HP DVD+R Writers Examined

tedgyz writes "CDR-Info has an article on the new DVD-writer lineup from HP - the dvd200i and dvd200e. Both of these models include support for DVD+R. In light of the recent review by "The Tech Report" noted in a recent slashdot article, this is a very important step in the evolution of recordable DVD." I've got a USB HP external burner which works great - I'm strongly considering buying one of these.

Comments

Competing formats

[DickPhallus]

Has the format won been won or is it still going on?

How about a burner that can write in multiple formats, just in case DVD-R becomes the standard, not DVD+R

P.S. I couldn't read the article, cursed /. effect...

Linux compatibility?

[eXtro]

I've been searching via google for a while now and trying to find information on burning dvds with linux. There's cdrecord-PRO but its only for data. I've got a bunch of stuff on DV-tape that I'd like to make DVD playable DVD-Rs with. Is there any possibility for this using linux right now?

Re:/.'d! Here's the article

[surferbill]

HP launches easy-to-use DVD writers Monday, 11 March 2002
Hewlett-Packard Compan today announced it will ship its latest super combination DVD writers, which allow customers to create and share custom CDs and DVDs using video, digital images, music and data. The HP DVD Writer dvd200i, a powerful internal drive, and the HP DVD Writer dvd200e, HP's first external DVD writer, include features making them very easy for consumers to use and enabling the creation of DVDs by notebook PC owners. Now, consumers can safely save their cherished memories -- everything from photos to custom-made home movies(1) -- with the confidence that they can't be erased or copied over. This new protection is made possible by the drives' support for the new DVD+R format. Additionally, DVD+R discs offer increased compatibility with most existing and future DVD-ROM drives and DVD video players.

According to a recent IDC report,(2) DVD writer shipments are expected to grow from 3.9 million units this year to 35 million in 2005. While consumers use rewritable DVD for a variety of applications, a primary benefit of HP's new products will be simplifying the transfer and editing of home video. In fact, in a recent HP consumer survey, 66 percent of respondents indicated video applications were the primary appeal of DVD writers.

``The idea of sending video highlights of a child's soccer game to Grandma on a personalized DVD really arouses consumer passion for DVD writers,'' said Dean Sanderson, product portfolio manager, HP Customer Business Organization, North America. ``As such, we are bundling with our DVD writers software that gives customers a quick and simple way to edit movie clips and allows anyone to produce great video.''

Also included with the drive is the latest MyDVD software by Sonic Solutions that offers powerful Edit-on-DVD technology, making it simple to change content already on a DVD+RW disc without going through the time-consuming process of rewriting an entire disc.

To support the variety of ways consumers use DVD writers, these new drives can write to several different media formats, including DVD+RW/+R and CD-R/RW. And, with the industry's fastest write speeds, the HP DVD Writer 200 series burns those discs quickly -- allowing consumers to write three hours of video to a DVD in less than 30 minutes.(3) The drives offer speeds of 2.4x (write), 2.4x (rewrite) and 8x (read). In addition, CD recording is simple and fast with 12x CD-R (write), 10x CD-RW (rewrite) and 32x CD (read) speeds.

Furthermore, the HP DVD Writer dvd200e drive allows customers to choose a connection type -- either IEEE 1394 or USB 2.0 -- with the flip of a switch, making it easy to install and share the drive on a desktop or notebook PC.

Pricing and Availability

The HP DVD Writer dvd200i drive is expected to be available at major retail outlets in the United States by mid-April at an estimated U.S. street price of $499.(4)

The HP DVD Writer dvd200e drive is expected to be available at major U.S. computer retail outlets in May at an estimated U.S. street price of $599.(4)

HP DVD+RW discs are currently available nationwide at an estimated U.S. street price of $10.99. HP DVD+R discs are expected to be available in April at an estimated street price of $5.99. At the same time, HP also will release a three-pack of DVD+RW discs at an estimated U.S. street price of $25.99 and a five-pack of DVD+R discs at an estimated U.S. street price of $27.99.

Re:When will it be affordable?

[mrscorpio]

Actually, you can get blank DVD-R's for like $2.95 at www.cdrecordable.com

Note - I have no affiliation with them.

Chris

what about storage sizes

[SGDarkKnight]

... i would have checked the article but im pretty sure that i can't get it cause it's been /.'d - but can you wrtie more than 4.8gb's yet? dont dvd's currently support 2 sides 2 layers per side making them capable of hold up to 18gb of info (roughly anyways). I'm all for the dvd writters when i know that they will do the full disc and not just one side one layer...

oh... just got the article - but damn is it slow comming... here's what it says....


