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Combined DVD Burners Coming Soon

MonMotha writes "Sony recently announced plans to make a DVD burner capable of supporting both the - (DVD-R and DVD-RW) as well as the + (DVD+RW and DVD+R) standards for burnable DVD media. This move could spur the adoption of DVD burners, which have been poor sellers so far, partly due to the lack of a single standard for writable and rewritable media. The drive will not support the older DVD-RAM due to it's plastic casing."

299 comments

  1. DVD-RAM Casing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What type of casing does DVD-RAM use?

    1. Re:DVD-RAM Casing by xigxag · · Score: 2

      Actually, despite what the article says, the latest DVD-RAM disks don't require casing.

      Furthermore, DVD-RAM has a projected lifespan of 100,000 read-write cycles, compared to about 1000 for DVD+R/-R. So it's really an attractive format and it'll be a shame if Sony doesn't include it in their combo drive.

      --
      There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
    2. Re:DVD-RAM Casing by Namarrgon · · Score: 2
      Quite true, except that you can't play a DVD-RAM disc in your DVD-Video player, at least for 99.99% of current players. And that's the #1 use for DVD burning. It's equally incompatible with almost all DVD-ROM drives.

      DVD-RAM makes for excellent jukebox archivers though.

      --
      Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
    3. Re:DVD-RAM Casing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Plastic box about the size of a 5 1/4" floppy disc but about 8 mm think. Has a sliding window to protect the media.

      Type 1 : Media not removable

      Type 2 can be removed from it's case/caddy.

      DVD-RAM is a hard sectored phase change media, like the old PD discs.

    4. Re:DVD-RAM Casing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Furthermore, DVD-RAM has a projected lifespan of 100,000 read-write cycles, compared to about 1000 for DVD+R/-R.

      I thought DVD-/+R was limited to 1 write cycle.

      You mean DVD+/-RW.

  2. coming soon? by discogravy · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    don't you mean been here already?

    1. Re:coming soon? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What is it like 2% of the population that use Macs? So who cares if they already have it.

    2. Re:coming soon? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      correct me if i'm wrong.

      but i thought the apple so called "super drives" are just pioneer drives.

      and if they are, the pioneer drives are DASH R/DASH RW

      not PLUS R/PLUS RW.

      these are two competing standards are they not? (dash versus the plus crowd?)

      if this is all true.

      what in the fuck is the parent talking about?

      take yer head out your ass.

  3. But what about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    the DVD+R-W/RAM standard?

    Sheesh. Who the fuck came up with all of these "standards"; it ain't a standard unless everyone's using it, and with this myriad of incompatible whimsical formats floating around, it's no surprise there's been no market acceptance.

    1. Re:But what about by prichardson · · Score: 1

      it ain't a standard unless everyone's using it

      WRONG: .RTF is a standard, very few people use it. .ISO is a standard, but there are many others. and there are many standards that Microsoft chooses to simply ignore

      I do agree on that it would have gained more market acceptance if it had been just one format

      --
      Help I'm a rock.
    2. Re:But what about by Com2Kid · · Score: 1


      WRONG: .RTF is a standard, very few people use it. .ISO is a standard, but there are many others. and there are many standards that Microsoft chooses to simply ignore


      Says who? It is used internaly by a wide variety of applications, quite handy. Just because the end user does not save stuff to it does not mean that it is not used. .ISO is not so much a standard as it is a bitdump, heh. And they are verrrry common thank you so very much. :-D Ask any window's warez kiddie, they know about them! (and isn't that the true sign of popularity for any file format, 'standard' or not?)

  4. ahh, cost by prichardson · · Score: 1

    I think the real benifit of this is that older DVD burners will come down in price, perhaps so I can afford one

    --
    Help I'm a rock.
    1. Re:ahh, cost by jkfresh · · Score: 1

      the older burners come down in price, but if nobody buys the media the price for the media goes up. You'll save money buying the new one.

    2. Re:ahh, cost by Zeinfeld · · Score: 5, Interesting
      I just looked at dirtcheapdrives and they are quoting $450 for the low end DVD-RW drives and $700 for the higher end ones. Media is $125 for 20 disks.

      In comparison I have seen CD-RW drives for $80 and media for under $1 a disk. The price differential is simply not justified by a mere ten-fold increase in capacity. It is pretty obvious that the price of the drives will be slashed to reasonable levels before they catch on on a scale large enough to make the media affordable.

      The big problem is that there is absolutely no backup media on the market that is as cost effective as an IDE hard disk drive! An IDE drive with a capacity of 120Gb can be bought for just over $1 per GB and requires only a $20 caddy to make it into a removable medium. If they would make them hot swappable there would be no reason to use anything else. They are faster than and have a higher capacity than tape drive systems costing tens of thousands. Best of all even if a drive fails entirely you have a chance at recovery - try that with a mag tape that has been chewed in a faulty drive.

      I tried to explain this idea to the Iomega investors some time ago when they were convinced that everyone would be queuing up to buy Jaz and the clik! disk would be taking over the world. DVD-RW still suffers from the same sort of economics as the Jaz drive - media too expensive to use as a backup, drive system too expensive.

      --
      Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
      Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
    3. Re:ahh, cost by Bartab · · Score: 1

      If you're not quoting in Canadian play money, then you need to check out pricewatch.com

      Pioneer DVD-R/RW for $264 (58% of your quoted price) and DVD-R media as low as 75 cents in quantity.

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
    4. Re:ahh, cost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can't be serious. You quoted Dirt Cheap Drives? Various quality DVD writing drives are now under $300! Writing disks is only a few bucks a piece. Maybe this sounds outrageous to you, but I can remember when a CDR drives/media were exactly the same -- and its JUST when they started catching on. If I remember correctly, writing speeds were just at 4X, which is when many finally began purchasing the drives because they were affordable.

      If you're burning a couple music files, there is no argument that a DVD writer isn't for you. However, if you're into burning video, or compressing large operating-sytem images onto disk, we're all a little tired of spanning across multiple CD's. To be able to burn these for a few hundred bucks (drive & media using REAL world prices, and not MSRP), I think this is VERY reasonable.



      Ok, let's get this straight -- an IDE drive is Storage media, not Backup media. If you use it as such, great; but I hope you don't EVER call yourself an IT person, and don't EVER touch any of my client's servers. Also, I think you mentioned JAZ and ZIP type drives, which are also simply storage media, and not backup media. All shareholders aside, anyone in IT knew this would never work, because storage media should NEVER be used as backup media. (Click fiasco, anyone?)

      Yes, your off-the-shelf Western Digital drive is much cheaper than a DDS4 DAT drive and a dozen tapes. Likewise, a Geo Metro is cheaper than a HumVee, but if I'm going off-roading, I'd recommend the HumVee anyday. You're comparing apples to oranges. If you knew anything about the differences between storage and backup, you'd know to clean your tape drives routinely, and to replace your tapes regularly.

      Lastly, you're evidently blind to how fast DVDR is catching on. In a year, you'll realize what a fool you are -- either because your office just got flooded and your "IDE HardDrive backup system" is rusted and irrecoverable, or because your neighbor will be showing you how cool it is to rent DVDs from Blockbuster and burn it onto disk for less than a buck.

    5. Re:ahh, cost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quit whinin about how much you can't afford. If you can't afford it, don't spill all over the topic with your problem - keep it technical please. You're talkin peanuts here...

    6. Re:ahh, cost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      ouch.

      buuuuuuuuuurn.

      Zeinfeld better reply to defend his shortsighted opinion. :)

    7. Re:ahh, cost by hoeferbe · · Score: 1
      Ok, let's get this straight -- an IDE drive is Storage media, not Backup media. If you use it as such, great; but I hope you don't EVER call yourself an IT person, and don't EVER touch any of my client's servers.
      Why? If you get the caddy like Zeinfeld suggests, you can easily remove the drive and place it in the safe with all the other backups. I believe the drive caddy makes it so you can plug the "backup drive" in and out without rebooting the server.

      I would understand if you had to reboot the server each time you inserted or removed the "backup drive". But you sound against it even if you could do that. Why?

    8. Re:ahh, cost by fliplap · · Score: 2

      There's many reason to use tape over ide hard drives, not the least of which being _less points of failure_. With a tape drive you have 1 motor, 1 read/write head, and none of these ever move more than a fraction of an inch, they never get dropped, they never get shaken up. If a tape gets left in someones car and melts, so what, you lost 1 tape, a few bucks and ones days backup, maybe not a huge lost since you've got a weeks worth of tapes.

      Now a hard drive on the other hand, Bill says to Sally from accounting, "take this to Ted in IT while you're headed over there"
      Sally drops the drive "Oops, I better not tell Bill or Ted"
      Of course, Ted get the drive and its dead. Tape on the other hand, if Sally dropped it, would be fine, even if the case cracked, so what, open another tape, switch the reels, no biggie. Hard drive platters don't take switching quite as well, and data recovery, in a clean room, ain't cheap.

