Slashdot Mirror

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Home.aspx
http://www.myce.com/review/
I have an ihas 324, performs well with EAC. See reviews at above sites.

Memorex claims 300 year life for their fancy (expensive) archival CD-R and 100 years for DVD-R.

http://www.cdrinfo.com/sections/reviews/specific.aspx?articleid=17324

Take that with a grain of salt, of course.

It might have to do with the fact that optical discs the pits and lands don't exactly correspond to binary 1's and 0's.

CDs use EFM Encoding to store their data, DVD's use EFMPlus and BD's use 17PP.

Having a faster switching laser may allow for the run lengths to be different. But that's just my best guess.

That's why they have archival quality cd's/dvd's which have a shelf life of 100 or more years.

Wasn't china working on their own High Def format?

Toshiba's name is not absent this list, so I'm guessing this is the same format.

Intel and AMD will never comply to putting DRM at the processor level

Sadly you have it pretty much backwards. Intel has been WANTING to do exactly that, at least since 1999. I dunno how you got +5 Insightful, I thought pretty much all the regulars here knew it was old news Intel to Build DRM into Next-Generation CPUs. The only good thing is that it keeps getting pushed back to "Next-Generation" CPUs. Intel has already shipped DRM-enabled CPUs:

Intel Pentium D series comes DRM-enabled and will, at least in theory, allow copyright holders to prevent unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted materials from the motherboard rather than through the operating system as is currently the case. This issue was "quitely" passed by Intel but it is possibly the most important feature of the new chipset. Intel steered clear of mentioning the new DRM technology.

Intel officialls have not yet given technical details of how embedded DRM would work saying it was not in the interests of his company to spell out how the technology in the interests of security.

Remember the PentiumII CPU Serial Number fiasco from 1999? That was actually intended as the first step in their roadmap at the time to roll out CPU DRM. They intended add features peicemeal, building it up. They didn't anticipate the backlash to CPU serial numbers. So then Intel go together with Microsoft and IBM and a host of other majors in the computer industry to create the Trusted Computing Group to build an "Industry Standard" compete DRM system on a chip to shove into computers in one fell swoop, with an entire public relations campaign to fight down any backlash, and an entire industry deployment pretty much meaning you would get STUCK buying one in ANY new computer. Don't like it? Tough luck, they intend all new PC's to include at as standard hardware. And then of course later to move it into the CPU. Windows Vista was supposed to make this DRM chip mandatory, but.... well Vista was a fiasco and everything got delayed and stripped out, including the new DRM hardware support. Last I heard Microsoft still intends to make it mandatory in a future release.

Intel's MultiMedia initiative - Viiv - was one gigantic hardware DRM system. Happily that particular project fell flat on its face and has been abandoned.

Intel has a major hard-on for DRM hardware.

And don't expect AMD be some knight in shining armor rushing to the rescue. AMD has been relatively quiet on the subject, but they too built CPU support for it. I don't know if AMD actively want it, but they aren't against it and they sure as hell don't want to get left behind without support for it if/when the Intel puts DRM in all their main-line processors. There's no way AMD could survive if the Latest Greatest release of Windows only ran on Intel CPUS. So yeah, AMD is doing all the work they need to do going along with it.

-

Several items are coming to a head in the laptop market that will drastically reduce power usage.

1) SSD Hard Drive. The hard drive is one of the biggest power consumers in the laptop today, by changing to an SSD, this can be drastically reduced. Yes, they are more expensive and they are smaller capacity than a HD, but in addition to being less power hungry, they are also much faster, smaller, and lighter.

2) Digital Paper Displays. The back lighting required by current LCDs is very expensive to run power consumption wise. They also require power 100% of the time to maintain the image itself even though this is much less than the back light power requirements. As the digital paper displays become more commercialized, we will see them start to take over the laptop market. Digital paper does not use back lighting and does not require power to maintain the image, only to change the image. Thus drastically reducing the amount of power required for the display.

3) Wireless network adapter. There are several changes coming in the Wireless world in the near future that will reduce the power requirements of wireless networking. As 802.11n moves from draft to production standards and the equipment become inter operable, we will see more usage of the N mode networking which will allow for most network cards to run at lower power for the same connectivity we see today. WiMax and other similar technologies will also bring lower power consumption for wireless networking.

