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The State of Recordable DVD's
An anonymous reader writes: "The Tech Report has a review of two DVD writers, one from each of the two competing standards (DVD-R and -RW and DVD+RW). In addition to testing the performance of each drive, they also test a bunch of DVD players and DVD-ROM drives to see how well they read the different types of media."
i was just recently in the market for these, and they REALLY have to get a standard together.
i'm currently looking at DVD+RW... i guess DVDR and DVD+R are also both good.
i'm just going to wait, becuase i don't want to be stuck with a drive 6 months from now that no one makes media for anymore.
to the standards people:
* 5+ gigs per disk
* plays on ANY DVD player
* readily available cheap media
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
D-VHS may be superior, but it's still a magnetic tape format, like VHS is, correct? One of the things that I like about DVD is that no matter how many times I play a movie, it will never wear out. I'm sure we've all expirenced haveing an audio or video tape lose quality from overplaying. CDs and DVDs don't have this problem, so why would I want one? The DVD format could just be amended, like audio CDs/computer CD hybrids (CD-XA?) were ammended to the origional audio CD format. Plus if this is indeed a tape format, then you don't get that great near instant seek of DVDs. Is there anything to prevent these tapes from degrading?
What ever happened to DVD-RAM? I bought one of those drives in '99 and I have yet to see another computer with one. I can theoretically use single-sided DVD-RAM discs in read-only mode in other drives, but is that the extent of its usefulness? I've only bought one (5.2gb) DVD-RAM disc, but I've never had reason to buy another.
t'nera semordnilap
So I personaly think they guy doesn't know what he is talking about.
How come he didn't mention that the Pioneer drive can only write at 2X speed if you buy the $12 media from them! None of the $2 bank disks will work at 2X. Talk about a rip off...
Also... copying DVDs is not that hard as he states..... now you can buy double sided DVD-R media.... and pretty much copy any disk and keep menus and extra stuff....
Of couse you only want to make back ups of stuff you already own...
heyday
************* www.phonecow.com www.handerazone.com
I just hope I won't be so poor I'll still be using a DVD-RW/DVD-R/DVD-Etc for another 100 years. Afterall, I'm still using one of the original Soundblaster 16 cards that is about 10 years old and is now in it's 4th machine. (And has been running fine all these years)
On a serious note though, how durable are the discs? Are they really scratch-prone or what? 100 years is nice if the disc is just going to be sitting around not doing much, but if it's put into a lot of use, it may develop scratches over time.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
I have one of the new flat-panel iMacs, which to my knowledge, includes the reviewed Pioneer drive.
I can corroborate, for CD-RW, that the write speeds are a bit pokey. It took about 25 minutes, round-trip, for me to burn a CD-RW full of MP3's.
However, I think this is balanced by the fact that:
a) Burning on Mac OS X is dead simple. Insert media. Choose format type. Drag files to burn to recordable media icon which appears on desktop. Burn. Soooo much more simple than any program I'd ever used on Windows.
b) Compatability. The reviewer is correct in placing much emphasis on how compatible DVD-RW is with current players. No matter how good YOU may be at making things work, buying the right player, etc., the family is still going to think "that's stupid" when they take the movie you burned on DVD+RW, stick it in THEIR player, and see an error message.
IMHO, YMMV, etc, etc.
the FIRST night it is shown on the very first playing I know someone that will have an AWESOME copy of it on DV. he has a translucent screen setup with the audio directly patched from the projecter's audio system. The projected image is sent through a beam-splitter and then throught another lens system.
Here's the kicker... He wont let anyone have a copy and you have to be at his home to view it.
Yes it's not 6.1 THX yaddayadda... but sitting in his living room drinking beer and eating pizza-rolls is a better way to watch the newest flicks.
Oh, Dont try this at home....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
From your "FAQ," it appears that you have some kind of bias against the DVD+RW Alliance, who it should be noted, consists of Dell, Hewlett-Packard Company, MCC/Verbatim, Philips Electronics, Ricoh Company Ltd., Sony Corporation, Thomson multimedia and Yamaha Corporation. It's not some cobbled together group of fly-by-night companies.
