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

Posted by timothy on from the that's-a-lotta-pictchas,-louey! dept.

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.

4 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  2. 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?

  3. 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.