      This also is the reason that backing up to optical media makes sense a lot of times, most of my real serious backups have at least one copy on optical (meaning CD) media.

    9. Re:ahh, cost by shepd · · Score: 1

      I'll add another reason:

      You can write protect a tape, and DVD-R is inherently write protected. But you can't write protect a hard drive.

      Having trouble with a hacked server? With a hard drive your choices are limited -- put it in and hope you can fix the server before it eats the drive, or start from scratch.

      With a physically non-writeable medium, I can trust that my tapes and DVD-Rs will never be eaten by a badly behaved server.

      --
      If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
    10. Re:ahh, cost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An IDE drive with a capacity of 120Gb can be bought for just over $1 per GB and requires only a $20 caddy to make it into a removable medium.

      Any particular ones you recommend? I've been looking to make few of my HDs hot swappable on mid-size towers. I usually ignored that new trend, and rather sent the data all over my LAN storage.

      Thanks in adavnce.

    11. Re:ahh, cost by sczimme · · Score: 1

      The price differential is simply not justified by a mere ten-fold increase in capacity.

      That may be true - for you. Generalizing and applying your needs/requirements to everyone is a Bad Idea(tm). Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) described this as one of the poor reasoning methods people tend to use (i.e. self == world): "I don't like country music; therefore country music is unpopular".

      --
      I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
    12. Re:ahh, cost by eam · · Score: 1

      Actually the real problem with the Iomega drives is that most computers don't include them by default.

      When DVD-ROM drives are available almost automatically, the DVD+/-R(W) drives become more tempting.

      That's what happened with CDs. Even now CD's beat out all other media because they're more robust & you're more certain of finding a device capable of reading your disk.

      Don't forget the most important part of a backup strategy: knowing you'll be able to read the backup.

      I do agree about the economy of using IDE HD for backup, but I have to say it makes me nervous. It might be silly to feel this way now, but I still think of HD's as extremely fragile.

    13. Re:ahh, cost by 0x0d0a · · Score: 2

      In comparison I have seen CD-RW drives for $80 and media for under $1 a disk...The big problem is that there is absolutely not backup media on the market that is as cost effective as an IDE hard disk drive...An IDE drive...can be bought for just over $1 per GB and requires only a $20 caddy to make it into a removable medium.

      Something about the math is not working out for me here.

    14. Re:ahh, cost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sally drops the drive "Oops, I better not tell Bill or Ted"
      Of course, Ted get the drive and its dead.


      That's bull. She'd have to drop it down a flight of stairs or something. Dropping a hard drive once from 4 feet onto a carpeted office floor ain't gonna do crap unless somehow you've left it running through this.

      Hard drive platters don't take switching quite as well

      You remember those clear HD case mods? They opened up the case, took out the platters, stuck 'em back in, and it worked. No clean room. I wouldn't trust it for continuous use, but you'd certainly be able to recover the data.

    15. Re:ahh, cost by phorm · · Score: 1

      Last time I checked a hard drive wouldn't fit into a TV-DvD player though... tried stuffing it in the slot and it just wouldn't fit. And my friends aren't equipped with caddy's to swap in a portable hard-drive.

      One must consider that DVD writables are used for a lot more than backup... it's also portability of data, and the use between mediums.

      If you're thinking just for home PC, a secondary HD is a good backup in case your first one craps out. With DvD players popping up in cars and almost everything else, I don't think we'll be seeing somebody plug a portable hard drive into their dashboard anytime soon.

    16. Re:ahh, cost by Xylantiel · · Score: 2

      You don't get it. A 120GB HDD costs like $300 right? now you want to back it up.

      CDs are out of the question (can you say 170 CDs!!)

      A DVD-R drive (right now) costs the same or more than the drive, then you have to buy the media, and you don't want to buy the cheapest right, because it's a backup. And it still takes like 24+ disks to do a backup.

      So the only viable option for backup is DDS tape. Which you need like $4000 just to get going. So the backup costs over 10x the media?!?! Most places simply CANNOT affort this, it's not an issue of will not. You can buy like 4 whole systems for that.

      So what do you do. Well you just buy another drive for $300, put it in another machine, and work up a system whereby it's mostly isolated from the system it's backing up. (off-site being ideal.) You could even buy 2 or 3 and not even come close to the price of the DDS solution.

      At some point DDS becomes economical, say if you have 15 120GB drives to back up, but if you only have one sometimes you just can't justify it. Also there is some breakpoint in how much that data is worth. If it's worth enough, yes you should probably have it on tapes in a saftey deposit box or something.

    17. Re:ahh, cost by Zeinfeld · · Score: 2
      ]]]Ok, let's get this straight -- an IDE drive is Storage media, not Backup media. If you use it as such, great; but I hope you don't EVER call yourself an IT person, and don't EVER touch any of my client's servers.

      For my purposes shutting down the machine to mount and dismount backup media is perfectly OK. And yes I would use the same strategy in a production environment, only I would use a couple of high end EMC storage cluster devices. Thing is that tape backup is even worse value when you go to the real high end stuff. I have used multi-million dollar tape robot systems and they tend to suck.

      I believe the drive caddy makes it so you can plug the "backup drive" in and out without rebooting the server

      Well you can get a caddy that does that but why the drive manufacturers can't get a clue and just fix it is beyond me.

      What I want is a 120Gb removable drive in my PVR. Then I will store all my movies on it.

      --
      Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
      Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
    18. Re:ahh, cost by Havokmon · · Score: 1
      There's many reason to use tape over ide hard drives, not the least of which being _less points of failure_.

      That's definately a positive, but Tapes are also:

      • Slower.
      • Less accessible (you need the drive, or a compatible drive)
      • Not always cost effective
      • Less compatible (Ever used arcserve to restore NT data to Win98? - doesn't work. Needs the same medium)

      If a tape gets left in someones car and melts, so what, you lost 1 tape, a few bucks and ones days backup, maybe not a huge lost since you've got a weeks worth of tapes.

      A few bucks my ass.
      How much does a 40GB HD cost? $80.29 at CDW.
      How much does a tape cost? 84.64 (50GB AIT -192845)
      And who says you wouldn't have a week's worth of drives?

      Sally drops the drive "Oops, I better not tell Bill or Ted" Of course, Ted get the drive and its dead. Tape on the other hand, if Sally dropped it, would be fine, even if the case cracked, so what, open another tape, switch the reels, no biggie. Hard drive platters don't take switching quite as well, and data recovery, in a clean room, ain't cheap.

      Umm yeah.. I have a slew of HD's that have been dropped with no issues. I suppose you wear grounding straps too, because that PC may not work in 20 years from a small discharge. (Note: I'm sarcastic, don't buy permits to build fences, and cut mattress tags) Again, why would you only have one HD backup, and multiple tapes? Just because the media is different, or maybe because you already know it's EASIER TO ACCESS?

      This also is the reason that backing up to optical media makes sense a lot of times, most of my real serious backups have at least one copy on optical (meaning CD) media.

      That's no different from mirroring your tapes, and unless your backing up less than 650MB, you could be spending a butt-load of cash on DVD's.

      I'd hate to submit your budget.

      --
      "I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
    19. Re:ahh, cost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't forget that DVD hold nearly 7 times as much data as a CD does. At five bucks a piece, that's still not as cheap as buying 7 CDs, but it's pretty damn close!

    20. Re:ahh, cost by fliplap · · Score: 2

      Sigh,
      Lets go over the many things wrong with your "arguement".

      The original discussion was using IDE hard drives as opposed to DVD. So we should be discussing this in relevant sizes (around 4.7gigs)

      5gig tapes fly for around $5
      new 5gig hard drives aren't available anymore so you're likely to buy at least a 40gig, smaller ones are too hard to find. So I can understand why you choose that.

      But, what if your project is only 5gigs? So you've got 8days worth of backup on your single drive. I've got 8 days on 8 tapes. Which is more reliable from your standpoint.

      I'm also amazed at the amount of time you spent on CDW, seeing as how you choose the cheapest IDE hard drive and the most expensive 50gb tape.By the way why did you choose 50gb when 40gb tapes are more common and cost so much less?

      So let me correct your error by supplying you with the least expensive 40gig tape:

      Verbatim 40GB 4MM Data Cartridge, single: $18.21

      I hope they don't have to correct these sort of errors at your place of employment too often

      You seem like a cost sensitive guy, so you're probably not paying for offsite storage of your backups, maybe you bring them home with you, I know plenty of people that do. Bill does it.

      Have you seen Bill's driving, the guy is a nutcase. I don't even want to imagine how many times those tapes have flown around his backseat or trunk. I'm not about to trust IDE hard drive backups to Bill's driving.

