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HP Introduces DVD Recorder
NecroPuppy writes "Hewlett-Packard is introducing the first commercially available DVD recorder, according to this. According to the article, it will be on store shelves in September, and list for $599, and uses the DVD+RW standard." Well, now that I've just bought the supposed to be awesome CD burner from TG (end plug), it might be time to pick this up come September. It'll make backing up a lot easier - since I don't have the Linus method of backing-up.
Actually this is a DVD+RW drive. There are at least seven different standards for recording/pressing DVDs and they all have their pros and cons. A summary can be found here.
Indeed, having so many different standards is sure to slow the adoption of a recordable DVD format. But hopefully, someday everyone will use the same format and the media will be cheap. Witness the price drops (over time) that occurred with CD-Rs, and then with CD-RWs - the drives did not become commodities until the media did. Back in 1996, blank CD-Rs were about $20 each, as a point of reference. Be patient; we will have cheap recordable DVDs soon enough.
-all dead homiez
I read a review of the Pioneer A03 DVD-RW a couple of months ago. (Google's Cache of the page)
The review stated that most new DVD-ROM drives and DVD video players can read these DVD-R disks. A few can also read the DVD-RW standard.
I know what I want for Christmas!
pick one up once I don't have to sacrifice my first born child
I agree, by next summer they will be $299 (media will be around $2 per disc), by Xmas 2002 the price will be $199 (disc wil be under $1) and there will be Linux support for the drive. Until then my Sony 8x burner will do very nicely.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Well, now that I've just bought the supposed to be awesome CD burner from TG
Not to poo-poo ThinkGeek (I've ordered from them before), but I can get the Sony CRX-1611 16x10x40 CD-RW drive with BurnProof for C$158 (about US$99) at several local computer stores here in Toronto (although one is my favourite).
And to think you paid twice as much, plus shipping... ouch...
For those of you too lazy to click the link:
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it."
- Linus Torvalds
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
It's actually quite a serious thing to plug a company owned by your own parent corporation, without giving explicit notice of that fact, or making the plug an advertisement.
But this is Slashdot, where none of that applies...
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Apple Super Drive - DVD Recorder - been around about 6 months or so - www.apple.com\superdrive (Approx $999 i think, included with G4 macs)
_ recorder/default.asp (designed admittedly for media creators)
Panasonic Sell a DVD recorder for TV use etc - http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/dvd
Pioneer have several models (including one with UNIX drivers) - http://www.proh.com/DVD-Recorders.shtml ($820 SRP)
And thats just a quick search - HP are hardly the first consumer level and the pioneer has been out 6 months - add to this offerings by phillips and sony due out soon and you have a bad claim to HP - i dont mean to flame but can we check stories first - even a 5 minute web search would have proven the claim wrong and stopped the hundreds of posts pointing out the error
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Just incase anyone is interested, the DVD+RW specs are here.
;).
Also, from the little I have read on zdnet it appears that DVD+RW is promising, being usable for video, data, etc. although not officially sanctioned by the DVD Forum (but with backers like HP, Phillips, Ricoh, Sony, Thomson MM, Verbatim, and Yamaha who needs the damn DVD Forum
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
Pioneer DVR-7000, available NOW!
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Me personally I will wait untill the cost of the blanks drop below $5.00 US. By then the price of the recorders will have, hopefully, dropped significantly
Those buttheads insisted on including CPRM buggery, which makes it as useless as a DAT tape deck IMNSHO.
Of course, if they thoughtfully made it easy to defeat by cutting a PC board trace or soldering a jumper on somewhere, I'd buy one in a heartbeat.
Still, for $1600 dollars, I want something that works for ME, not for Jack Valenti.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If you want a ~$600 DVD recorder, you already have a couple of other choices.
At $629 on PriceWatch, the Pioneer DVR-A03 that a number of posters have already mentioned writes DVD-R at 2X, DVD-RW at 1X, as well as CD-R and CD-RW.
At $535 on PriceWatch, the Panasonic LF-D311 writes DVD-R at 1X and DVD-RAM (1X for 2.6GB, 2X for 4.7GB), as well as reading the usual CD formats, but apparently not writing any CD format whatsoever.
