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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?
And what happens when that DVD breaks, gets scratched, etc.? Do you have to shell out (whatever the price of a DVD is, my DVD drive has never even seen a DVD before.) again just to have the media that you were only licencing before? Maybe if you owned the contents of the disk it may be worth spending the money, but since it is just a licence to use the contents of the disk it isn't. Maybe the MPAA should have to replace unusable DVDs?
As I understand it you are legally allowed on copy for backup purposes. This just might be the backup solution suitable for DVDs.
Now more on-topic: I would assume a tape drive would have a high enough transfer rate for full motion video and it really wouldn't be that hard to hack up some software to read/write to a tape drive with video data would it? The problem I see is drive noise. I'm sure there are quiet ones out there, but the ones I have experience are rather loud. So unless the computer is far away from your viewing area the noise might be less than desireable.