      And have you met Sally in accounting? Have you seen how Sally treats her floppy disks? She doesn't treat my tapes much better. Yeah, I've dropped hard drives too, but not as much as I've seen tapes abused.

      Tapes are easier to store as well. I also like how you didn't touch the fact that data recovery on a broken tape is worlds easier and less expensive than that of a hard drive. I don't know about you, but if the guy doing data recovery on my hard drive isn't grounded in some way, I'm pretty annoyed.

      Btw, DVD-R/RW writters got for $300 and sometimes less. Media is $5 a disk.

      But hey, you use whatever you want for backup.

    21. Re:ahh, cost by Havokmon · · Score: 2
      But, what if your project is only 5gigs? So you've got 8days worth of backup on your single drive. I've got 8 days on 8 tapes. Which is more reliable from your standpoint. -

      But who would do that (one week on a single HD) and consider it a backup? Of course, MORE MEDIA is more reliable than less media, which is why you mentioned having mirrored backups on Optical in your last post. *Unless that's not SUPPOSED to be a question ;)

      I'm also amazed at the amount of time you spent on CDW, seeing as how you choose the cheapest IDE hard drive and the most expensive 50gb tape.By the way why did you choose 50gb when 40gb tapes are more common and cost so much less?

      So let me correct your error by supplying you with the least expensive 40gig tape:
      Verbatim 40GB 4MM Data Cartridge, single: $18.21

      Err. There's no such thing as a 40GB 4mm tape. That's COMPRESSED. 4mm only goes to 20GB, which is why I COMPLETELY ignored that section, and picked the cheapest AIC tape, (Since you can just select 'lowest price first') which DOES have >20GB capacity, and compares nicely with the cheapest 40GB hd. My current position requires me to backup 20GB. I don't assume that I'm going to get ANYTHING other than what the media is rated for. Why should I get caught in the morning, with the drive beeping for a second tape? So going to AIC/DAT tapes is just logical (unless you want to get into multiple tape drives, what are those again, $500 each? Or 6 HD's?)

      Tapes are easier to store as well. I also like how you didn't touch the fact that data recovery on a broken tape is worlds easier and less expensive than that of a hard drive.

      I just find that odd. If a single days worth of data is THAT valuable that it can't be recreated, it's not just on the RAID and on tape, it's in another location. Then you don't HAVE to worry about data recovery...

      I don't know about you, but if the guy doing data recovery on my hard drive isn't grounded in some way, I'm pretty annoyed.

      ... and clean room 'voodoo'.
      We won't get into the security/liability issues of Bill and Sally wrecklessly handling your company data (I mean, if you KNOW Bill is a drunk, why'd you let him drive the truck for the glass company?) :P

      --
      "I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
  5. No DVD-RAM?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Its too bad they aren't going to support the DVD-RAM format... The fact that the discs were in cassets gave them very long life times and made them really good long term storage devices. Of course becuase they have a casing they cost a lot more and the mechanics needed to work with them are more complex.
    Oh well, the best technology doesn't always win in the end.

  6. Why did they develop multiple formats? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm assuming each manufactured liked theirs best, and didn't want to adopt someone else's (and possibly pay for it.) DVD recordable drives have just seemed like more hassle than they are worth.

  7. CD? by einstein · · Score: 1

    if this little puppy could burn cdr and cdrw disks as well, I'd be sold. too bad there is no mention of said ability in the article.
    ---

    1. Re:CD? by koreth · · Score: 2

      All the existing consumer DVD-R and DVD+R drives I'm aware of can burn CDs too, so I think there's no reason to believe this one will be any different.

    2. Re:CD? by silicon_synapse · · Score: 1

      Actually the Vivastar RS-111 burns DVD-R/RAM but does not burn cd-r/rw. Of course it is only $220.

  8. Floppies by krnlgmp · · Score: 2, Funny

    We don't need this! Why would anyone ever need to carry more than 1.44mb around with them? ;)

    1. Re:Floppies by garcia · · Score: 2

      your post was not really all that funny. In fact, I can't even find one floppy in my house in order to make a bootdisk when I need one (most of the time the machine that crashes is my circa 1996 Dell Laptop which doesn't support boot CD).

      DVD's are really nice for recording. My biggest problem though is the lack of standard and the lack of support in older DVD players (especially cheap ones).

      My DVD player will play VCDs (but not CDRs, CDRWs, or any recordable DVDs). What's the point? If I shell out $400+ for a recorder am I going to be stuck w/something that I am only going to be able to use on limited hardware? Will we have to forever deal w/this?

    2. Re:Floppies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      maybe you could go out and play instead. Take the $400 to Vegas and party baby. Fuck DVDs.

    3. Re:Floppies by antirename · · Score: 2

      I've been holding out for lack of a standard... so I'm seriously considering buying one of these things. That is assuming that one of the two standards it supports will win out, and that a third "compromise" standard doesn't wind up ruling the roost. However, if it's good for a year or two (and at the rate this "standard" is being hashed out that looks reasonable) it might be worth the money.

    4. Re:Floppies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't gamble. If I had $400 I would spend it on beer.

    5. Re:Floppies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I rarely post about metamods, but who the hell marked this guy as a troll. It's COMEDY people.. geez

    6. Re:Floppies by rmohr02 · · Score: 2

      1.44MB is almost too much. After all, "640K ought to be enough for anyone" (Bill Gates).

    7. Re:Floppies by Francis+Avila · · Score: 3, Informative

      (most of the time the machine that crashes is my circa 1996 Dell Laptop which doesn't support boot CD).

      You know, I had this same problem. I was trying to install Linux on an ancient HP Omnibook laptop, and of course its floppy drive had long since bit the dust. Proprietary laptop floppy drives, if you haven't noticed, are very expensive, even on eBay, even for 5+ year old models.

      At first I just boot-strapped my way up to Linux from dos, which worked until I managed to get the computer into an unbootable state. Then I bought those laptop-ide to normal-ide adaptors (whatever they're called) and plugged the old hard drive into my desktop when necessary.

      But alas, at long last, I found Smart BootManager: a flexible bootloader that allows you to boot from floppy, cdrom, and hd, regardless of your BIOS. This thing is perfect for old PCs. Heck, it will even adjust the year on your bios, for those stupid Award bioses that turn anything from 2000 up into 1994 (i.e., my old 486).

      I found out about this from Debian (yay Debian!) which includes it on their install cdrom.

      There may be better solutions out there, but this works perfectly for me. Also, the site doesn't seem to have been updated since Feb 2001, so it's probably a dead project.

      Anyway, you dd it to your MBR (or use the install program?), make sure your lilo/grub/whatever is installed to the boot block of your root partition (instead of the MBR), and you're set. Boot from a cdrom on a 486!

      Hm, it suddenly strikes me that this is probably off topic...

    8. Re:Floppies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Fuck DVDs.

      Unless you have some problems, I think this would require some serious surgery.

    9. Re:Floppies by Eric+Smith · · Score: 2
      "640K ought to be enough for anyone" (Bill Gates)
      Care to cite an authoritative reference for this quote? No? I thought not.

      Lots of people quote this, but no one can back it up. I seriously doubt that Bill ever said it.

      I'm not an admirer of Bill, but there are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize him rather than by putting words in his mouth.

      The 640K limit is almost certainly due to design decisions by the IBM PC design team, not by Microsoft. MS-DOS did not have a 640K limit; some early 8086- and 8088-based computers ran MS-DOS with as much as 896K of RAM. IBM was just a little short-sighted in the addresses they assigned for video cards. But to be fair, back in 1980 (when the PC was being designed) it wasn't obvious to anyone that this would be a serious limitation. Most personal computers in 1980 had no more than 128K of RAM.

    10. Re:Floppies by saider · · Score: 1

      Yup, 640k was a design limitation of the PC architecture, not DOS. The 8086 processors had a 20 bit address space and it was decided that the memory map for peripherals would be in the upper 384k of memory. This is where the option ROMs were supposed to be located for video and IO cards. Modern BIOSes still scan this area to look for these ROM images and load them if nessecary.

      That's why all the SCSI cards with the ROM's would work without drivers, while the ones without (generally) needed drivers. The ROMs contained code that would extend the BIOS and allow DOS to "see" the SCSI drives through the BIOS function calls.

      --


      Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
    11. Re:Floppies by Reziac · · Score: 2

      Your crappy 486 is living in the past. MY crappy P90 with an Award BIOS thinks the year is *2094*, so there! :)

      (Even my XT's clock card and my 286s know the right year. What's Award's excuse??)

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  9. confusing for consumers? by firebat162 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It sounds awfully confusing for a normal consumer if they buy one of these super combined dvd burners...

    can you imagine? This guy wants to burn a dvd, but when he hits burn, he has 4-5 choices to pick between( DVD-R, DVD+R, etc...). While this is good for more technical people, I can't see this being a feature normal consumers would buy this for.

