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A Drive With The Works: DVD-[R,RW] And CD-[R,RW]

grub writes: "The MPAA must be saying "Ho Lee Fook." Pioneer had introduced a rewritable DVD drive. The drive reads and writes in four formats: DVD-R, CD-R, DVD-RW and CD-RW, has up to 4.7GB capacity per DVD side and records on DVD-R at twice the normal speed." With 60GB drives now at reasonable prices, and drives three times that size coming out on the high end, 4.7GB no longer sounds like the mountain of bits it once did. Still, this is a wild combination: hopefully the world will soon agree on some nice DVD-RAM standards worth living with.

19 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Overlooked by Cheschire · · Score: 4

    I swear. You mention dvd burning and everyone's minds immediately jumps to copyright infringement. Most people are missing the fact that we are getting close to REPLACING TAPE DRIVES. Finally. A form of backup that has, though half the size, far more speed than your normal tape drives. Now, i am not saying we are ready to get rid of those old pieces of crap yet, but we are close. I am not sure, but i imagine that the 4.7 gb is only on the dual-sided disks, and i imagine too that you have to flip the disc to write to both sides. So it is still just a 2.xx gb automated backup solution, but thats a heluva lot better than 650 mb!! Now stepping away from the business world and into the desktop realm, think about the size of your average hard drive. Personally i use 14.2 gb out of my 40.6 gb of hard drive space. Most of that though is game fluff that needs to be reinstalled anyways everytime i reformat my windows partition. (i couldve shortened my sentence by saying i reinstall my games every weekend... cron job anyone?). Anyways, the problem with ghosting is that it takes a LOT of space to get, not only the default windoze install, but also all the extra programs and tweaking that comes along with it everytime i reinstall. But now i dont have to store that img on my hard disk, i can store it on a dvd, and still have room to throw in some of the fluff like saved games, mp3's, etc. Basically all i am saying is to stop trying to burn dvd's for a few years. If you cant afford the $20 per dvd, then how did you afford the player???

    1. Re:Overlooked by x0 · · Score: 3

      I hate to be the bearer of bad news (well, not really...), but even at 4.7GB per disc, this technology isn't even close to replacing tapes.

      I got a bit of a chuckle out of your statement 'Now stepping out of the business world' though. You see, your entire post _is_ about desktops.

      Why is that? I think when you say 'tape' you mean Travan or some form of DDS. While desktop level tape drives are usually in the 4-12GB range, there are many forms of tape that have much more capability.

      I am running a relatively low end jukebox with four DLT7000 drives. It is not unusual to get data rates to tape in the 10MB/sec range. Another reason that discs aren't quite ready to replace tapes is that, at least as far as jukeboxes are concerned, you generally don't write one file (or stream of files) to one tape. The backups are threaded onto multiple tapes at the same time.

      Did I mention that DLTs are in the 80GB/tape range?

      --
      In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
  2. Goal: Replace the VCR by jedrek · · Score: 3

    C'mon guys, this is the VCR replacement we've all been looking for. The only reason VCRs are still selling is because they are recordable. My mom isn't even considering a DVD right now, she wants a VCR for christmas. Why? Most of the movies she wants to see are on TV but usually at some late time. She just wants to record them and watch them at her convenience (I'd get her a TiVO but I haven't seen a PAL version yet)

    The ability to record and re-record TV channels on a disc is the function most consumers have been looking for. They want to do more than just watch movies, they want to record Sex in the City, The Sopranos and watch them when they want to.

    I can't wait till I can toss my VCR and free up an extra EuroSCART port.

    Jay


    -- polish ccs mirror

  3. Still not a viable DVD pirating solution - yet. by matthew.thompson · · Score: 4
    I doin't know how much this will retail at but if it and the media are going for todays prices then it's still not worth pirating DVDs at DVD quality to DVD material as it costs twice as much as the £12.99 copy of 2001 I bought the other day.

    Of course the MPAA should be getting frightened about DIVX and the new DVD to CD-R Video devices being launched.