4) Sub 40nm chips. As we shrink circuits smaller and smaller, we are finding that they, in general, require less power to operate. In addition, new materials, such as the new High-k materials, are required to allow circuits to operate correctly at this smaller scale and these new materials are also introducing power savings. As RAM, CPU, and main chipset chips are moved to the smaller die size we will find they use less and less power.

5) Non-Volatile MRAM. Another power consumer is main memory. Even if the system is idle, RAM requires power just to maintain the data stored in it. New technologies are just coming to fruition that will create RAM that does not require power constantly but will be just as fast as current RAM offerings and not have the life span problems that Flash RAM has.

Combine all of these changes with the fact that we may see Li-Ion batteries that have 3-5 times the capacity of today's Li-Ion batteries on a size to size or weight to weight ratio, I expect that over the next 5 years we will see personal electronic devices shrink to down to the point where they are practically non-existent

Those that actually know about the rootkits will know that Sony is at fault.

The sad thing is they are still committed to copy protection. Even after all the stuff on CD's, they continued into DVD's. They went so far as to keep their head down.

Go to a local DVD store/rental store. Pickup a box of Open Season. Look for SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT on the box. At first glance it looks like a Columbia Pictures product. It has extra copy protection.
Sony says that it does not not intend to change the copy protection.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38 938
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/004150 .html

To their credit, they will replace the defective by design DVD's if you are having problems with them.
I got mine replaced free of charge.
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx? NewsId=20244

If you have one of these DVD's call them right away.
Consumers who have purchased one of the 20 faulty Sony DVD movie titles can call Sony Pictures Home Entertainment at 1-800-860-2878 and request a replacement DVD. Sony says it has corrected the problem with ARccOS copy protection.

I wonder what they mean by corrected the probelem with ARccOS copy protection?

I don't suggest the semi-cheap route either. Most of it's junk. The Phillips unit happens to be cheap non-junk. Most of the other DivX capable home units cost US$100 to US$300 more than the corresponding units from other manufacturers. I haven't tried them, either plain reader or reader/burner, so I can't evaluate them here. I can say that the output and durability of the Phillips unit is as good as I've seen anywhere. And I've been in electronics professionally. sales and repair, for 42 years off and on. The output is probably bettter than what the TV can show, unless it's a spectacular plasma or something.

Disk degradation has nothing to do with the unit. They'd degrade just sitting there. The link I provided pointer out objective testing on many disks and found only 1, the TY disks, to have a retention of 20 to 30 years, whereas most others had a 2 to 3 year retention. For RW disks, testing and comparison is here: http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.a spx?ArticleId=13934

Seems that first burning is crucual for subsequent burnings. Many disks degrade around the 5th nto 10th burn, but most of those recover in subsequent burnings, up to the limit of their tests, 100 burns (on in somr cases, 280 burns.

Sony is moving to a 65nm process for the Cell much sooner than most expected. Perhaps they plan on keeping their loss the same per-unit, and passing the new savings down to spur sales?

Three regions.

Window Live CD

Stop spilling your negative karma all over me! :)

As of basis in fact, here you go:

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx? NewsId=17598

In a seminar held last week in Japan, the Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA) explained the content protection technology used in the BD-ROM format, based on the AACS technology.

In the beginning of the seminar, Mr. Ajima Kosuke of the BDA's Content Protection Group compared the protection scheme applied to the BD-ROM format with the one used by the rival HD DVD-ROM format.

The main difference between the two incompatible formats lies in the copyright protection system (CPS). The HD DVD camp has chosen to use the AACS technology only, compared to the AACS BD-ROM technology which also uses two additional layers of security, the BD-ROM Mark and the BD+.

http://www.cdrinfo.com/images/uploaded/BD-ROM_HDDV D-ROM_Comparison1_large.jpg

So, here is your millionth+one time: there are differences in content protection between HD DVD and Blu-ray. Do your homework before you jump on someone with accusations...

Stop spilling your negative karma all over me! :)

As of basis in fact, here you go:

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx? NewsId=17598

In a seminar held last week in Japan, the Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA) explained the content protection technology used in the BD-ROM format, based on the AACS technology.