    I personally think there needs to be one standard.

    1. Re:confusing for consumers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All the consumer needs to know then is to not buy DVD-RAM media. If his DVD player(s) support DVD-R, and DVD-RW, he can safely choose those. If they support something else, he can buy those. It opens up his options quite a bit, and doesn't lock him into one format forever if he upgrades his other hardware.

    2. Re:confusing for consumers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hopefully the drive will be able to auto-detect what type of media is in it.

    3. Re:confusing for consumers? by Enforcer42 · · Score: 1

      Since its Sony I would have to agree, but I'm sure compatible software out there at some point will offer a default to a particular standard to make it a little easier for the average consumer to use.

    4. Re:confusing for consumers? by coene · · Score: 2

      I would have to think that the marketing guys at Sony will be able to properly market this to the consumer, especially if it hits a good price note.

      Think about it, if you are looking at buying a DVD writer, with all these confusing formats, now sony can just say "one burner that supports all dvd writing standards". If someone is looking for a dvd writer, this really is their only option to make sure that its compatible with everything.

    5. Re:confusing for consumers? by Proc6 · · Score: 1

      Why would that happen? Current CD burning software can tell the speed of CDR media, and a DVD-ROM drive (or the OS) knows if you've inserted a DVD or a CD. My guess is the burning software's manuals would say "you can burn any of the following: CDR, CDRW, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, etc." but as for having to "choose" it, I dont think Joe Consumer would have to. Just slap it in, and the burning software says "You have 650 megs availabe, or, You have 4.3 gigs available".

      --

      I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!

    6. Re:confusing for consumers? by Scott+Baio · · Score: 0
      No kidding. Too many choices confuses providers as much as consumers.

      Like there was this one "Charles in Charge" where I had to make sandwiches for a whole boy scout troop, and I was all, "Peanut butter and ham, coming up!" and stuff like that.

      Sure makes me wish I still had a job.

    7. Re:confusing for consumers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You must be bored out of your tiny mind.

    8. Re:confusing for consumers? by Mononoke · · Score: 1
      I would have to think that the marketing guys at Sony will be able to properly market this to the consumer, especially if it hits a good price note.
      Yes. They did such a good job with Beta videotape technology.

      (It's a joke, dang it.)

      --
      NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
    9. Re:confusing for consumers? by WiKKeSH · · Score: 1

      This guy wants to burn a dvd, but when he hits burn, he has 4-5 choices to pick between( DVD-R, DVD+R, etc...).

      They shouldn't have a choice.
      It should automatically detect the type of media in the drive ready to be written to.

    10. Re:confusing for consumers? by coene · · Score: 1

      Haha, of all the things I will argue against, that isnt one of them :)

    11. Re:confusing for consumers? by dwater · · Score: 1

      I don't see why anyone would be confused.

      Why would it pop up any menu at all? It won't need a user to select what type of disk it has in it since the s/w can detect it.

      It's not a new type of disk they're introducing - it's a drive that can write to both types of disk.

      I currently have a DVD-R/RW drive and mistakenly purchased some DVD+RW disks. So, they won't work with my drive and I spent money for nothing.

      If I had one of these new drives, I would still be able to use them.

      That's the only difference, but it's a big one and very significant, I think.

      Am I mistaken?

      Max.

      --
      Max.
    12. Re:confusing for consumers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yea, this is WAY to confusing for consumers. This drive should only support one standard.

      You know, there's no way a consumer could handle having a choice of format -- it should be more like CD burning; Very Simple.

      By the way, my newest CD Burner supports the following CD formats: CD-DA, CD-TEXT, CD-ROM, Mixed Mode CD-ROM (CD-ROM+CD-DA), CD-ROM XA, Photo CD, Video CD, CD EXTRA, CD-MRW(CD-MRW), Mt. Rainier

      ...and writes in the following modes: Disc at once (DAO), Session at once (SAO) Track at once (TAO), Packet Writing, Advanced Audio MASTER Quality Recording

      Suddenly I'm thinking of HOW I want to burn the disk... ISO Level1 or ISO level2. Should that be in Mode1 or Mode2. What kind of Character should I use? I prefer IOS9660 over the DOS and ASCII sets. How about using Joliet?

      Heaven forbid it should support 2 standards and confuse consumers, because there is NO way they could handle something like that. It'll never pan out.

    13. Re:confusing for consumers? by Gooba42 · · Score: 1

      And in this wonderful CSS controlled realm, I've got a drive that simply spits out any disk that isn't a Region-1 encoded DVD. It used to accept CD's and CD-R and I could even copy a disk from the DVD drive to the CD burner. One day, I guess something happened to the firmware, a reinstall of the drivers or something, and *poof*.

      To those of you who just scream "take it back", it was already past the 14 day return limit at Fry's when this weird behaviour began. I've talked to the company's tech support and they've never heard of such a thing.

      --
      I just found out there's no such thing as the real world. It's just a lie you've got to rise above. - John Mayer
    14. Re:confusing for consumers? by Sentry21 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It sounds awfully confusing for a normal consumer if they buy one of these super combined dvd burners...

      can you imagine? This guy wants to burn a dvd, but when he hits burn, he has 4-5 choices to pick between( DVD-R, DVD+R, etc...).


      I think it'll actually be easier. The +/- difference is in the discs themselves - or at least, there's a difference in the discs themselves - so the chances are this burner will be able to detect what kind of discs they have and burn accordingly.

      This seems like a Good Thing for non-tech users. Buy whatever disc you like, and away you go.

      One can hope.

      --Dan

    15. Re:confusing for consumers? by Tarazis · · Score: 1

      Ahhh TLA's the joy of teckies, the curse of people who have sex.....

      --
      This is not a test, it is just a distraction.
    16. Re:confusing for consumers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      First off any software Will autodetect the drive capabilities (and only work for the drives it knows about) and already it has to read the pregroove data to determine if it is a. -r or -rw, the speed it can burn at, and finally it has to check for a valid TOC to see if the media is blank.
      So a drive supporting - and + media will provide all this information to the program, and that program will then be able to burn to the media with no problems.
      Second off, DVD recording isn't popular, because the current drives _have_ the features and functionality of a _4x_ cd burner that you bought when that was the fastest out there. They're all CPRM compliant, none of them read/write defect sectors, nor can any of them burn PS One/PS 2 style TOCs... Yes, you can get for $60 or less a 48xMAX(P-CAV) CD-RW (which can copy a 700 meg game in 5:47 (minutes:seconds) (26x read average, 30x write average) if sent to HD, or in just 3:07 (26x Average) if copied on the fly.) But still, that ~$300 DVD-burner has no excuse for NOT being able to at least support clonecd properly for reading and writing at the meager 8x (conventional medthod) cd-r speed it can write at.
      People aren't buying DVD recoorders for a number of reason, a. you can't copy most DVDs to them without cutting away some of the vobs to fit in the 4.7 gb capacity limit. b. you can't copy games with them correctly, and as such PS2 modchips ship on a Daughtercard with 30-70 soldier points, or require Disc swapping.
      As for price, the prices are already at a price point where people would adopt them, if they worked properly.
      If sony wanted to really do something about modchips and piracy they'd have to get into the buisness themselves almost. Sell special $5 PS2 Only DVD backup media, only sell at stores that agree to limit 2 media per customer (with an additionl disc allowed if an authentic PS2 game is purchased at the same time) Also have special burning software and a special DVD-recorder, and sneak in an anonymous reporter into it, so people who make more than 3 copies of the same disc get flagged and if they're flagged too many times sony knows to try to hunt them down for piracy.
      People have a right to make backups of games. People who are making backups aren't spending any less on games than they would without being able to, even if they're 'backing up' a rental copy of a game, because they're essentially replacing late fees with the cost of the backup. If they really enjoy the game, and have the $50 they buy the legit copy, because they're not cold heartless beasts. The real pirates aren't selling backups of games on the street corners that require modchips, they've got professional grade DVD-presses that can churn out perfect copies, that look identical to the original, right down to the reproducion holographic PS2 logo.
      The people making backups are for the most part making backups, and not pirating games, but rather looking to preserve the $50 investment they put into that game. The gaming industry has lost billions of dollars, not to piracy, but rather to the anti-piracy protection racket.
      All this money, dumped into finding a way to break the CDs games come on, so that they won't be readable to anything but the game or console itself. All this in such a way that a tiny scratch will disable it for use completely. For PCs, older CD-rom drives won't even read it.
      You have to have faith in the common decency of
      humanity. People who are sleeze bags are going to find a way not to pay you a dime no matter what you do. Your paying customers on the other hand, are going to find somewhere else to spend your money if you sell them a broken product and then tell you that they have to pay you to replace it with an equally broken replacement copy.
      Anyways, DVD recorders will grow only as fast as the market for a castrated product with little demand for it can grow. What needs does it meet?
      With difficult to install and low functionality modchips there isn't much demand for them for PS2 or X-box backups. most software for making DVD-r's into DVD movies limit the ability to say, make a region-free DVD or one without CSS encryption, and also force you to use lower-quality codecs for making the mpeg-2 stream so the quality is lowered by the software, because they assume the user isn't going to want a high-quality, processor intensive converion mode for DV to DVD. even then the ~4.7 GB you have to work with is less than the ~9.2 hollywood has to work with (double layer DVD fit less per layer.)
      So really, even if you DeCSS the DVD you then have to cut until you can fit it in single layer, possibly having to recompress the video stream a time or two.
      The movie, music, and game industry had DVD recorders castrated from the initial dual-layer design for DVDs. Because Dual layer media can't be write-once, and re-writeable dual layer would require higher gain reading lasers than a commercially pressed disc. Is it any suprize that DVD recorders are finding a market with low growth?

