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HP DVD100i DVD+RW Burner Tested
An anonymous reader writes: "I'm fairly sure this is the first review of a DVD+RW drive. Looks like it fared well in testing. The only downsides to the 100i are slow DAE with audio CD's, lousy manuals, and it can't read DVD-RW (note the dash instead of the plus) discs. Still a tad expensive at 599USD though. Are you reading, Santa?" I want this as a heavy-duty *external* drive :)
An anonymous reader writes: "... Are you reading, Santa?"
Yes, but who do I deliver to?
-Santa
Just for a point of comparison... how does this differ from the Apple SuperDrive DVD writer (you've seen the ads) which is included in high end Powermacs? According to Apple's website the SuperDrive is a DVD-R drive, which I was told, couldn't write DVD-Video... so how are they accomplishing it?
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
that can always be taken care of with a "video clarifier"
Does anyone know if that affects quality though?
this is great. $600 now means they'll be $150 three years down the line, and they'll be as ubiquitous as CD-RWs are now.
:D
boy there's gonna be some piracy problems
Uhm, why? I always wondered what it was about people and external drives. Do you plan on swapping this across multiple systems? Or do you just want to be "cool" for having an external DVD+RW? From what I've seen, most external CD-like solutions are enormous, unless you get a PCMCIA slimline version, but I don't see any slimline DVD burners coming out any time soon, heh.
Note that dvd+rw and dvd-rw drive can both write dvd-r disks that can be played in a standard dvd player. So it's not quite vhs vs. betamax.
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Maybe the poster of this article should look for reviews of Apple's G4 desktop macine, it's been shipping with a Panasonic DVR-103 DVD-RW drive as standard for quite a while now.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
/.
While DVD+RW may eventually become the industry standard, you're still gambling until a true standard unequivocally (sp?) emerges.
Look at what 56Kb modem prices did once the v.90 standard was published.
SO, I'm still waiting!
--Charlie
First DVD-RAM, then DVD-RW, then DVD+RW... the industry's parade of new and different recordable DVD formats has got to be awfully confusing to consumers. Until this article, I certainly couldn't keep them straight.
The funny thing is that the faster they crank out these new formats, the faster the previous ones become obsolete. We are accumulating dead media at a faster and faster pace. Will anyone own a working DVD-RAM drive in 10 years? Woe to those businesses, individuals or organizations who chose this as their archival medium...
I have one of those (DVD recorder is on the list to get) and it works fairly well. Get the Pinnacle DVD authoring software ($40 at Best Buy) because the bundled software isn't any good.
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Hmmm, so all the hype here really is over a drive that is rewriteable and has the capability to hold how much data? 18 GB total maybe? Plus they're sort of slow. Then again, the first CDR drives were painstakingly slow as well.
:o) Alas, such things are not in the forefront of the news as I guess most companies are scared to invest in something so powerful.
:-)
My feelings are two folded. I guess I am happy that the DVD+RW is finally around, mostly because I don't want to see DVDs go to the wayside like many economists were saying that they would (then again, what do they know really?). But at the same time, with companies like Constellation 3D out there with their Flourescent technologies out there, I'm wondering why this sort of media storage hasn't been developed more. Constellation 3-d uses a flourescent technology to store up to 140 GB of data on a single disc. This would be more than enough to be like that of HDTV
Oh well, like others I'd love for Santa to bring me an external unit...
I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
At $15.99 a disk, the cost they mention in this CNet article http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-6909288.html from August 19, I don't think its all that affordable. With the drive costing $600, the total costs would just be too high. Sure you can record repeatedly for each $16, but you're going to want to have more than one thing on disk at any one time, requiring additional disks. I realize that's cheaper than competing DVD rewritables so far, but still too much.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
The best site I've found that goes through all the differences between DVD formats is in the DVD FAQ at DVD Demystified
I waited on the 56k v.90 standard for a while and I can wait on this to get sorted out too. If it were something a little bit cheaper then I would not mind spending the money on this, but since they cost >$500 I will wait.
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
You are incorrect. It will take about 24 minutes.
2.4x = approx 3Mb/s
Mmmmmmm
Can this drive make perfect copies of DVD movie disks? For backup purposes, of course.
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
Just slap the drive into an external SCSI case and off you go. Some of my friends use external SCSI cases with a CD-ROM drive as a CD player.
marotti.com
hi,
i've had one of these for the last month and have found it to be an incredibly reliable and useful tool.
i haven't run across a bad cd/dvd write yet with it, and while the software is very vanilla, it is still quite useful.
installation was very simple, and with media prices dropping, i'm happily looking forward to finally feeling secure about having enough back-ups...