Hewlett-Packard Compan today announced it will ship its latest super combination DVD writers, which allow customers to create and share custom CDs and DVDs using video, digital images, music and data. The HP DVD Writer dvd200i, a powerful internal drive, and the HP DVD Writer dvd200e, HP's first external DVD writer, include features making them very easy for consumers to use and enabling the creation of DVDs by notebook PC owners.
Now, consumers can safely save their cherished memories -- everything from photos to custom-made home movies(1) -- with the confidence that they can't be erased or copied over. This new protection is made possible by the drives' support for the new DVD+R format. Additionally, DVD+R discs offer increased compatibility with most existing and future DVD-ROM drives and DVD video players.

According to a recent IDC report,(2) DVD writer shipments are expected to grow from 3.9 million units this year to 35 million in 2005. While consumers use rewritable DVD for a variety of applications, a primary benefit of HP's new products will be simplifying the transfer and editing of home video. In fact, in a recent HP consumer survey, 66 percent of respondents indicated video applications were the primary appeal of DVD writers.

``The idea of sending video highlights of a child's soccer game to Grandma on a personalized DVD really arouses consumer passion for DVD writers,'' said Dean Sanderson, product portfolio manager, HP Customer Business Organization, North America. ``As such, we are bundling with our DVD writers software that gives customers a quick and simple way to edit movie clips and allows anyone to produce great video.''

Also included with the drive is the latest MyDVD software by Sonic Solutions that offers powerful Edit-on-DVD technology, making it simple to change content already on a DVD+RW disc without going through the time-consuming process of rewriting an entire disc.

To support the variety of ways consumers use DVD writers, these new drives can write to several different media formats, including DVD+RW/+R and CD-R/RW. And, with the industry's fastest write speeds, the HP DVD Writer 200 series burns those discs quickly -- allowing consumers to write three hours of video to a DVD in less than 30 minutes.(3) The drives offer speeds of 2.4x (write), 2.4x (rewrite) and 8x (read). In addition, CD recording is simple and fast with 12x CD-R (write), 10x CD-RW (rewrite) and 32x CD (read) speeds.

Furthermore, the HP DVD Writer dvd200e drive allows customers to choose a connection type -- either IEEE 1394 or USB 2.0 -- with the flip of a switch, making it easy to install and share the drive on a desktop or notebook PC.

Pricing and Availability

The HP DVD Writer dvd200i drive is expected to be available at major retail outlets in the United States by mid-April at an estimated U.S. street price of $499.(4)

The HP DVD Writer dvd200e drive is expected to be available at major U.S. computer retail outlets in May at an estimated U.S. street price of $599.(4)

HP DVD+RW discs are currently available nationwide at an estimated U.S. street price of $10.99. HP DVD+R discs are expected to be available in April at an estimated street price of $5.99. At the same time, HP also will release a three-pack of DVD+RW discs at an estimated U.S. street price of $25.99 and a five-pack of DVD+R discs at an estimated U.S. street price of $27.99.


and look, nothing that I can see about recordable sizes... anyone else got any info about this?

I'm in a similar boat

[FreeUser]

I've been searching via google for a while now and trying to find information on burning dvds with linux. There's cdrecord-PRO but its only for data.

It is also impossible to get any information out of the author on how to actually go about paying the $100 he wants for cdrecord-PROdvd, as I and many others who wanted to buy the product discovered. The author didn't answer any of the three separate emails (on three different occasions) I sent, nor any of the questions posted in public forums (USENET in particular) by numerous people. One guy who asked he flamed into oblivion, others he told "email me", and still others, myself included, were simply ignored.

This delayed my purchase of a Pioneer DVR-A03 DVD-RW burner by about a year. However, three days after the Free Software Foundations fork of cdrtools, entitled dvdrtoos, made its appearance I purchased a Pioneer drive (since that is what the software fork's author has) and have been burning data DVDs ever since.

The author's goal is to support the burning of video DVDs, but the software isn't there yet. However, I'm still waiting for a better CODEC was well ... the color space limitatino of DV (4:1:1) coupled with the MPEG2 artifacts of DVD make the two in combination somewhat undesirable for me. I'd rather burn a half hour of good quality video onto a DVD and be required to use a computer to watch it (hell, my computer IS my television, anyway), at better resolutions and without the ugly artifacts, than accept the compromises of both DV and DVD just so I can play it in grandma's region-coded, MPAA crippled DVD player. Far better to build her a small computer with the appropriate software on it, instead.