    17. Re:confusing for consumers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What are you, 5 years old?

  10. nice idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    fuck that. no matter what these H03Z do, CD-R will always be the one that you come back to time after time.

  11. But what about DRM? by umStefa · · Score: 1

    To me this looks like a good reason to get a DVD burner (well as soon as I know that it will work under linux) but I worry about sony putting some sort of hardware based DRM (Digital Rights Managment) into the drive.

    i.e. preventing the drive from recording in raw mode

    --
    Technology is most abused by the very people it was created to help
    1. Re:But what about DRM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      cdrecord offshoot can burn in linux, i do all the time. although the graphical tools are not avail for the size, but thats not a big deal

    2. Re:But what about DRM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wonder if they're not a bit fragmented internally -- one part creating technology that defeats the technology of another part. Sony's on my boycott list until they back off on the DRM crap, esp. when it comes to hardware.

    3. Re:But what about DRM? by essell · · Score: 1

      Perhaps because they do it with many of their consumer electronics producs, like Minidisc Players. Tunes go in, but they can't come out!

      --
      i swear my userid used to be lower.
  12. cost by Squarewav · · Score: 4, Interesting

    its the cost thats the problem not the standard , a genaric dvd burner runs around 264$(pricewatch)(400$ at my local comp usa) a lot more then most people are willing to spend when they rarely use more then a normal cdr. Its cheaper to buy a hard drive

    1. Re:cost by realmolo · · Score: 0

      $264 is cheap.

      CD recorders were selling for that a scant 4 years ago.

      The problem with DVD burners is the cost of media. The discs are too expensive to be used in the same way as CDRs. They're not disposable.

    2. Re:cost by j_dot_bomb · · Score: 1

      Per Gig DVD-R and DVD-RW and CD-R are the same price. Yes they are not 15 cents a piece, they are a buck. But -RW is linearly rewriteable for the same price - so you also never make a coaster.

    3. Re:cost by garcia · · Score: 2

      yup cheaper to buy a HD. I can't fill up a HD, take it out, and put in another one for $7.

      I have a 10G and a 20G HD in here. They are both hurting bad. Between SHN music and AVIs I am toast on space.

      I would love to have a DVD burner and have two movies per DVD to play later. That would make my life a lot easier. I wouldn't have to be sitting there counting the MBs like I was still using my 44mb drive in 1991.

    4. Re:cost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      or you could stop pirating all that crap, get a life, and not worry about it.

      Most of us normal people are still doing fine with 12g hard drives...

    5. Re:cost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I haven't pirated anything. AVIs have valid uses other than Divx ;-) and SHNs are mostly for loss-less compression of high quality live shows.

      Next time, before you say something, think.

    6. Re:cost by coene · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You do know that you can get hard drives at about the cost of $1 per GIGABYTE, right? Skip a few pizza's and you're golden :)

    7. Re:cost by iCEBaLM · · Score: 2

      But you can get a pizza for $1 per GIGABITE!

    8. Re:cost by Gooba42 · · Score: 1

      Dude, I've got 100 GB in my "play" machine and it is very nearly packed. I reserved some space for a Linux install that hasn't happened because it doesn't seem to want to play nice with Windows 2000 no matter whose HOWTO I abide by.

      What I'm looking at taking up all that space is a)Games (non-pirated, they're huge these days) and and b)Development software (I'm new to it and still trying out all my options before I pick a favorite).

      Between these and assorted detritus that I never have the heart to destroy, nor the temerity to sit through a 60 CD backup session, I'm full up. I can't imagine playing all of my games, etc. *and* being a media producer type (recording my own music, etc.). I'm a freak, but I'm also proof you don't have to pirate to fill up drives.

      --
      I just found out there's no such thing as the real world. It's just a lie you've got to rise above. - John Mayer
    9. Re:cost by Artifex · · Score: 2

      You do know that you can get hard drives at about the cost of $1 per GIGABYTE, right?

      Yes, but you can get DVD+Rs for well under $2.50 US, and DVD-Rs are even cheaper. That's under 55 cents US per gigabyte. The fixed cost (the drive itself) becomes irrelevant when dealing with any real quantity.

      Besides - if the motor dies on the hard drive, or the head crashes, you're out all your data. Not good, especially for a backup storage medium. And that's not even getting into the whole DVD-Video aspect of the game =)

      --
      Get off my launchpad!
    10. Re:cost by evilviper · · Score: 2

      Actually, the cost of the drive is nominal. What keeps people like myself away is the cost of the discs (14 CDs are cheapers than one DVD, IIRC), as well as the relatively small number of people with DVD players in their PCs. Obviously that number will grow, but until it does, it's hard to justify paying more for discs that are less compatible, and portable.

      Besides, is a CD not big enough to store a PDF? It takes a huge ammount of data to fill a CD. Short of backing up my 100GB hard drive (which I do to another 100GB HDD) I don't have any single file, or groups of files that need more space than a CD can provide.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    11. Re:cost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Most of us normal people are still doing fine with 12g hard drives...

      I suppose you haven't yet attained a high enough education level to combine the idea of a video capture card and the idea of time shifting into a workable idea on a computer.

      Fortunately, someone already has for you.

    12. Re:cost by kesuki · · Score: 2

      Easy, 700 megs is enough for about 50 minutes TOPS in 'good' quality mpeg-4, with 'good' quality sound tracks. If you really want not-humanly-percievable loss vs mpeg-2 you're lucky if 2.1 gigs a movie is enough for mpeg-4 video and mp3 audio.
      Maybe this guy want's to enjoy near DVD quality, with the convience of fitting more movies per disc.
      Speaking of which, even if you're willing to compress an hour and a half or more of video into a 700 meg package, you can then fit 7 movies per DVD instead of having to tote around a spindle of CD-r to even carry around a small movie archive.
      Yes, you need a PC to play them back, but if you have a HDTV a PC is the only device that can send full resolution HDTV images to it's display currently. (as no 1080 scanline DVD players are even made, since you'd need FSAA to make the 720 scanline convervion look any better at 1080 scanlines, and only a $300 PC graphic card can do that, with 1080 scanline HDTV output.) and yes, you'd have to pay the full price of yoru DVD-r drive in media (and use it all probably right away) But to a quality freak DVD-r provide a practical solution to a problem (storing video content at good quality at a low price) for everyone else they're worthless though.

    13. Re:cost by Gossy · · Score: 2

      You do know that you can easily get hold of DVD-Rs for less than $5 each, making them cheaper per gigabyte.

      It really depends on how much data you have to store. If you have a lot, to recover your initial outlay of the drive won't take much doing. I do feel safer when I have thinks on optical media as well as hard drives - even entire RAID arrays can be completely trashed, and I usually end up just clearing backups on the hard drive to make room for more stuff I need.. :)

    14. Re:cost by Lust · · Score: 1

      It's a catch 22. Piracy would really promote DVD-burner adoption if the cost of the media would drop first. Right now, a blank DVD runs around $25 (Canadian), which is more than the cost of DVD movies at the store. Why take the time and guilt of pirating a DVD when you can buy it for cheap.

    15. Re:cost by Hast · · Score: 2

      I don't think anyone is arguing that you'll need DVD-R for your PDF's. (Although just wait for word 2010. ;-)

      But if you eg want to save tv series then DVD-R is a great medium. One or two DVD's and you have an entire anime series. (Well in most cases at least.) Or two for a serie in higher quality.

    16. Re:cost by evilviper · · Score: 2

      That's true, but it would still be just as possible to store them across a few more CDs.

      The ponint when a new medium gets adopted, is about when a single file (or group of related files, such as in a program) is too big for the media. That's why iomega had success with Zip, and then CDs replaced Zips.