    --
    Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
  4. Re:Your player won't play DVDRs by IO+ERROR · · Score: 3
    DVDRs have certain portions of the disk already written to as part of their production companies licensing deal with the MPAA. The bits required for the disk key are already prewritten with zeroes.

    That's easy enough to deal with. You write unencrypted content. Problem solved.

    I'm more interested in seeing the price tag on this thing, though. Its predecessor was selling around $5,000, last I checked. The new combo drive should cause the price on the older one to drop, hopefully within the range of mere mortals, as happened with CD-R.... then you'll finally see the price of blank DVD-R media drop.
    ---

    --
    How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
  5. Panasonic's Entry by larryj · · Score: 3

    Panasonic has a new 'DVD Recorder' too. It's DVD-RAM (differences? It's 4.7 gigs too). http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/dvd/ dvd_recorder.htm

    --
    What if the Hokey-Pokey really is what it's all about?
  6. Dear Santa by ackthpt · · Score: 4
    I've been a not-so-bad boy this year. Please gimme:

    This

    A few of these

    AMD 760 MP

    Two of these

    A fridge with a padlock

    Oh yeah, and huge pectoral muscles!

    Unless you count the way I drive in my Highway 17 commute, in which case anthracite is just fine.

    --

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  7. Re:Your player won't play DVDRs by Nailer · · Score: 4

    That's easy enough to deal with. You write unencrypted content. Problem solved.
    Problem not solved.

    Your player won't play unencrypted content. It will look for the content code, which will return the zeros. It will then refuse to play the disc.

    Unless you play with the firmware or software, and unlike Region Codes, there's very little inroads which have been made into supplying replacement firmware or software capable of playing consumer written DVD content [obviously these would be underground efforts - like with console games, producing any DVD content involves licensing from those who intented the system - the MPAA].

    OSS will likely be one of the first players to support consumer produced, backup, and pirate DVD content if enough [that fits into the first two categories] is produced.

    Mike

  8. DVD-R media != DVD-Recordable media by FreeUser · · Score: 3

    Pioneer also plans to continue sales of its popular external DVD-Recordable drive (DVR-S201) for high-end authoring and content development applications.


    First, as the subject points out, DVD-R is not the same thing as DVD-Recordable (the latter will play in any DVD player and does not have the disk key zeroed out -- it can be used to make true DVDs and, indeed, the early players could be used to make bit-for-bit copies sans decryption, a feature later removed when the MPAA discovered it would undermine their court battle against DeCSS).

    Second, Pioneer's statement appears to imply that DVD-Recordable drives will remain (artifically?) expensive, while the DVD-R/DVD-RW drive will be priced lower for consumer use.

    I'm afraid DVD-Recordable media isn't likely to come down in price anytime soon, although DVD-R and DVD-RW media should.

    As another pointed out, it is likely that future DVD players will play DVD-R and DVD-RW disks, as there are many of us who want to make our own DVDs from our own home videos and be able to send them to our grandparent's/relatives to watch. Pioneer seems to imply this when they say

    "The driving force behind both DVD-R and DVD-RW has always been compatibility with standard DVD playback systems," said Andy Parsons, senior vice president of product development and technical support, Pioneer New Media Technologies, Inc.. "Pioneer believes that interchangeability between recorders and players is the most important attribute any recordable DVD format can offer [...]"

    --
    The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
  9. Something is wrong here by rogerbo · · Score: 5

    I used to work for a Video Post Production
    facility and we had a Pioneer DVD Burner and
    Authoring software for the PC (not sure
    exactly what, it wasn't my area).

    We could author DVD's just fine with this setup
    that would play on standalone DVD players or
    on Computers with DVD drives. It was common
    for clients to ask for copies of their commercials
    on DVD and we could provide them no problem.

    I believe you can choose to author an unencrypted
    regionless DVD (which is what we were doing) and
    players will play them fine.

  10. How much will it cost? by Goonie · · Score: 3

    I don't expect it to be affordable right away, but how unaffordable it is should give an indication as to how far away from the mainstream it is.