So here's to holding out for ogg-tarkin!

In the meantime, at least I have a place to burn my high-bitrate MPEG4 recordings of Star Trek Enterprise to (two episodes a disk and far better quality than videotape will allow, though still with enough annoying artifacts that I don't want to use it for my own work).

Why not VCD or Super VCD?

[nicestepauthor]

For the kind of stuff that people want DVD writers for (other than backing up data) I have to wonder if VCDs would work better. For instance, I have a big collection of Betamax tapes I bought cheap when all the video stores were dumping them. I find that I can get reasonably good results converting them to VCDs, which can play on most DVD players, especially the cheaper ones. I could do the same thing with my wedding video, videos of my friend's kids, and the student films I made in college and later transferred to videotape (at great expense). It's like they used to say in the old mainframe days: garbage in, garbage out. If your source material isn't that great then doing an analog transfer to DVD won't help. VCD is good enough. On the other hand, if the source material is clean and you filter it digitally a VCD can look very nice.

Unless you have really expensive equipment I don't see how you could make a decent DVD at home. OTOH, you can make a VCD with modest equipment and cheap or even free software.

DVD-R vs DVD+R

[Kanasta]

So DVD+RW is so good for movies, and DVD-R is so darn compatible, and DVD+RW obviously has little to do with DVD+R (otherwise they would have come out at the same time).

Why don't those stupid corps give up their turf wars and do a DVD+RW + DVD-R drive?

What exactly IS the diff btwn DVD-R vs DVD+R if they both read on normal DVD players?

Don't buy an HP *anything*

[Anonymous Coward]

My personal experience with almost every leading-edge HP product has been *completely* without joy. With the constantly shifting version numbers of many MS products with which I am forced to deal, HP compounds almost everything they touch with late-to-market drivers, poor functionality and outright inexplicably user-hostile attitudes towards distributing things when they DO come out.
Let 'em get their money from someone else.

Re:DVD-R vs DVD+R -- It's called Sony/Philips ...

[BitMan]

See my other post. While the DVD consortium standardized on DVD-R and DVD-RAM back in the early '90s, Sony/Philips saw an opportunity to break away from the consortium. One reason was that Pioneer's DVD-R, DVD-R(A) at the time, was expensive ($10K+!), and Panasonic's $500 DVD-RAM was designed for optical archiving (long story, but its not designed for consumers), and could only hold 2.6GB/side at the time. Sony/Philips had a 3GB design that could also record/rewrite CD-R/RW as well. They called this "standard" DVD-R+W

But Sony/Philips soon "woke up" to the reality of their design took too long to build -- over 3 years! By the time their 3GB drive was ready to "hit the market" in 2000, Panasonic had delievered its sub-$500 2nd-gen 4.7GB/side DVD-RAM drive and Pioneer released sub-$1K DVD-R(G) drive. So the 3GB DVD-R+W drive never saw the light of day, and S/P went "back to work" on an "improved" DVD-R+W drive. This would become DVD+RW

Well, even before DVD+RW finally hit in 2001, Panasonic had released a 3rd gen DVD-RAM which was a 2nd gen DVD-RAM + DVD-R(G), and Pioneer had come out with its consumer DVD-RW drive, which also did CD-R/RW as well as DVD-R(G). So basically DVD-R(G) _is_ the standard for recordable DVD, and DVD-RW is the consumer rewritable, and DVD-RAM is the optical archiving rewritable.

Now you've got the requirement of a second gen DVD+RW drive just to get DVD+R. And I haven't seen any compatibility testing to show its as good as DVD-R. If DVD+R is only as compatible as DVD+RW, then it's only around 70%. Although that is the same as DVD-RW, and much better than DVD-RAM), it's still not as good as the 99.9% compatibility of DVD-R(G), which is now done by _all_ competiting drives. Worse yet, you can get the 3rd gen Panasonic drive for less than $300 and the rewrite capability it has been working in Linux for years (and cdrecord/DVD-R(G) is in beta testing).

Sony/Philips has proven they are consistently "behind the times" and they flat out make promises they canNOT keep! As such, this whole DVD+R announcement does NOT shock me at all.