      Hey, even if you completely disagree with that aspect, DVD media is still grossly expensive (compared to CDs), and not enough people have DVD drives yet.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    17. Re:cost by Hast · · Score: 1

      Yes but the convinience of having eg an entire series/season on one disc is part a big point. Perhaps not to everyone but then again when I got my first CD burner most people didn't see any use for them. It's still in the phase of early-ish adopting for DVD-R. (Hence the entire [+|-] thing.

      Here the cost of DVD-R is basically the same as CDR. (Per GB, DVD-R are still a bit more expensive, not much though.) And if you use CD-R you'll generally leave some space over on them. (Particularly if you burn series, then you'll have 50-150MB over generally.) So in the end, for this particular use, the cost is about the same.

  13. jchristopher is a moron! by z-kungfu · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    a mere troll who dosn't know dick. has nothing of merit to post. Apple is doing great sucker, their superdrive rocks, you don't... I really hope that DVD formats can stabilize, that way more people can enjoy being able to burn their own movies etc. I just wish that more people could just respond to the thread and quit trolling like a moron...

    1. Re:jchristopher is a moron! by jchristopher · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      You are welcome to call me a troll if you like. Mac OS X is still slow, however.

    2. Re:jchristopher is a moron! by Courageous · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Oh yeah? Well you can't spell "you're".

  14. yuck-o. by nbvb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know, this really *isn't* good for DVD recording ....

    I can't wait for the day we standardize. Don't really care which wins the "war", but it needs to be one or the other.

    Nobody is going to look at the label on a 50-pack in the store to see if it's a DVD-R or DVD+R. DVD recording won't take off till Bill the Accountant can walk into CompUSA and ask for a pack of DVD discs to put his stuff on without having to worry about brands and standards and all that jazz....

    We just need to pick one and let the other one die off ....

    Of course, I'd +prefer+ it to be DVD-R, just 'cuz my Apple SuperDrive^W^WPioneer DVR-A03 is a DVD-R. :)

    1. Re:yuck-o. by koreth · · Score: 2
      Nobody is going to look at the label on a 50-pack in the store to see if it's a DVD-R or DVD+R.

      As I read it, that's exactly what this new drive will be good for -- if you have a drive that can read and write both formats, then you won't care what kind of discs you're picking up. The only situation where you'd care is if you depend on some feature that only one format supports (e.g. interruptible writes on a DVD+R disc) which I suspect won't be a factor in the vast majority of cases. For Bill the Accountant who just wants to burn a backup of his PC's hard disk (or a collection of his pirated movies) one format is just as good as the other, so it'll come down to price per disc.

    2. Re:yuck-o. by nbvb · · Score: 2

      Sure, but if he gives that disc to Fred the Landscaper, then he has to worry if Fred's computer can read it or not.

      DVD-R's and DVD+R's are incompatible with some drives in different ways.

      If one out of every 3 discs that Bill gives to Fred works in Fred's computer, he's going to assume that Bill's machine is broken. Bill will think that too, not knowing that the difference is the DVD-R or DVD+R disc he used.

      *sigh* we really need to pick one and stick with it.

      Standards are great. Everyone has one.

    3. Re:yuck-o. by MisterBlister · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      There goes nbvb, spouting his stupid ass Neo-Nazi-views to Slashdot. Why don't you shut the fuck up you stupid redneck hick?

    4. Re:yuck-o. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      except DVD-R / DVD-RW is the inferior format.

    5. Re:yuck-o. by nbvb · · Score: 1

      Have another drink on me.

    6. Re:yuck-o. by Psx29 · · Score: 1

      The main thing stopping me from buying a DVD-R is dual layer support...even though there is supposedly no current way to burn a dual layer disc and they have to physically put togehter, etc ,etc....I want to see some kind of solution so I can burn 9.0gb~ or so to a disc...

    7. Re:yuck-o. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DVD recording won't take off till Bill the Accountant can walk into CompUSA and ask for a pack of DVD discs to put his stuff on without having to worry about brands and standards and all that jazz....

      DVD recording won't take off until Bill the 15 year old kid or Bob the 45 year old couch potato can copy DVD movies from one disc to another without going through some arcane conversion process. Let's face it, copyright infringement is a BIG reason CD-R drives took off in the mid 1990's and the reason they started dropping in price. CD-R's were never a decent backup media because by the time they got affordable enough to use in that capacity we had 20 or 30 gig drives being the norm. What can we really use them for besides burning music?

    8. Re:yuck-o. by pod · · Score: 1
      As I read it, that's exactly what this new drive will be good for

      Well, yes, but it doesn't solve the problem: multiple competing non-compatible formats. And it still leaves the issue of having to read the damn things. Well, history of the CDR/RW will just be repeated. Wait a year or two and pick up a Plextor DVD burner for $200.

      --
      "Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
    9. Re:yuck-o. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The new blue-laser burners are supposed to be able to do like 27gb per disc aren't they? Not consumer level yet, but hey it's something to look forward to.

    10. Re:yuck-o. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...with a superior price.

      Sorta like SACD vs. regular CD. SACD won't ever win unless its cheaper.

    11. Re:yuck-o. by Cryptnotic · · Score: 2
      What can we really use them for besides burning music?


      Let's see... You can make Playstation discs, Sega Dreamcast discs (also SegaCD and Sega Saturn), Video CD's, Super VCD's, DivX versions of movies, ROM CD's for emulators, pr0n, CD-R's full of MP3's for the MP3-CD players. There are lots of uses for CD-R besides making ordinary music CD's.

      --
      My other first post is car post.
    12. Re:yuck-o. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The fact that you can't back up your whole hard drive onto ONE CD-R doesn't make them useless for backup. Remember, there was a time when people used to back up their hard drives onto floppies.

    13. Re:yuck-o. by castlan · · Score: 2

      DVD-R and DVD+R disks are only incompatible as far as writing is concerned. Once the disks are burned, they are designed to be universally readable, including standard consumer DVD players.

      The only issue would be if Fred wants to add to Bill's rewritable DVD format. Your stated concerns would be fully addressed by this solution.

      Unless Fred the Landscaper taked on double duty as Fred the Digital Media Editor.

  15. Lower price will speed adoption not this by j_dot_bomb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Drives are min $300 for a -R/-Ram.
    But many people have CD-Rs.
    DVD-R and CD-R media both cost $.2 per gig now.
    The startup cost is so much it seems better
    to buy a few IDE drives and wait till the price
    comes down. The only good thing is the (linear)
    rewriteable -RW which are as cheap as -R which is
    great.

    And why not include -RAM? Its media is cheaper
    than +RW (the most similar), and it is so established.

    1. Re:Lower price will speed adoption not this by MonMotha · · Score: 1, Redundant

      DVD-RAM has an extra plastic casing, which means that it is mechanically different from all the other standards, which are just a bare disc. The other standards are all the same size.

    2. Re:Lower price will speed adoption not this by j_dot_bomb · · Score: 1

      Gee thanks for repeating whats in the article reference. I know but there are -R / -Ram drives out there anyway right !

    3. Re:Lower price will speed adoption not this by IdleTime · · Score: 1

      And how do I view the contents of an IDE drive in my Pioneer DVD player connected to my big-screen?

      I see the point in using HD rather than DVD, but not exclusively as there are things that you can not do with data stored on a HD that you can on a DVD.

      Another good use of DVD is of-course to store compressed database files that I can unpack on any system. It is always a little more difficult to carry a physical HD around rather than a few DVD's.

      Just don't blow people off with the argument: "Just buy a few HD's" It doesn't always do the job!

      --
      If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
    4. Re:Lower price will speed adoption not this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Find one and give a link.

    5. Re:Lower price will speed adoption not this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no drives are $250 for -R/-RW

    6. Re:Lower price will speed adoption not this by Zebbers · · Score: 1

      any system with a dvd drive

    7. Re:Lower price will speed adoption not this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Another good use of DVD is of-course to store compressed database files that I can unpack on any system. It is always a little more difficult to carry a physical HD around rather than a few DVD's.

      If you have to store/generate that much data on a regular basis, consumer grade writable DVD is probably not the apropos backup/redundancy solution.

      Just don't blow people off with the argument: "I have a more important but poorly backed-up datacenter than you do," It doesn't always do the job! Nor will you for much longer if your boss gets ahold of your post.

    8. Re:Lower price will speed adoption not this by IdleTime · · Score: 1

      Don't assume too much. My posting has nothing to do with backing up a datacenter or not. The argument I used about putting some databases on DVD's are for ease of transport. These databases are test-databases and not production. I actually work for a large database company (sigh) where I do support. And, my Pioneer standalone DVD player that I use to watch movies are not connected to a PC so it is not m,uch use to store the movies on an HD which my Pioneer has no use for.