-myrth
-- ABAP Guy
It looks like Pioneer's drive is now cheaper than the new HP one, and I think the disks are cheaper, too. Plus, it is readily available, and so are the DVD-R's and DVD-RW's. It also works with Linux, at least to write CD's. I've done it.
"Luncheon meats make the sawdust in your stomach explode."
CD-RW drives cannot burn DVD-RW or DVD+RW.
DVD+RW drives cannot burn DVD-RW, and visa-versa (until someone makes a drive that does both).
DVD-R media can be had for as little as $5USD apiece. Given that is 4.7GB, that is the equivalent of about 7 CDR's. Not too bad, in terms of price/MB.
Ever try to back up a 40GB drive to CDR? That's about 60 disks - a real pain. Eight or nine DVD-R's would be much easier and quicker.
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
...It's called a hard drive. They're REALLY cheap these days, and they have INCREDIBLY FAST seek times. Oh, and they can be written to and read from without any additional software. Oh, and they're compatible with ANY operating system.
Seriously, though...these things are still WAY too expensive to justify buying one, unless you're one of those guys making a six-figure salary who buys everything, no matter the cost. Then again, i guess they have to go through this phase before they're going to bring the price down anyway, so whatever. But for now, I'll take a bunch of hard drives over a DVD-RW or DVD+RW any day.
AFAIK DVD+RW drives cannot write to DVD-R media.
There will be a supplemental media released
"early" next year... DVD+R which will fill the
cheap recordable gap in the media line for
DVD+RW drives.
For the time being the only media you will be able to
get for the HP, Phillips, and so forth drives will be DVD+RW.
Which is one of the reasons I am holding off (saving up) for
a drive in a few months.
1. It will be clearer which standard is more compatible.
2. The media selection for both should be better at that point.
When DeCSS first appeared, I remember pundits saying, "Oh well, no biggie, nobody has that much disk space to spare." Repeat after me: Moore's Law. Moore's Law. Moore's Law.
I put one in one of my Linux boxes last week. So far, I have read CD-Audio (grip) and CD-ROM (iso9660), DVD-ROM (iso9660), and a Video DVD ("Chicken Run") with no problems. I have written to CD-RW media, both CD-Audio and CD-ROM, with cdrecord.
As soon as I get some time, I will test DVD-Video and DVD-ROM formats on DVD+RW media. Any idea where I should post the results?
cdrinfo reviewed the Ricoh 5120A (CDRW and DVR+RW) months ago. Then they did the Philips DVD+RW 208.
The current review is of a 32x writer, the Mitsumi CR-480ATE, so no need for a "Woow! First review of a 32x writer" in two months :-)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
The HP dvd100i also uses RPC-2 for region protecting. This means that the drive's region is stored in the firmware itself. You can change the drive's region five times and after that you cannot change it anymore.
Bummer.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What is best for writing dvd video discs?
the only reason I want a DVD-R or RW or +rw or a r*(rw/r)^rw or whatever they want to call it this week is to make my own DVD flicks (Ok and maybe backup my PS2 DVD's..) but mainly for taking my DV cam's video and spitting it to a nice disc for friends, relatives, archival... basically to completely remove any need for VHS.
What drives will write a disc that is readable in any DVD player I wander up to?
what drives are supported under linux?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Checkout the DVD+RW Alliance's page for more info.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't deny what you are saying, but I have had exactly the opposite experience, at least with HP CDRW drives.
You could've hired me.
I have the Pioneer DVR A03. It records DVD-R, and DVD-RW both. I also have a 3 year old Pioneer consumer DVD player. I assumed that DVD-R's will play on the DVD player, but what surprised me is that I was even able to play DVD-RW media on my DVD player!
A little off-topic: From experience, Dazzle DVC II is a great card for capturing TV/VHS video. I also have the higher end Dazzle "Dv Now.AV," and it's simply superb. To top it off, it comes with the full version of Adobe Premiere 6.0!
I believe that this is the one bundled in the PowerMacs.
Since it burns DVD-R at 2x, DVD-RW at 1x, CDR at 8x, and CD-RW at 4x, and is available for what looks like a relatively cheap price right now, it looks like what I'd put on my christmas list. :-)
Especially since Nero now supports burning VideoCD (mpeg1) and MPEG2 DVDs.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
...here.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
The main things to consider are the drive itself (speed etc), price (drive & media), and perhaps availability. DVD+RW is supposedly a little more compatible that DVD-RW, but the difference isn't apparently that large in users' experiences.
