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Which DVD-Recordable Drives?
We've had a couple stories recently about DVD-RW and such. I'm wondering what ones out there people have used, how well they work, what's the support etc etc. I'm also still on my quest to build the ultimate quiet machine, so any comment on the amount of noise the drive generates would be great - I love my Yamaha Drive for burning - but it's a *loud* one.
I recently got a plextor 16x burner, man that thing is super fast and super quiet.
"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
Double-sided discs. (4.8 + 4.8 = 9.6)
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Take comfort in your ignorance.
Grandmaster Plague
This web site is good for news on DVD recording
technology:
http://www.dvdwriters.co.uk
IIRC The 17+GB Discs were 2 sides of dual layers. Not single-sided quad-layered.
I had a friend who purchased a yamaha drive that was noisy when burning. He took it back to the store and got a new one which did not have this problem. It seems that there was a batch of drives that had this problem.
No, not as such, because the DVD ring that stores the CSS key is zeroed out on blank DVDs. That having been said, you could, in theory, run a DVD through DeCSS then burn the unencrypted video to the disc, but there are DVD players out there that won't play unencrypted video.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
There are two widely used mechanisms for consumer priced DVD recording drives.
/CD-RW/CD-R drive.
There is the Pioneer DRV-103/A03 unit that is used in the G4 Power Macintosh computers.
It is a DVD-R / DVD-RW
It writes and rewrites DVD and CD media, and it's DVD movies are playable in set top box DVD players.
The other prevalent drive is a Panasonic unit that is DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RAM, CD (no CD recording, just playback.)
Plextor, Yamaha and others are largely reselling these mechanisms.
Expect to pay about 500-1000 dollars US for one of these units. These are DVD General drives, and cannot be used as Masters for DVD reproduction use. The DVD Authoring drives are SCSI, cost upwards of $5000, and the only one I know if is a Pioneer unit. (Doesn't mean there aren't others, but I haven't done my homework to find them.)
God bless America, and may her enemies cower in fear.
the DVD+RW drives coming out soon will likely be the best balance of compatibility and flexibility, since the drives burn discs usable in almost all standard DVD players, not to mention CDR and CD-RW discs. Also, from what i understand, the upgradable firmware will allow for when future capacity increases.
This article at cdmediaworld has good reviews as well as links to other sites with reviews.
Check out
http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#4.3 for a nice compatability grid.
Because of that, I would go for price or bundled software.
These were burned on the A03 Pioneer writer. They were 4gig DVD and both DVD-R and RW played fine. My player is also a Pioneer unit but was more than a year old. We were surprised that it worked but both being Pioneer may have had somehting to do with it (shrug).
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
the "quad layer" was really a double sided dual layer disk for 17.1GB if I remember correctly.
If God gave us curiosity
Hey, I usually live in Mississauga too, perhaps I know you =P.
Are you sure that there are players that won't play unencrypted DVDs? Because I have a pack here of unencrypted DVDs, and they seem to work fine in all DVD players around here. (Mind you, I am in France right now). However I'd assume that any video that's not copyright or protected (i.e. broadcasted TV, or perhaps commercials or music videos or those "how to use your super duper vacuum!" VHS tapes that you get, I'm sure they don't need to be encrypted. ?
If God gave us curiosity
Here is a lot of good info about DVD+RW.
:-)
From what it says there, DVD+RW is both cheaper and more compatible than DVD-RW, for about the same capacity. DVD+RW uses a slightly different technique that reduces gaps between data to give compatibility with the "vast majority" of existing DVD players. It is also apparently more flexible in burning compatible discs, 7x faster to close the session, and allows erasing of individual sections, rather than just the whole disc.
HP are shipping their first dvd100i DVD+RW drive this month for US$599. DVD+RW media will reportedly sell for about US$16 (compared to the US$24 I've seen for DVD-RW media). Philips have announced their standalone DVD+RW unit, and will ship the bare drive in October.
Apparently, initial units will only support DVD+RW/DVD-ROM/CD-R/CD-RW/CD-ROM, but DVD+R (analogous to DVD-R, but apparently also cheaper/more compatible) is promised shortly via a firmware upgrade. DVD-R media support may also be available.
FWIW, my own experiences with DVD-R are mixed; 2 of the 4 DVD players and DVD-ROM drives I've tried DVD-R discs with would not recognise the discs at all. I plan to get a dvd100i as soon as they're available
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
DVD-R and DVD-RW can be played in set-top boxes, though not all of the older boxes will play home-burned DVDs. For a good matrix of what media play in which drives, check:
t .shtml
http://www.proh.com/DVD_and_CD_compatibility_char
the sept. ish of max pc has a pretty interesting and informative article on the new formats and drives coming down the pike for dvd recording. I don't believe it's online at maximum pc but its on the newsstands and max pc is a pretty great mag. its their dream machine issue.
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Back when DVD-ROMs were first developed, pleas to include "linking areas," also called "run-in" on magnetic media, were ignored. This meant that there would be no space to write bits to allow the data clock to be recovered. This is not a problem with a continuously written disc, as the "earlier" data can be used.