Currently, to the best of my knowledge, the only Linux software that can drive DVD writes is proprietary (sorry, there really is no good link for it). I am not sure whether complete information on how to drive these DVD writes is given in the SCSI-3 standards on www.t10.org or whether some additional information is needed. Any pointers to this information would be appreciated, as I might get ambitious one of these days and try to hack cdrecord or cdwrite to control these drives if nobody beats me to it.
The new drive will enter the mess that is the DVD rewritable market. Three competing standards--DVD+RW, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM--are vying for market supremacy, confusing compatibility issues and keeping prices high.
I'm glad to see the technology emerging in the consumer market, but I won't touch this sh!t until these standards issues are worked out. Somewhere, my Beta player is weeping.
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
Be patient; we will have cheap recordable DVDs soon enough.
By the time we have cheap recordable DVDs, 4-6 GB will be a laughable amount.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
At one point, Linus had implemented device files in /dev, and wanted to dial up the university computer and debug his terminal emulation code again. So he starts his terminal emulator program and tells it to use /dev/hda. That should have been /dev/ttyS1. Oops. Now his master boot record started with "ATDT" and the university modem pool phone number. I think he implemented permission checking the following day.
Best Slashdot Co
Sounds great. CD-Rs are just too small for backup, and nothing else is rugged enough. I'm using an external USB hard drive that I got dirt cheap now, but although it's fairly big (20G) it's slooooowwwwww.
Also, I can copy all my home videos over from VHS-C to DVD before the tape disintegrates. (No doubt in 20 years I'll be copying them to new media for the 5th time, probably to molecular-torsion memory or something).
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
I have yet to really do anything with DVD stuff. Not only is it not entirely HDTV compatible (they must have forgotten that we're all supposed to be switching to that from NTSC, just like everybody else), the whole business with the DVD Forum has rubbed me the wrong way. If I'm going to import anime, I don't want to have to import a new DVD player as well. My laserdisc player handles foreign media just fine. (Too bad they're leaving that standard, though). As for renting movies, my VCR still works. Even if I end up getting a PS2 or an Xbox, I don't see myself spending money on DVD movies.
However, DVD+RW seems to be a format in which they've done everything right. If I were to get a DVD recorder, I'd want something that can be played on most normal players, be it a movie player or a DVD-ROM drive. DVD-R and DVD-RW can't promise that, and DVD-RAM is really just a gloriefied tape drive with its proprietary sealed cases. On top of that, this bad boy will write CD-R and CD-RW as well. I get this and a normal DVD-ROM drive and I can copy damned near anything. The only problem I see here is that, once somebody figures out how to record dual-layer discs (so you can record discs the same size as the commercial plants), that will probably entail yet another standard.
But, again, I have no use for a DVD player, and only marginal use for a DVD-ROM drive. DVD+RW would be nice in that it hold a metric fuckload of data, but do I really have that much to hold? (OK, maybe I will when I live someplace they have broadband again) Is there a reason for me to need this instead of a normal CD-RW?
Panasonic had the first "consumer" DVD-R at under $1000, the DVR-A03. You can find it at Best Buy for a rather high $799, or find it on Pricewatch.com for $620. Blank DVD-R disks are $7 each online.
:-)
My strike price is about $400 which is high, but considering I have a *bazillion* mp3s it is still cost-effective (factoring in TIME). The REAL "killer app" for DVD-R will be mp3 players that read the disk. Currently DVD players that do MP3's, only do so off of an ISO-9660 CD. THAT is a crying shame. An Apex 5-DVD changer with 25GB of MP3's would just be too much fun...
This information isn't super-secret... the reason Slashdot credits HP is because most Slashdot publishing is "headline based", with research about as deep as a beer cap. Not only has the Panasonic been available for MONTHS (and shipping inside certain Apple models), but even that was not the first DVD-R -- there were various drives for the last few years at about the US$5,000 mark.
Please, Slashdot, the moderation system already sucks. At least do a 30-second Google to make sure your facts are OK. (FWIW - I'm one of the "original" users #54xx and I will not moderate because, because the criteria for being selected is NOT how well you moderate, it is HOW OFTEN YOU POST [this does WONDERS for signal-to-noise... duh!] )
-Scott
Except the driver for it is cripped to prevent you from sharing drive contents over a network. Unless you pay hundreds of dollars for crappy Win or Mac only software, which doesn't make it any more networkable since only the primary computer has the ability to select which CD/DVD is being accessed.