That said, I'm personally holding off until DVD+RW drives can also write to DVD+R media. That'll be cheaper than rewritable media, and more compatible (rewritable discs - of either standard - have different reflective properties, which confuses some older players into thinking it's a double-layer disc).
HP don't have a clear position on whether current dvd100i drives will be firmware-upgradeable to support DVD+R (Ricoh make the drive unit itself for HP, and they won't say either). When I know that the drive I buy will do this too, I'll be first in line :-)
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Or you can just go for a $50-100 analog capture card (with no DV support).
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
First, metaphor and usage have extended the application of of the term "Moore's Law." If it were a real scientific law, that would be uncool (thought still inevitable). But it's not. It's just a observation about manufacturing costs.
Second, the number of transistors you can pack onto a chip has everything to do with the cost and power of electronic products. Prove me wrong: build a DVD player using vacuum tubes!
Um. Unless you're running a *serious* corporation's IT section, the degree to which DVD-RW\? is *already* proven is more than sufficient.
:) shorter MTBF, but high probability that the next one you're going to purchase will be $200 at Wal-Mart rather than $900 from a reseller specializing in obsolete media formats. Additionally, your media that can read from almost any modern computer, which can SAVE YOUR BACON during a serious crisis.
:)
For a small business, you have the following options:
(1) Tape drive storage. More space than you probably need in the immediate future, high-ish price, proprietary format (usually) and the usual incompatibilities between various OSes. Large, but not infinitely so, MTBF. Unusual drivers. Exotic hardware. High TCO.
For instance, at work we used to have a setup with a DP-30 Onstream parallel port 'Windows Tape Drive'. Terrible story: When the drive died, we lost access to 2 years of backups. Furthermore, even before its demise, it never really worked right. The W2k drivers were almost completely broken, and in fact the blasted thing would refuse to install itself on W2k-server, apparently because the included software (incl. driver!) was intended for 'personal backup' (read: had crippled fileperm/ownership handling) and therefore wished us to buy a 'real' archiving package in order to store the measly ~4gb of critical data. Evil! Bad!
Since the dratted thing also wouldn't talk dirty to WinME, we eventually ended up re-installing 98SE on a machine in the corner, which would drag 4gb of server-side data across the network every friday night. I was almost in tears from the aesthetic trauma alone, not to mention frustration.
(2) DVD storage. Improved versatility, cheap-ish media (esp. if you're re-writing). Reliable media with a very nice lifespan.
Yes, I hear you say, but what about that time when you *really* *really* need capacity? Well, with compression -- which is what all the tape drive figures are assuming, BTW -- you get ~9G of storage; having to swap CD's a couple of times for a large backup isn't that onerous.
Only when you're at the 5-6 swap-per-backup point -- that is, ~50gb+ -- do you really need to consider a more industrial solution. And at that point, you're interested in a $1700 tape drive, not a $400 model.
But what about Moore's law? Surely in a couple of years, your capacity needs will (at least) double?
Well, aside from being an incorrect application of Moore's law, this 'law' simply fails in the face of fact. We've been in business ten years, and in that time our data requirements have gone up from virtually nil to 4gb. Another 4gb in ten years is credible, so that's the figure we run with. (We're not a dot-bomb; no explosive growth, no explosive fall, just steady improvement in sales.)
Also, don't forget that a DVD backup solution (once the drives are cheaper) will allow 'localized' or 'workgroup' backups, wherein five or six computers handle their own data storage and backup. Rather than driving the whole wad of data over the LAN, we can just use cron to burn to disc in each workgroup, and collect those.
AAR, the small company I work for has had no problem with our DVD-backup solution. I should know; I'm the one who advocated and installed it.
- undoware.ca
Granted I don't know exactly what a DVD-R records per second, but would a 2.4x DVD-R burner really be much faster than a 24x CD-R burner? I can understand dealing with 8 or 9 disks being easier than dealing with 60, but I think it would probably actually take longer to do.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Alright, so I'm lazy. Can someone please answer me this: is it possible yet for me to take my DivX ;-) movies, turn them into VOB files, burn them, and play them in my DVD player? Last I checked the answer was an uncertain "no." Or, more accurately, I tried to figure this question once before and was unpleasantly surprised to discover the myriad of formats out there: DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD+RW, blah blah. Every player seems to be incompatible with about half of them, but it's never the same half. So I assumed no. Has anything changed?
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.