Furthermore, I believe you are factually incorrect in stating that DVD+RW can't "legally" be called DVD. The DVD+RW Alliance seem to do so with impunity on their site. What is true is that their format is not licensed by the "DVD Forum" nor can it use their logo. But, big deal. The Alliance has its own logo which is just as pretty, and it seems to me that they are a fairly reliable manufacturing bunch. And who's the DVD Forum, anyway? Just another, larger group of companies. Interestingly, it would appear that all the members of the DVD+RW Alliance are also members of the DVD Forum, although not vice-versa, of course. Anyway, these two formats will duke it out on their respective merits and the marketing savvy of their proponents, and not on whether some licensing agency nobody cares about issues a logo. (I mean, DVD-RAM, how the hell does that get to be called DVD-anything? It's not even the same recording material as a regular DVD. I'll be nice and not discuss the "RAM" portion of the name. Let's just say Panasonic's been trying to mainstream this product line for many years and I wish them the best of luck.)
And as for confusion, how confused can people be? If slashdotters can wrap their heads around SIMM, DIMM, SODIMM, SDRAM, RDRAM, HTML, XML, XHTML, MathML, XSL, and so on, what's so hard about researching a couple of recordable DVD formats?
Of course, it's all a moot issue. Recordable blue-laser discs will be out in a couple of years and by that time, these two formats will have caught on about as much as the Sony HiFD and Imation LS120 did.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
- All those wonderful PowerMac/iMac machines that are being pumped out have the Pioneer drive in them. Even if the DVD+ format wins out, there will still be quite a few people making disks down the road. With Apple behind them, though, I thought it a safe bet it would have a pretty large margin share. (Before you go "Apple only has single-digit % market share", I am aware, but alot of people I know think "If it is on a Mac for AV, it must be pretty good).
- Compatibility was a huge issue for me. I have quite a few family members with DVD players that I don't know about. With DVD-R, I am almost always guaranteed that the disc will work on their player. That way, I can send a disc out without worrying about it not working.
- To be honest, I have been tracking the DVD+ standards group, and their inability to come to an agreement on the +R standard until very recently had me kind of upset. To top that off, companies promising DVD+R upgrades (HP included) have quietly removed this notice from their websites and their products. One of the forums I visited even had an anonymous report that a tech said they will not upgrade the units. Don't have time to wait for you guys to pull your thumbs out of your butts, guys....
- Finally, my biggest motivation: price. Best Buy had one on the shelf for $300 with an additional 10% off at the register. Couldn't pass that up.
Sure, there are drawbacks. As the article mentioned, write times are slow. If I am burning a DVD-RW to test on my x-box, I might as well go and get dinner with friends. The unit is also a little slow on the read, but nothing a second DVD-ROM drive didn't fix. The other thing that might deter some folks is that the software is way under-developed. I wish Adobe would just build DVD creation support into Premiere so I would have a nice all in one solution for my digital camcorder, but I can dream.In all, I am glad at my purchase. As I mentioned above, compatiblity has be fantastic, and I have something that I can play digitally for quite some time.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
Communism is a system where the workers own the means of production. Soviet style communism is a version where the government owns the means of production on behalf of the workers. Regulation of business, however, has nothing to do with communism, and most capitalist economies are quite happy with the concept.
By your definition, Teddy Roosevelt, who used government to rein in the "robber barons" and was one of the major forces behind the government breaking trusts and monopolies, is a God-damned pinko. I think many Republicans would consider that practically blasphemous...
American (for it's usually you, I'm sorry, I hate to generalise, but frankly this is getting on my tits, and I'm not even female) Slashdot posters who presume to compare everything that isn't hard-core libertarianism or is in any way left wing (as if these are contradictory concepts!), to "communism" (and who usually continue as if to compound the error by throwing in statements that show they don't know the difference between Communism, Soviet-Style Communism, any of the various Socialisms, trade unionism, Green politics, vegetarianism, humanist liberalism, and, most bizarrely of all, KKK racism and Nazi fascism), might want to bear in mind that while your views may reinforce those of the like minded, the rest of us turn off the moment you start sprouting the keywords.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.