And to top off insult to injury, they charge $500 for an SDK to keep you from writing your own better software.
No thank you. I just wish someone out there would create a project to built one of these only use a thinserver to provide access to all CD/DVD with standard FTP/SAMBA formats.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Plextor is the best drive. They now have a 24X write version, and the computer stores are starting to sell 24X certified CD-R blank media.
Bush's education improvements were
Of course, maybe it won't matter.
Maybe new dvd players will just add the new formats to their list of compatible formats. Current DVD players support lots of data formats: dvd, cd, vcd. Better ones support mp3 and svcd/xvcd/xsvcd. Lots of current inexpensive players have more than one laser to support most of the different physical formats: dvd, cd, cd-r, cd-rw, and even the newer dvd-r, dvd-rw, dvd+rw.
Check out http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers.php
HP has several devices on the market that have no manufacturer supported Linux drivers. This might be good for backups, but only if it's useable.
I think that HP's assessment of the Linux market is defined by their announcement yesterday of a $3,000 version. They see Linux as being for servers. Consumer items may well get a very short shrift.
My guess is the Linux support is out of a totally separate division from the consumer stuff. Abd the two groups either don't talk, or are rivals.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
"The media for the new drive, which HP also plans to sell, will cost $15.99 per disc."
Amazon's best-selling movie DVDs seem to average around $21-$22 each. That price relative to $16 for blank media sounds like it could be a factor in the success of their DVD+RW's. The movie industry can't be happy about this, although they must realize cheap, writable DVDs are inevitable.
According to rumor, you can't (easily) record other video than home movies on to the Apple/Panasonic DVD burner. Do we know anything about the restrictions in this one?
The press release says this, which sounds pretty free to me.
the HP DVD-writer dvd100i drive enables users to create DVDs from their own videos using the DVD+RW format. Users also can transfer analog or digital video directly from a camcorder or VCR to a DVD disc(Requires separately purchased video capture and compression hardware for download of video to PC), create and play digital music CDs and store large amounts of data safely and securely on both CD and DVD media.
You bought it from ThinkGeek? Tsk, tsk -- Taco, you paid too much.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Perhaps when a post is moderated to and above +3
Better yet, they could actually solve the problem, by parsing for and removing the javascipt shenanigans that made links suspect in the first place. Besides being ugly, the safety-link is no help if the author links to Google's cache or anonymizer.com or some random IP.
As long as (which others have already said) there are more than one standard and nobody yet knows which standard will be the one that wins the race, I'm not buying.
Here is a quote from a faq:
There are six recordable versions of DVD-ROM: DVD-R for General, DVD-R for Authoring, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD+R. All recordable drives can read DVD-ROM discs, but each uses a different type of disc for recording. DVD-R and DVD+R can record data once (sequentially only), while DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW can be rewritten thousands of times. DVD-R was first available in fall 1997.
DVD-RAM followed in summer 1998. DVD-RW came out in Japan in December 1999, but won't be available elsewhere until mid or late 2001. DVD+RW will be available in late 2001 or early 2002. DVD+R will be available in mid 2002.
From what I have read in the faq, CD+RW looks to be the kind of drive you should buy (this HP drive is such a drive).
To quote:
/dev, and wanted to dial up the university computer and debug his terminal emulation code again. So he starts his terminal emulator program and tells it to use /dev/hda. That should have been /dev/ttyS1. Oops. Now his master boot record started with "ATDT" and the university modem pool phone number. I think he implemented permission checking the following day."
"At one point, Linus had implemented device files in
I laugh. It's nice to know that I'm not the first one to mess up the mbr. I just wish I had read this before executing this command:
# dd of=/dev/hda if=/dev/fd0
Now, that was *supposed* to back up the MBR to a floppy disk in case it ever got corrupted. Needless to say, "in case" happened and the backup didn't.
