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DVDs On DAT?
Guppy06 asks: "The big question about copying DVDs (other than legality) seems to be "What do you do after being able to decode it?" A cursory scan of Pricewatch shows that DAT tapes are now big enough to hold the entire contents of a DVD and then some. I know that tapes in general have been relegated to the back-up role because of their slow search times and, to some extent, slow read/write times. However, you don't exactly need ATA-100 (or even a 12x DVD-ROM) to watch DVD-quality streaming video from start to finish. So, my question is 'Would it be possible?' If not, what's standing in the way, and are those problems long-term or short-term? How fast are read/write times on DATs increasing, if any? DATs are an ancient technology (by computer standards), widespread, cheap, and not easily censorable in the near future. It might be a better alternative to bending over for the MPAA for playing/recording large media files." As long as the data transfer rate is sufficient for real-time playback of a DVD, I don't see why something like this can't be done. Of course you will lose the searching capabilities (playback in a differing speeds both forwards and backwards), but when you are just playing a DVD, do you really need those?
Ferchrissakes... Just go drop a few hundred on a PS2 and watch the DVD. What's the deal with you guys wanting to copy these things anyway, you've already got the DVD, right?
http://www.indigita.com/ Indigita makes a DAT drive speciffically made for this type of stuff. It's called the RAV6 and comes in IDE and SCSI configs. Writes to standard DDS-2 tapes and shows up as a drive letter. They specifically mention being abel to copy and run DVDs. I couldn't get to their homepage at the time of this posting but I know that pcconnection.com sells them. Just search for Rav6. Taffey Lewis taffeyl@hotmail.com
No, DV actually uses an encoding similar to (but not the same as) motion JPEG. So, like MJPEG and MPEG it uses discrete cosine transforms to compress individual frames, but unlike MPEG it does not have any temporal compression. Frames are recorded individually, which requires a much higher bit rate (25 Mbps) than MPEG2. This is good for editing, but not ideal for storage.
DV is a standard format, you can buy recorders and players (including portable decks) that won't be unique to your personal setup. Downside: recompression and different colorspace divisions (4:2:0 on DVD, 4:1:1 for NTSC DV) will hurt quality slightly.
Definitely not, and if you're using MiniDV or Digital8 tapes you'll get at most an hour per tape, so 2 tapes are needed for most movies. The larger DVCAM tapes can hold 2 hours or so, but are much more expensive than most DVDs.
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
Yes, I want to convert my DVDs to a format that gives me fewer features than VHS. (Do I _need_ searching? Probably not. Do I use searching? Yes. Do I like searching? Yes.)
What's the rationale here?
The only real problem with using DLT's for piracy is it entirely defeats the purpose. A $15 legal copy beats paying $90 for a DLT cartridge to store an illegal copy, methinks...
Only on slashdot can a posting be rated "Score -1, Insightful".
Then who cares really? Just store them on their original media. Unless you want to do streaming, and then hard drives are your best bet. As another poster pointed out, you can set up a streaming server (For your lan... you'd need a pretty sexy pipe to stream over the 'net) and the storage would cost $10/movie. The random access would be much easier that way; you wouldn't need a tape robot to not have to get off the sofa. That would be cool.
If you really want to pirate movies (as long as DVDs stay cheap, why would you? They're cheaper then mucic CDs!), are you sure a public forum is the best place to discuss it? The MPAA has more money then the Church of Scientology...
The larger DV tapes are 270 minutes - 4.5 hours, but need to have a deck capable of using it.
My VCR has 2 bays - VHS on the right and DV on the left. The DV bay will take either DV or Mini DV.
I'd love to find a Linux solution that will stream out the firewire port to the deck's firewire - Since the deck refuses to record MacroVision streams, I'd have to strip that out of the video, without going to analog. (The DeCSS version I use strips that.
Anyone know of a solution?
(Oddly, the main reason I need this is not to pirate, it's because I am really hard on discs...)
Cheers,
Jim
-- My Weblog.
It also is about an hour per tape... two tapes per movie (or one tape per episode of Junkyard Wars!). Sony makes a VERY nifty device that encodes various formats to DV... it's referenced on Apple's site with their high end Macs.