In the beginning of the seminar, Mr. Ajima Kosuke of the BDA's Content Protection Group compared the protection scheme applied to the BD-ROM format with the one used by the rival HD DVD-ROM format.

The main difference between the two incompatible formats lies in the copyright protection system (CPS). The HD DVD camp has chosen to use the AACS technology only, compared to the AACS BD-ROM technology which also uses two additional layers of security, the BD-ROM Mark and the BD+.

http://www.cdrinfo.com/images/uploaded/BD-ROM_HDDV D-ROM_Comparison1_large.jpg

So, here is your millionth+one time: there are differences in content protection between HD DVD and Blu-ray. Do your homework before you jump on someone with accusations...

Almost everyone has +- players so I go for cheaper disks every time

Bad move.

While compatibility is about equal across types, the leading indicator for compatibility turns out to be the quality of the media. So going for cheaper disks is probably the worst way to go since price and quality tend to be pretty highly correlated in the dvd media market.

Or so says a recent NIST study of recordable DVD media.

Kenwood actually had a pretty good CD-ROM based on this concept. They had 7 "heads" that allowed reading multiple tracks at the same time. I don't know if it improved latency much, but it certainly improved bandwidth.

http://www.cdfreaks.com/
http://www.cdrinfo.com/
http://www.cdrlabs.com/

Reviews from people that actually understand the tech and know how to test it. Beware though, you wont get simple answers like "This one is best, buy it".

Besides being the least expensive choice in the review, it's also the only model of the four which is supported by K-Probe.

http://www.cdrlabs.com/kprobe/
or
http://www.k-probe.com/

And if you actually care about burners, read the reviews from a quality site that actually reviews virtually all the models, does far more exhaustive tests, and has a very active technical forum. CDR Info.

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Home.aspx? CategoryId=1

It all depends on what you believe the main contribution and technical risk of Blu-Ray to be. As I said, I don't think it's the codec

Blu-Ray is *much* more complicated than just a codec. The spec papers for it are several hundred pages long for a compliant player(one can easily find portions on the internet with google). As I mentioned in my first post it has it's own virtual machine just for playing content. It also has AACS a very highly technical cryptographic security system. Plus Blu-Ray spec supports more than one codec depending on how much space there is(MPEG-2, H.264, WMV9).

There is also the BD9 spec which will be helping the red to blue laser transition period. The spec is Blu-Ray format on Dual-Layer 9 gigabyte capacity DVD drives. here, and here

I would like to point out another hypocrisy...

The publisher of the link this Slashdot article points to is Yahoo! Inc.. Yahoo! also censors their Chinese portal.

so here's my suggestion... get a clue and find a link that doesn't include such an obvious conflict of interest. there is a lot of commentary going on about this out there... I'm pretty disappointed that this is what the /. community has decided to roll with.

Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google to censor China's web
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx? NewsId=14130

Yahoo 'helped jail China writer'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4221 538.stm

If you get even the tiniest scratch on the ROM MARK on the disc, the disc is UNUSABLE.

Could you provide a link for this information? I did a few Google searches and this is the best I could come up with... but it doesn't say anything about there being problems if the disk becomes scratched.

FWIW, most optical drives at the moment have excellent error correction capabilities. You need a pretty deep scratch across the ROM Mark for it to make the disk completely unusable. I would be surprised if Sony didn't account for this when they designed the protection scheme.

Take a look at the CDRinfo Optical Storage section.

Optical storage reviews at www.cdrinfo.com does this.

Indeed, and that goes for media as well. For better reviews that test write and read quality as well, I find Optical Storage reviews useful. I've no interest in the fastest way to produce coasters when I'm making backups, so I do look at those reviews for both media and burners before I buy.

Fairly certain they are indeed region encoded.

These are actions Google has actually taken:

Helped Chinese authorities to censor their subjects' Internet access.
(http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx ?NewsId=14130)

Selectively approved and refused ads, based on political content.
(http://www.unknownnews.net/google.html)
(http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040830/reilly)

Permanently collected search history for everyone who has ever used their site.
(http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html)
(http://www.techweb.com/wire/ebiz/161500535)

Permanently collected/indexed the email history and content of all gmail users, for marketing and law-enforcement use.
(http://mail.google.com/mail/help/privacy.html)

Filed obvious software patents.
(Refer to this slashdot story.)