      --
      If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
  16. AMEN! by wo1verin3 · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Well this is what I've been waiting for, it might be +1 redundant but a DVD writer that supports both is a great solution for those that don't wish to wait until one standard takes over.

  17. Just when you thought it was safe.. by Malduin · · Score: 1

    Some competitor is going to release yet another standard that will knock this super drive off of its pedestal. Maybe this will knock down the prices in the other non-super drives. I just can't wait for these things to cost below $100 like CD-RW drives. But, I have a feeling that won't happen in the near future until everyone gets their act together and decides on a single, standard format. All we can do is wait.

  18. Front Line Reason by UserChrisCanter4 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I used to work retail, and I can tell you the number one reason why these things aren't being readily adopted: piracy, or rather lack thereof.

    I'm serious. I've owned three different CD Burners going back to the days when they started to become remotely affordable (as DVD burners are now). When I first got them, truth be told, it was for the purpose of creating mix CDs (completely legal) and burning MP3s found from the various FTP sites (this was around the time when Napster was just barely registering on geek radar, much less the public's eye). My current unit hasn't ever written a single CD with music on it (at least not for the purpose of playing in a CD player... I've probably archived an mp3 at some point). I use it heavily for backing up data, particularly TV shows that I time shift and digital photos.

    But this isn't what the average Joe user uses it for. I know, I talk to them every day. They want it for music, almost exclusively for music. In fact, a lot of Joe Users aren't aware that CD burners can be used for anything else (seriously).

    From Joe User's perspective, copying a CD is easy. Converting and burning an MP3 is easy. It's all done with fun, easy wizards. Drag and drop songs until the wizard says the CD is "full". Press start.

    doing the same with DVDs isn't easy. First, I have to contend with running DeCSS and ripping the video off of the DVD. Assuming the source is a single layer, single side DVD, all I have to do is write and go. Assuming it isn't, now I have to split the source file into two different DVDs or recompress into a tighter space. See, all the /.ers just said, "yeah" and Joe User spaced out when I mentioned DeCSS. On top of that, creating a DVD of home videos is difficult for Joe unless he's running an Apple, but he heard those suck 'cause they can't run windows. (Note to Apple fans: I said for Joe User, not for real people. I own two apples, and I love 'em).

    DVD Burners do have many great uses, just as CD Burners do, even to Joe. But for him, the gateway use is copying movies, just as his gateway use on the CD burner was copying CDs. Would he discover cool uses for his DVD burner just as he did his CD Burner? Sure. But right now it's too difficult for him to use it for what he perceives to be it's primary purpose.

    1. Re:Front Line Reason by j_dot_bomb · · Score: 2, Insightful

      True but I think thats coming. Were people burning CDs like this 4 years ago when the recorders cost like DVD-R drives do now ? Have you seen all those advertisements on places like yahoo for "copying a DVD to CD" ? Thats for joe user. As DVD-R/... drive prices go down, the software will become simple and available.

    2. Re:Front Line Reason by antirename · · Score: 2

      If DeCSS is a problem, then your users must be running linux and trying to rip DVDs. Most users I know aren't trying to do either... The drive probably comes with software that handles DeCSS, as long as they're running windows. I don't see why it's significantly more complicated than a normal CD-R.

    3. Re:Front Line Reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Assuming you are just making a backup copy for your movies DeCSS isn't a problem. Just do a direct bit-by-bit copy.

    4. Re:Front Line Reason by glesga_kiss · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Sure, burning DVDs may be beyond Joe User just now, but so was burning CDs at one point. Those drag & drop interfaces wheren't always around. You had to worry about buffer underruns, drive fragmentation, media choice and all that nonsense just to get a usable disk. Now it's all easy.

      As DVD burners are aimed more and more at the non-geek, so will the software. Burning your own videos to disk with easy to set up menu structures isn't too far away...

    5. Re:Front Line Reason by MrResistor · · Score: 2

      Reread the post. He's talking about copying DVDs, not playing them, which is exactly what DeCSS is supposed to prevent. Copying DVDs is equally difficult on either OS.

      --
      Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
    6. Re:Front Line Reason by rmohr02 · · Score: 2

      Right, it's not much more complicated, but when you confront people with acronyms they've never heard of they get confused.

    7. Re:Front Line Reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      or not, DeCSS is not required on platforms that can play DVD's "nativly"

      you just rip it to a mpeg and re-encode it

    8. Re:Front Line Reason by Post-O-Matic · · Score: 1

      (I'm refering to Joe as a "He" in this post, but i'm far from seeing myself as a "not-Joe"). How long was it since the point where CD-Writers became accesible for Joe, to when CD-Burning sortware had nice easy wizards for what Joe wanted ? And remember that the second time around ppl are more ready. Nero And Adaptec probably have a thing or two cooking up somewhere. More then that, they are probably racing towards who comes up with the easiest Wizard first. Now think about your Joe again. I think He's anticipating DVD Burners. You said yourself that it's all about piracy. Well what's a bigger treasure then lowering the 15$ rent-for-one-day fee at BlockBaster to a $2 have-it-forever cost ? I give it 6-12 monthes from the point where DVD players are home affordable, to when we start see them in every living room. But then again, i'm just another Joe... :\

      --
      "My mom always said that there are no monsters - no real ones - but there are !"
    9. Re:Front Line Reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well you can do a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD *without* decrypting and it will still work in your DVD drive because your drive+software player (or hardware drive) will happily decrypt it themselves. If you want to copy to your harddrive then you need DeCSS.

    10. Re:Front Line Reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What the fuck are you babbling about? "Native" support for "play[ing] DVDs" on a "platform" still requires CSS decoding, assuming you want the MPEG data.

    11. Re:Front Line Reason by foo12 · · Score: 1

      iDVD is exactly what you describe, and it's been out for a bit over a year now. When paired with iMovie, it's an incredibly powerful consumer authoring suite. Coming from Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro, I was actually suprised at how much power Apple put into its iLevel apps.

    12. Re:Front Line Reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >If DeCSS is a problem, then your users must be running linux and trying to rip DVDs

      Actually, AFAIK, you can get DeCSS integrated with the kernel if you know the right sources, making the DVD transparent.

      I don't see why Linux is significantly more complicated than any other solution.

    13. Re:Front Line Reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >I give it 6-12 monthes from the point where DVD players are home affordable

      Check out Apex DVD players. At $60 (from various sources) they're significantly cheaper than VCRs, and they play anything you throw at them too.

      The future is now.

    14. Re:Front Line Reason by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 2

      In order to do that, you need to have the same DVD burning/blank media setup that the distributor uses (You know, like Warner Bros?).

      The burner/media that you can get in a standard PC cannot store CSS keys. You can't do a full bit-by-bit copy.

      --

      There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
    15. Re:Front Line Reason by PurpleBob · · Score: 2

      The problem here is several parent posters using "CSS" and "DeCSS" interchangeably.

      --
      Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
  19. About damn time ... by LoudMusic · · Score: 2

    The Pioneer drive that Apple puts in their PowerMac and new iMacs (dubbed "SuperDrive") is really nice, but it doesn't do +RW. Dell is putting someone elses DVD writer in their computers that does +RW but they don't even offer a -RW alternative.

    And besides, Sony is the best darn electronics company on the planet (:

    Maybe now I can upgrade my Sony 12x to a DVD writer. What are the speeds up to these days?

    ~LoudMusic

    --
    No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
    1. Re:About damn time ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've got one of the g4 towers with a superdrive. It burns DVD-RW at 1x or DVD-R at 1x or 2x. So far I've only burned things at 1x. I kinda assumed 1x meant it would take 90 minutes to burn a 90 minute movie. Thats how CDR works. 1X on a DVD burner seems to be more like 2X on a CDR. A 90 minute movie would burn in around 45 minutes or so. I mention this because 1x sounds slow, but it really isn't that bad.

    2. Re:About damn time ... by cybercrap · · Score: 0

      HAHAHA, sorry but I know you didn't say sony is the best electronics company on the planet. The only thing sony even makes anymore is their display products (monitors, tvs,etc), all their other shit is just relabled shit from taiwan or whereever. Also, sony MIGHT be top of the line at best buy or some store like that, but they are far from top of the line if you include the brands not sold at BB, CC, etc..

  20. Well isn't that all nice and great... by Loki_1929 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now just please tell me when HP is going to own up to their promise to provide owners of the DVD 100i the capability to burn DVD-r's (one way or another). At this point, I'm leaning towards avoiding any first generation product offered from anyone, and specifically avoiding any and all HP purchases in the future. If you're going to promise something, make sure it's possible first; and don't edit the FAQ later without so much as telling anyone to make it look like you never promised what you did, in fact, promise. Remember, the people who buy the first-gen products are the ones who help shape what hits mainstream.