However, with most technologies, the start of writing can vary hundreds of bits from its nominal location. This means that if you write sector 1, and later write sector 2 on its tail, there is no way to align the data clock to the data in time to read the data of sector 2, since the first bits are used to recover the clock.
DVD-RAM addressed this problem by introducing a new format. There are small embossed address headers to mark where each sector might be, and a small written run-in for each recorded sector. This media is highly susceptible to scratches, since the embossed headers are easily obscured by dust or a scratch. Also, having the embossed headers means that these discs are INCOMPATIBLE with DVD-ROM drives.
DVD-RAM discs also use land/groove recording. This means changes to the servo mechanism just to follow the track. A DVD-ROM drive must add in special reader circuitry to handle the data coding, different block architecture (ROMs use blocks of 16 sectors), different servos for land/groove structure, etc. DVD-RAM is endorsed by the DVD Forum, so is the "official" format.
DVD-RW is also endorsed by the DVD Forum, but for video use. Its intended application for reliable use is to not put data in the first block where you first start writing (it becomes your run-in). The "link point" where writing begins and ends occurs about 1.5 sectors into the 16 sector block. This means that the first 1.5 sectors, while readable, have unrelated data to what you just recorded! Also, some amount of the beginning of what you did write will be unreadable because the data clock needs to be recovered, and the words synchronized to a sync mark. Realistically, the first two sectors will be trashed in any sector that contains a link point. These sectors are recoverable by ECC, but it severely reduces the amount of recovery that can be done on your real data!
DVD-RW uses a shallow, low frequency, wobbled groove with some high frequency "ticks" (occurring at a low frequency) to gain some positional accuracy. These ticks are extremely susceptible to dirt, etc.
Overall, DVD-RW is best used as a re-usable DVD-R.
DVD+RW uses a shallow wobbled groove. However, this wobble is a continuous high frequency, and uses phase modulation to contain address information. The link point is a few bytes from the end of the sector, meaning that only a few bytes are sacrificed to the ECC gods (instead of 4K in the case of DVD-RW), and sufficient data exists to act as the run-in for the newly written sector.
The logical layout of DVD+RW is identical to the logical layout of DVD-ROMs. Any drive that conforms to the DVD-ROM standards will read a DVD+RW disc. Unfortunately, some manufacturers took shortcuts (like assuming a low reflectivity disc is a dual layer disc, rather than reading the proper parameter from the media).
The design characteristics of DVD+RW are such that it works well for randomly written data, and is compatible with DVD-ROM drives.
In short, DVD-RAM only works if the reader was deliberately designed to read it. DVD-RW is readable by properly designed ROM readers, but is a very fragile format. Finally, DVD+RW is readable in properly designed ROM readers, and has the most robust inherent design.Standards that describe these DVD formats are available from ECMA.
Disclaimer: I work for HP, and used to work in their DVD group. Opinions expressed here are mine, not HPs.
i have two of the pioneer dvd r/rw they work great. no problems or underruns. I have burned around 90 dvd's between them. The Media is very expensive around $20 for a 4.7 gig disk which is too small for most movies and not worth the cost
a good site is:
vcdhelp.com
which is generally for VCD's, which will only play on "compatible" dvd players.
However, they have lots of background information, including a huge section on DVD players with compatibility information - showing which will play DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW. Also sections on all kinds of other issues. I believe they have the domain dvdhelp.com, but there's not much to it.
They also have a huge, well documented and well organized Links section to other information.
I believe that in the early days, some Hollywood discs actually went out without CSS, or were region free. Of course, they keep quiet about them to protect the sales of more expensive versions in other markets. The DVD FAQ has lots and lots of good info.
;)
I too have had experiences with FutureShop reps: I tried to buy a multi-DVD player/changer and told them that I needed one that supports CD-Rs... they told me that they only had one that handled CD-Rs, and it just happened to be the most expensive one there. After getting it home, I found that it didn't support CD-R's at all. Wankers! One of the few reasons I use FutureShop is their good returns policy
It's 8.4 GB.
Horse-shite. Another /.er with an elevated opinion of what he actually knows.
1) There are 2 DVD standards
a) DVD for authoring
b) DVD for general use.
2) DVD for authoring DVD-Rs can only be burned on drives that support this standard. Currently the cheapest of these drives is still $5k+
3) DVD for general use does not support encryption or region coding.
4) 99% of standalone DVD players built in the last 18 months support DVD or General Use DVD-Rs.
5) It is completely possible to copy a commercial (DVD authoring std) to a DVD-R for general use, however, it must be decrypted first. It must also fit onto a 4.7G DVD-R disk, 75% of commercial DVDs will not fit. I have verified that it is possible to produce a perfect digital copy of a commercial disk.
6) There is a lot of misinformation floating around re: DVD-RW & DVD+RW. Both standards work well withe existing h/w. There is not much to choose between them.
7) I have the Pioneer A03 IDE DVD-RW drive. It's an excellent piece of h/w and can be purchased for $650. I have used it for burning home movies (boy, is that a long process!) and for data backup.
8) DVD-R media can be had for $8. DVD-RW for $21. Checkout www.meritline.com if you don't believe me.