP entries to filter, and after running BlocklistManager there are 43473 IP entries being blocked.

(Unfortunately ProtoWall only runs on WinXP/2k/2k3, and the install process can be buggy, but once up and running it's great.)

(Also, I don't know how true this is, but one post here claims the current version of PeerGuardian is out-of-date.)

You don't need to do jack to hack the Dreamcast. It doesn't have any anti-copy protection that prevents it from booting off CDs. Instead it used a special disc format for the games called GD Rom that stores about 1.2 GB. So in theory, it was not possible to copy them. In reality, it turned out that there were a few groups able to extract the contents of the discs anyway and make them fit on 700 MB CDs, sometimes with ripping out movies and so on, sometimes not. Sadly, that's one of the reasons the Dreamcast tanked as hard as it did. Rampant piracy. Only a few of the release groups could make the discs because of the hardware hacking involved, but once they got made, they got passed around all over. It got so bad, there was even the rumor that Sega Japan approached the most egregious group with a bribe to stop doing it, which they allegedly took. But, nature and release groups abhor a vacuum, so when one group took a bow, others came in to fill the gap.

But the upside is if you want to run, say, MAME on it, just burn a CD with a bit of help and off you go. No hardware modding required.

That would be Pioneer. Have fun importing their discs that are sold only in Japan. :P

My advice for purchasing DVDR media is the following:
1) Made in Japan = Taiyo Yuden, Ricoh or Pioneer = Excellent media, regardless of the name brand. Usually at retail it's sold as Fuji or Maxell.
2) Made in Singapore = Genuine Mitsubishi Chemicals = Very good media, usually sold as Verbatim
3) Made in Taiwan = RiTEK, Princo, Prodisc, CMC or ??? = No guarantees on anything. Could be good or bad. This is very common at retail.

If you are in the US, you can buy by manufacturer at www.accaproducts.com, which is a very popular supplier. I am not affiliated with them and have never bought from them as I am in Canada. I will not tell you who my Canadian supplier is right now because they finally got a new batch of TY inkjet printable 8X +R and -R in, so I want to order before they are slashdotted. ;-)

See Also: Brands and disc types that are fake Taiyo Yuden.

Technically there are some differences ...

+R media has better multisession support. With many sessions, it uses only 2 MB overhead on the disc (per session) for whatever data they use to link sessions. In contract, -R media uses much more data in the border zones. (It varies per session, but 3 sessions will have up to 132 MB of overhead.)

Most people don't know that a -R disc holds slightly more data than a +R. It's about 5.5 MB. I was astonished when I found out. Go look up the specs and you will see that this is true. This is not too relevant unless you are trying to back up a DVD that has so much data in 1 layer that it goes into this 5.5 MB limit.

Optical Issues: There are weaknesses in the design of the optical properties. The explanation is long and I really don't understand everything.

Yes, sites like CDRLabs, cdfreaks and CDRinfo should have better technical reviews. However, Anand has a shootout of several drives which makes it easy to compare them.

But why is it that not a single one supports Mt. Reiner?

Its Mt. Ranier, and at the moment its pretty much vapourware. Check this out. (Not authoritative but well put).

"..if there was no Macrovision license, we would run into a lot of copyright problems with things like remote access and "TiVo to Go" functionality."

Could it be that P2P could provide a decentralized solution that couldn't be readily targeted through DDoS?

Oh wait... that'd probably upset the RIAA by demonstrating P2P has legitimate uses. Oh well, I think I'll go listen to the free CD the RIAA gave my library per my state's settlement for being nailed for price fixing. Let's see... "Osmonds Holiday Favorites", Michael Bolton's "Timeless" or Will Smith's "Willennium"? Tough choice!

What if you are guilty? That's why there are trials and juries and all that.

To see such optimism really warms my old heart... can I quote that above to these guys?

If you don't like the way the law and courts work, I would agree. It doesn't mean that what the RIAA is doing is wrong.

Don't you think that being sued in a civil court and running up thousands of dollars in legal fees is a threat? One that the RIAA/MPAA uses all the time. And even if you are innocent, stand your ground and defend yourself, the penalties that could be applied if you are wrongly convicted (see above) will ruin your life.

Copyright law needs to exist to protect the rights of the artists that produce the content , not the industry that doesn't compensate them and screws consumers, then blatantly thumbs their nose at the court ordered fix.

When the RIAA starts doing the right thing, then I'll start supporting their actions against those that infringe. Until then, this looks too much like a big criminal shaking down a smaller one.

I have the honor of living in the district of Rep. Rick Boucher

It feels odd to have to feel "lucky" that my congressional representative's The Real Thing. Frankly, I don't like guys that run for congress because they think it's a good gig.

You may have fake Taiyo Yuden media.

Apparently there are lots of fake Taiyo Yuden discs circulating. They have the same media code (TYG02) as the real discs, but the discs are of inferior quality, and definitely not made by TY.

The same thing happened back when 2x drives were popular, there were some companies (mainly Princo) who used TDK's media code, so that they could trick the burners into burning the discs at 2x. The only problem is that most of these discs were awful even at 1x, and you'd wind up with coasters.

I recently ordered some inkjet-printable 8x Taiyo Yuden discs from rima.com, and my new Pioneer DVR-A08XL burns them at 12x (no hacks involved, Pioneer set them to burn at 12x in the default media table - I guess Pioneer feels that the media is that good, and TY paid their money). I ran them through Nero CD/DVD Speed and got a perfect speed line.

Also, it could be your drive, you didn't mention whether or not your TYs are +R or -R, but I've heard it said by quite a few people that the LiteOn drives tend to prefer +R media.

-- Joe

For the NEC drives, check CD Freaks NEC forum. For other drives, check their Recording Hardware Forum.

(No I'm not trying to be a karma whore by posting this twice.)

For the NEC drives, check CD Freaks NEC forum. For other drives, check their Recording Hardware Forum.

(No I'm not trying to be a karma whore by posting this twice.)

Here.

For the NEC drives, the best source of info is CD Freaks forum.

According to Philips the production of the media should not be much more complicated than the production of current dual layer DVD-ROM discs. Mrs. Harpe of Philips Consumer Electronics says: "It's too early to be specific about prices. However, we can say that the production process of dual layer DVD+R is similar to DVD9 production.

Here is an extract from this story http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/10540/

Whilst we wait for dual layer media to tumble in price, we can satisfy our craving by contemplating this news release from PC World. According to this article, Sony has cast caution to the wind and developed an 8 layer 200 gigabyte Blu-ray disc. Although they have not decided whether to commercialize such a product, they are saying a 4 layer 100 gigabyte version is expected to hit the consumer market within the next 2 years.

Do you think movies will be distributed on this media? DVDShrink compression ratio will be like 1% !!!

Ah, dagnabit...I hate it when people don't make their URL a link, and yet there I go and forget to do it myself.

Here ya go: http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/113

-- Nathan