    --

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
    --Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
  11. How the hell is this even REMOTELY on topic? by citizenc · · Score: 3

    The moderation system has failed us again. I moderated this post up when it was relevent.. here it is completely off topic. You can't even pretend. Too bad I'm posting this; it would get -1 Redundant, -1 Off Topic. Grr.

    I'd be afraid of getting moderated down, but if moderation continues in this fashion, then I'll probably wind up with +5 funny.

    ------------
    CitizenC
    My name is not 'nospam,' but 'citizenc'.

  12. Re:Your player won't play DVDRs by Betcour · · Score: 3

    I seriously doubt this :
    1) what's the point of having a DVD-R writer if you can't author your own videos and play them on a regular DVD player ? Surely, preventing all DVD-R from reading on a stand alone DVD player would kill a lot of the legit market for DVD-R. Many people want to edit their own DV videos and then burn them on a DVD-R to watch WITHOUT A COMPUTER.
    2) if current DVD player don't like the unencrypted DVD-R, the new players will (see point 1).
    3) if not point 2, then someone will offer firmware hacking (like all the dezoning and de-macrovisioning currently happening on the market)

  13. Finally... by Alakaboo · · Score: 4
    I can have my complete works of Beethoven on a single disc. =) Or the complete works of any musical talent, for that matter... The Beatles, Metallica, Luciano Pavarotti. Some quick math tells us that while a CD (approx 650MB) can hold an optimistic 11 hours of digital sound at 128kbps, a DVD can hold almost 90. PER SIDE.

    I think we're going to need a better menuing system.

    Alakaboo

  14. Give It Time by Cheshire+Cat · · Score: 5
    Sure, today a blank DVD is more expensive than one with content. But for how long? The reason blank DVDs are so expensive is that there isn't much of a market for them yet. Nor will there be for several years.

    However, as devices like this one come out and get more popular, it will cause the demand for blank DVDs to increase. This will naturally lead to a drop in price.

    Consider this: A a few years ago, blank CDs were going for about $5/pop. Now you can get them in bulk for about fifty cents each. Given enough time the same thing will happen with blank DVDs.

    This is why the MPAA was so incensed over the DeCSS. They were looking ahead to when blank DVDs would be much less expensive than those with content put out by the studios. Whether or not this is good/bad/or otherwise, I'll leave to the reader.

    --

    Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
    1. Re:Give It Time by cyber-vandal · · Score: 5

      The MPAA forward-looking? What's next, Microsoft sticking to standards?

  15. Re:Your player won't play DVDRs by Eil · · Score: 3


    Surely, preventing all DVD-R from reading on a stand alone DVD player would kill a lot of the legit market for DVD-R.

    No offense, but you haven't been watching much news in the last year, have you? Those that have would note that the whole DVD industry is far from legit, even from the very beginning. They don't consumers making DVD-R's at all, let alone for a low price.

    I surely do hope all of your predictions are correct. I'd much like to see DVD eventually become more of a recognized standard than the vast market strongarm tactic it currently is.

  16. DVD-R by onion2k · · Score: 3

    A while back, when CD-R was shiny and new, I found I had a problem with my hi-fi. It wouldn't play CD-Rs. Being a bit of a technophile I'd bought the player when they weren't exactly mainstream, and it was getting on a bit. When I bought my first CD-writer I found that my recordings of CD audio weren't compatible with an older cd player. They were fine on computer drives, but audio players didn't like it at all.

    Do DVD players of the set-top box variety play DVD-R discs? This is not an obvious attempt at piracy. The company I work for produces video adverts for things, and DVD would be a great medium for sending to people. Unfortunately even the shortest production run of DVDs costs more than my annual salary (well, not quite, but exaggeration is allowable). Would a DVD writer be a viable option instead?

  17. Your player won't play DVDRs by Nailer · · Score: 5

    DVDRs have certain portions of the disk already written to as part of their production companies licensing deal with the MPAA. The bits required for the disk key are already prewritten with zeroes.

    You can't burn an exact copy of a DVD to a DVDR, and your inexact copy won't play in most peoples DVD drives.