And yes, most DAT drives for backup purposes are around $1000... I have two, one for home use, and one at the office. The tapes are dirt cheap, however. It would be possible to do this with an MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 stream, but the listed capacity is generally pre-compression (the backup devices compress on the fly onto the tape).
I have a friend who is wholesale converting his large videotape collection to DiVX ;-) on CD-Rs. That seems to me to be the best solution... we often watch Anime on his 'Toshi-chan' laptop at Dennys or other restaurants. Gets quite a few looks, but is fun.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
DLT's are used to make new pirate DVD's, I don't think anybody actually views them.
They're called DLT's, Digital Linear Tapes. Probably somewhat comparable to DAT's, but almost certainly not compatible. DLT's are used in the production of DVD's-everything goes on a DLT right before the master DVD is pressed. Apparently, DLT's are the main enablers of DVD piracy, not DeCSS (big surprise there), so it might be possible to get your hands on a DLT player and maybe even a recorder, if you're into black market dealing.
Anyway, is it even possible to store/playback video on DAT's? Seems not to smart to me.
You could also look at an Ecrix drive, about $500 through the LUG deal, which stores 33 GB on an 8mm cartridge costing $65 or so (ouch). I've heard of people punching holes in hi-8 video editing tape (Sony HMEAD E6-120, about $13 per tape at B&H Photo) and getting good results with that. The 120 minute video tape holds about 20 GB since it's shorter than the Ecrix tape. Still, this is kludgy and maybe flaky. Basically all tape media are overpriced right now. CD-R is a lot cheaper, but the capacity is too low to really dub video in style.
It's probably best to just wait for recordable DVD to get cheaper. Recordable DVD is available now, but costs a lot. Consumer products are coming though, and within a year or so it will be like CD-R.
Finally, there's good old analog videotape...
Well if you really want this to work, you should also place the contents of the DVD on 5000000 DISks. Then you could have the DVD on DIS(ks) and DAT.
No Applause, just throw money.
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It could be made to work. The DVD transfer rate is 1.32 megs/sec, so you need at least that much. Looking at the specs for Seagate DDS drives, they should have enough transfer, but you need to get a pretty high-end drive. Most of the cheaper drives don't have enough transfer rate. Remember that they generally show the transfer rate specs as compressed, and that's not going to work with already compressed MPEG2 data too well.
I have a sneaking suspicion, however, given that the cheapest DAT drive that's fast enough is over $1000 MSRP, you might get better results just using a DVD-RAM drive for your MPEG-ripping enjoyment. The media's either as expensive or a little more expensive than DAT (You can get DDS2 and DDS3 media, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the DDS4 -- $19 on PriceWatch -- media is required to get the required transfer rate) and the drives are $300-400.
So, really, the DAT drive seems to be a better deal. Unless you already have the drive, it's not worth getting one.
Gentoo Sucks
I say you try to stream a ripped DVD from a Ditto drive. That will work!
Pricewatch shows regular IDE drives 40GB @ $100 = $10/movie (assuming 4GB movies)
After factoring the cost of the Tape Drive, the Media, the empty area on the end of a tape that is wasted, and the time or money for the software to perform the playback, looks to me like you should just buy a bunch of cheap hard drives and copy the files. If you are worried about data recovery, use RAID-5, even with the extra $100 I think it'll come out cheaper in the end. Plus, with hard drives, you'll have many different options to play back the video. Better yet, get an external setup and take your movies to your friends! Hey... maybe there's a new product there...
--
He had come like a thief in the night,
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes
I've got nothing against a nice hack, but this just seems like far more trouble than it's worth. As mentioned above, the price of a decent DAT drive brings you within striking range of a DVD burner, and if not, it will certainly in a few months. Besides, now you've managed to strip the DVD of all random access and interactive features (When my girlfriend made me watch Stewart Little, at least there was a little game off the menu that I could enjoy.) Another drawback is the lack of a remote control. And finally, I love the speed of the DAT drive I have at work, but it ejects tapes annoyingly slow. jelling (Also, is it safe to assume that the DAT will be able to output 5 channel audio?)
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