--Jon
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
No, don't worry. You don't need to encrypt a movie to play it on an ordinary DVD player. They'll play movies without encryption -- or region coding, or Macrovision for that matter -- just fine.
... but there's no way to do a bit-for-bit copy onto a blank.
In fact, as I understand it, the DVD-R media you use in the Pioneer drive is not capable of recording either region coding or CSS encryption. That's on purpose; it's one of the safeguards they've come up with to keep you from pirating DVDs. You can copy all the data from your encrypted, region-coded DVD, sure
Hint: That's what DeCSS is for.
BTW, I sincerely doubt you can fit 40 minutes of "DVD quality" video onto a CD-R. VCD quality, maybe. Current writable DVD blanks only hold about 2.5 hours of video.
Also, note that I only really know about the DVD-R/DVD-RW standard, which is the Pioneer drive that ships in the Apple G4s. I've not used anything DVD+RW, which is the drive HP is talking about. These are two competing standards.
Breakfast served all day!
I've been following the DVD writing market for a while now, and I'm interested in seeing how this competition between the DVD-R/DVD-RW standard and the DVD+RW standard. I've read here several times already the opinion that the competing formats will slow the adoption of DVD writing.
My question is: Why?
There seems to be some kind of industry FUD being thrown around that these drives are "incompatible." How so? Both write to media that can be read in either an industry-standard home DVD player or an industry-standard DVD-ROM drive. There is some worry going around that DVD-R media can not be read by 100% of the home DVD players out there, but I think this is being largely overblown by the industry (particularly the DVD+RW) people. Hell, my old CD player gags on CD-R media ... does that mean I should sign up with a new standard created by a consortium of big corporations, like DVD+RW?
But leave the home players aside for a moment. Let's say that I buy a DVD-R burner (and I have), and you buy a DVD+RW burner. Both of our burners also function as DVD-ROM drives, right? So if I burn a DVD-R and give it to you, you will be able to read it on your DVD+RW burner. If you burn a DVD+RW and give it to me, I will be able to read it in my DVD-R burner. Or, if for some reason it doesn't work -- say the drives are "touchier" than most -- then we can still slap the things into some other DVD-ROM drive, and read them there.
The drives are not "incompatible." This is just a gross overstatement, coupled with with marketing spin from the DVD+RW people who want to edge out DVD-R. Sure, their blank media formats are incompatible. You and I won't be able to trade blanks. But, ultimately ... so what?
Seems to me we should be investigating things like the licensing terms for each format, roadmap for future development (if they come up with a dual-layer blank, who will get it first?), industry tactics, who's making deals with the RIAA and MPAA, who's going to be able to offer lower cost sooner, etc. When we get informed about that, then we can put our money where our opinions are, and encourage the industry to support the format that's best for US.
Breakfast served all day!
Okay, sorry...or unless you pay THOUSANDS for the "workgroup" or "enterprise" versions, which is exactly the same hardware except apparently for said remote disc select utility.
Anyway you look at it...great idea, crappy implementation.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
I've been writing DVD-R's for months (write-once data or video), and DVD-RW's for about a month, using the SuperDrive in my PowerMac (it's a Pioneer drive that also does CD-RW). The DVD-R discs are $10 each (from Apple, in boxes of 5), hold 4.7GB of data, and take about 20 minutes to write. I got rid of my slow tape drive and its expensive and fragile tapes, and now I have backups that are easy to access and will last longer (cheaper, too ... paid for itself). I also have my portfolio on DVD video discs. Very easy to get pro results with Apple's software (the interface is the hardest part).
So, the HP drive has a "+" in between DVD and RW instead of a "-". For video DVD's, you need authoring software, and Apple has been selling that in spades for months now, also Compaq, using Pioneer's drive. The HP DVD+RW makes me think of USB 2.0, which is only amazing if you don't already use or know about the overwhelming popularity of FireWire. What does the DVD+RW media cost? Where can you get it? Does the drive come with authoring software? If not, then making DVD video discs is only a theoretical possibility. Yes, the drive can write the data (any DVD drive can), but there is so much more to it than that.
Interesting. I just ejected the tray on my 24X Plextor, and the groove is there for the small CD-Rs. Are you saying the Plextor software does not support the small CD-Rs?
Bush's education improvements were