For me, when people's actions directly contradict their words, I reduce my trust in them accordingly. Google can keep claiming to "do no evil," but the words are becoming more and more empty.

"How is it evil? It could be evil because its very powerful but in the right hands.. it could be good for everyone."

There's a simple way to tell if someone is likely to abuse power. When someone collects power over you, and states that it's for a purpose which doesn't require that power, you are being misled.

try this link for a more informative look at vista.

take it for whatever it's worth, cause i'm not vouching for the authenticity. but it should be slightly more informative than "IE7, tabbed browsing and more eye candy".

part 1
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Print.aspx ?ArticleId=14763

part 2
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Print.aspx ?ArticleId=14850

and those are the print versions, not the spread - out - versions - like - some - links.

i didn't even know about many of the things that are apparently included.

anyway, back to the regularly scheduled propoganda.

try this link for a more informative look at vista.

take it for whatever it's worth, cause i'm not vouching for the authenticity. but it should be slightly more informative than "IE7, tabbed browsing and more eye candy".

part 1
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Print.aspx ?ArticleId=14763

part 2
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Print.aspx ?ArticleId=14850

and those are the print versions, not the spread - out - versions - like - some - links.

i didn't even know about many of the things that are apparently included.

anyway, back to the regularly scheduled propoganda.

$500 mini PC (again I ask...why?)...it's not out yet...next month I guess. There is also a strong possibility that this will be the x86 Mac Mini base.

$500 Laptops...Apples start at $999 but there are several x86 laptops at or around $500. I like Apple plenty (I used to work for them), but the zealotry has got to stop.

According to: http://cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?News ID=14213, the iRam now supports 8GB, and should have a street price of $60.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

And will you be completely screwed if you have a Pentium D and a motherboard with a 945 (or 955) chipset?

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx? NewsId=13912
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,121027,0 0.asp

The bill also raised the tax per blank 700 MB CD-R to 24 cents a disc (I assume in Euros, not USD). I thought the idea of these taxes was to pay the *AAs for piracy?

Kenwood made a 72x CD-ROM drive with multiple heads a few years back. Also allowed the CDs to spin much slower while still achieving high speeds, making the drive much quieter. From what I remember it was a great drive according to reviews, guess it was just cheaper to put one head in than several and spin the disc faster.

1.0.4 had been out for a week already before Netscape launched 8.0.

This is, again, wrong. Netscape 8.0 was released on the 19th, three days before Firefox 1.0.4 on the 22nd.

I'm actually not looking forward to either format. They'll probably sell well for a while, but I expect they will get crushed when holographic disks come out, not only due to the storage space (>200GB to 1600GB), but also due to a significantly increased transfer speed and faster access times. Some manufacturers already have working prototypes and are planning (hoping?) to ship to OEMs in 2006. http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx? NewsId=11966 http://www.inphase-technologies.com/news/index.htm l>

Um, except that AOpen announced the EY-855 at CES, which was over a week before Apple announced the mac mini. So maybe apple got the idea from *cough cough* AOpen then? :) AOpen vs. Apple I know this because I was at CES looking for such a machine. I even went to the Shuttle booth and asked them when they were going to release a Pentium-M based system. They just looked at me like I was crazy. Lucky for me, AOpen picked up the slack.

At the risk of being disregarded as belonging to the 'speed before quality' crowd so despised in the forum topic you link to: cdrlabs doesn't have reviews for the Nec ND3500A or the Pioneer DVR-108.

In other words: put up or shut up. This is just plugging the cdrlabs website which seems like a bunch of whiners for complaining about the quality of others without performing themselves. Especially when the complaints sound like nit-picking.

Furthermore, the one specialist site that does have reviews of most of these drives, cdrinfo, seems to mostly agree with Anandtech, like in their review of the #1 Nec ND3500A so the specialist sites seem not to disagree too much with this 'amateur' review:
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.a spx?ArticleId=10114

Note to mods: these drives aren't as new as people would like you to think, there has been ample time to review these beasts.

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.

> What's your point? Most CD drives don't actually read must faster then 24-32x anyway...

So I guess that all those 48X and 52X drives are just a figment of my imagination.

> What's your point? Most CD drives don't actually read must faster then 24-32x anyway...

So I guess that all those 48X and 52X drives are just a figment of my imagination.

I've been reading reviews on CDRinfo for quite a while and it looks like every drive has drawbacks.

Some have low CDR/CDRW writing speeds, some have slow DAE, some have high error rates, some cannot deal with popular copy protection schemes, some cannot overburn, some balk at cheaper media...

It almost seems like you need to get several different optical drives for optimal performance.

I hope that Plextor's upcoming model is worth waiting for.

I've been reading reviews on CDRinfo for quite a while and it looks like every drive has drawbacks.

Some have low CDR/CDRW writing speeds, some have slow DAE, some have high error rates, some cannot deal with popular copy protection schemes, some cannot overburn, some balk at cheaper media...

It almost seems like you need to get several different optical drives for optimal performance.

I hope that Plextor's upcoming model is worth waiting for.

Check out this thread on cdrinfo.com.
it suggests the parent is correct about the upgraded firmware allowing for DL burning

Blu-Ray is one of the formats in the upcoming HD-DVD battle, and Sony is a major backer for this format.

Sony's building a facility to produce Blu-Ray disks. This falls in line with what I've read about them planning to release Blu-Ray HD-DVDs in 2005.

Having the PS3 support Blu-Ray HD-DVDs could very well effect the acceptance of Blu-Ray as the HD-DVD standard.

It is possible according to
what I've read here.
I have not tried it. Perhaps you could try and report back.

In Europe, DVD+RW products have captured a 76 percent share of the DVD market, while DVD-RW and DVD-RAM have 14 percent and 10 percent, respectively. In the United States, DVD+RW has a 72 percent market share, while 19 percent goes to DVD-RW and 9 percent to DVD-RAM.

Most makers contacted have adopted DVD plus. Wu Xiang-chun, a representative from the overseas division of Amoi, pointed out that a uniform standard will boost the industry. Wu predicted that the format debate will be settled by year's end.

Most makers in Taiwan produce recorders that only support the DVD+RW recording format, although some dual models support both DVD plus and DVD minus. DivX can also be supported depending on the chipset used to build the DVD recorder.

> The average write speed on this drive barely qualifies it as a 12x drive.
> Claiming this is a 16x drive is silly.

No, it is not silly. It's just creative marketing which, incidently, was in common use since CD readers reached 8X speeds.

This particular drive uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) technology. That means that the disk spins at a constant speed, just like your old LP record players.
The circumference of an inner track is smaller than that of an outer track and yet thay take the same time to complete a revolution. That means that the linear speed thatthe laser reads/writes is lower on the inner tracks than on the outer. The speed increases from the inside to the outside but since CD and DVD disks are written from the inside out, you may not reach the max speed at all if the disk is not full.

Ignoring the "dips" (write quality adjustment attempts), the speed graph should be close to linear.

Most other drives use eithr Z-CLV or P-CAV to achieve higher average speeds.
See here, here or here for an explanation of the terms and here for a comparison.

However, I haven't seen anyone else yet mention the following quote from that link:

Note: There doesn't seem to be a BookType setting for DVD-ROM DL with current firmware revision.

I for one have a settop DVD player which will not play discs burned without the DVD-ROM BookType setting. Does this apparent lack of the DVD-ROM DL BookType setting mean that double layer discs cannot be BookTyped yet? It appears that single-layer DVDs can be booktyped, however, from what I can glean from the article and from the firmware site.

www.cdrinfo.com
The firmware page

Two forum threads about upgrading your NEC-drive :)

NEC 8x DVD Burner $81 - Free Double Layer Conversion 12-May-04
newegg has the NEC 8X Beige DVD+RW/-RW Drive, Model ND-2500A, OEM Bulk packed for $81.50 free shipping. No rebates. Click Thru to see new price.
Hack it into a NEC 2510A DVD+R Double Layer burner! (Thanks Ken) Save $120 over a new Double layer burner!

Here's a link to the article linked by techbargains.

And here's a link to a page with the firmware (scroll down to NEC 2500).

- JoeShmoe
.