    --
    -- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
    1. Re:Well isn't that all nice and great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      HP had a trade in program, did you miss that?

      You got an 200i for 99 US D

    2. Re:Well isn't that all nice and great... by Loki_1929 · · Score: 2

      Trade-in... how quant. No, I didn't "miss" it, I ignored it. That's like a medic promising to bring you a band-aid, and instead offering you a new leg for $99.

      After paying over $500 for this burner, I don't see the reason to spend an additional $99 to attain the functionality that was promised with the first burner. Now, I'm sure HP is expecting us to all be used to paying more money for functionality that was promised in an earlier product (listening, Mr Gates?), but I'd like to see a little truth in advertising for once. I'm not some cheapskate looking for a free ride, I'm one of the folks who financed the R&D for the 200i with my high-dollar purchase of their first-gen product. It was advertised as being able to burn DVD-r's with a future firmware upgrade. I understand that they probably can't be held legally accountable for not owning up to that, but at least Phillips chose to take the moral high road by offering a free (as in beer) trade-in for first-gen purchasers of their own DVD+RW product. I wouldn't even mind paying the shipping to send the drive to HP, where they could either modifiy the drive (with a warrantee of course) or send me a new drive with the promised functionality. You know, advertisers should really be jumping all over this kind of thing, as it hits them the hardest. If you cannot believe the advertisement, then it has little or no effect on your purchasing decisions. I've bought many products from HP, but as it stands right now, this will be the last. I'm not much revenue to HP by myself, but I'd imagine they've lost a large number of people who usually buy first-gen products over this.

      --
      -- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
  21. Standards by ImaLamer · · Score: 2

    I just think it's about hilarious that the word "standards" is actually used.

    If there is more than one, how can it even be standard? Sure, I realize that they individally have their own protocol , but having more than one nullifies the word standard right? Or no?

    1. Re:Standards by CableModemSniper · · Score: 1

      Nah. Just look at the metric way of doing things and the American (North Ameriacan? USian?) way of doing things. They are both standard.

      --
      Why not fork?
  22. What Copyright Protection Scheme Will be Used? by __aadhrk6380 · · Score: 1

    Kind of makes ya wonder if they will...

  23. modern floppies by lingqi · · Score: 1

    one does have to wonder:

    with the "keychain USB flash storage thingys" multiplying size every couple monthes or so, why DO you need to shell out that much dough for DVD burners?

    i mean, i can get 512MB worth of go-anywhere storage on a key chain. OR i can get credit card sized CDR worth 30M or so for a quarter or so each. so... what's the benefit of a 5 dollar DVDR disk again?

    i'd say money is better spent on wireless connectivity, bluetooth and the like, which is more convenient, less hassle, and no ongoing maintainence cost (media).

    for archival purposes (the above has been regard to data-sharing), get a second hard disk. i am willing to say that everyone (personal use) has the CRITICAL data which would all fit onto about a CD, maybe two. kids who do video editing or whatever may need more, but then they already got DVDR and stuff already anyway... me as average joe, i am sticking with floppies.

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

    1. Re:modern floppies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All the people saying "What's the point of recordable DVDs" are the ones who cry a river of tears when their unbacked up hard drive crash.

    2. Re:modern floppies by dorsey · · Score: 1

      My component DVD player doesn't have a USB port.

      --
      hinderfreude ('hin-dur-"froi-d&), n. The feeling of joy derived from being in the way.
    3. Re:modern floppies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      Ok, so how much your "512MB worth of go-anywhere storage on a key chain" cost? I'll have one when the price goes anywhere close to CD burners, but I'm not seeing that happening any time soon.

    4. Re:modern floppies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Lets assume that you can get the DVD burner for $300 (I've seen them going for about $265 on Pricewatch). The first blank you buy gets you 4.7GB for $5. That's $305/4.7GB= 65 $/GB. For the 512MB USB storage device to be price competitive, per gigabyte, with the first DVD-R you burn, it'll have to cost $32.

      If you need two DVD's full, then the cost per GB becomes $310/9.4= 33$/GB, and the 512MB USB thingy needs to cost less than $16.5.

      As burner and blank prices come down, the comparison will keep looking worse and worse for the USB thingys. They aren't really swimming in the same pond as the DVD's. The USB thingys have an entirely different purpose: they're floppy replacements, to let you drag some ``small'', evanescent files around from machine to machine. DVD's are aimed more toward archival use, for large files, or large collections of files.

  24. Bad Move by Ken@WearableTech · · Score: 1

    Supporting both is just going to delay the inevitable unifying standard. I bought a HP DVD 200e, just because it is external and lets me use firewire. I can't fit a 5 ¼ bay in my notebook so I had to pass on the less expensive IDE drives. When I bought the 200e I had no idea what + or - was. I leaped before investigating. Sony is just creating another piece of hardware that will be the novelty of proprietary standards.

    I bought an HP... long live +R.

    A good site that outlines the differences is vcdhelp.com

    1. Re:Bad Move by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What is the new Sony be able to do that the HP 200i/e doesn't already do? I was planning on getting the HP, thinking that it supports all the formats...

    2. Re:Bad Move by Ken@WearableTech · · Score: 1

      The HP is DVD+R, which Im happy with. The Sony is DVD-r and DVD+r. Other than that it does not due much of anything that the HP can't due. If you need a firewire burner the 200e has worked great for me.

  25. obligatory regex joke by jdbo · · Score: 2

    I can't wait to see the labels for this one:

    "the new Sony DVD(\+|\-)R(|W) Foo2002! Now super-easy for you and your family!"

    Even funnier, this won't help much with limiting the playback confusion - some of these formats are data-centric, others video player-centric... and do _any_ of these encompass the Audio standard?

    1. Re:obligatory regex joke by pabs · · Score: 1

      The obligatory /. pedantic correction:

      /DVD[+-]RW?/

      :-)

      --

      Odds of being killed by lightning and winning the lottery in the same day: 1 in 2^55

  26. Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to news out this week, Sony has been quietly building CD-RW burners with anti-copying technology built in. Sony is also leading the push on drm legislation which will take away your fair use rights to backup that CD/DVD for protection from scratches, aging, and many other purposes, which are legal under fair use law.

    It's up to you to decide whether you will support a company that is trying as hard as possible to prevent you from transfering music from your CD to your Rio or your car, or for backup purposes, etc.

    It's up to you to decide whether Sony is acting in your best interest, or their own selfish interests by setting up a tollbooth on the digital highway that is becoming harder and harder to avoid.

    How many of you knew that Sony was building anti-copying technology into their CD-RW burners that they are currently selling? I certainly didn't know, but since I refuse to purchase any Sony products due to their stance on "digital rights management", I am somewhat protected. By avoiding the companies that are pushing hard on drm, I am mitigating some of the damage they are doing to my ability to backup my property.

    btw, have you unchecked the drm box in wmp before burning that CD? If not, you burned drm anti-copying abilities into your CDs.

    See NYFairUse for more info.

    1. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doesn't anyone find it suspicious that Sony isn't supporting DVD-ram, technology built more for random access, and ease of copying, and a technology they can't control?

      Also, the fact that DVD-ram is normally housed in protective cartridges, and thus less susceptible to scratching, (and less susceptible to having to shell out more money to replace the scratched discs) would have an impact in the marble walls and floors of Sony's executive headquarters in mid-town NYC?

    2. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So people buying Sony DVD burners, whether -rw or +rw or both, may unwittingly be buying DVD burners that cost about $500, and may be prevented of backing up their music and other legally owned property belonging to them? Or will have to ask Sony to unlock a song after proving to Sony that your DVD is scratched/not functioning and hoping for a quick (week?) response?

    3. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      who the fuck uses wmp to burn cds?
      they DESERVE to have broken cds if they do.

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    4. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Who uses wmp? Since it is the default media player on windows, and since I run into a lot of computer users who don't even know they are running windows, or what windows is, I would assume that a lot of people use wmp to do a lot of things.

      I wouldn't expect people reading slashdot to use wmp. But most people don't even know what slashdot is.

      Sony and Microsoft could care less that you don't use wmp. They do care about the other 80-90% of users that don't switch off cookies, javascript, uncheck the box that says allow web sites to uniquely identify your player, leave IE security settings on media, don't know what a cookie is, go ahead and use IE for credit card purchases over internet after having been told that SSL is broken (what's SSL? That little lock on the bottom right of browser. What's a browser?)


      they DESERVE to have broken cds if they do.


      So if users are not on your level, they should get off the internet. I agree. Let's save the internet just for us. I'll start pulling the plug on all the non-techs I know, you do the same on your end.

      .
    5. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I didn't know SSL was broken...where did that come from?

    6. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by JFMulder · · Score: 2

      Do you have an article to back that up, because Sony is now selling a portable MP3 CD Player so if they're so much anti mp3 why are they selling a player?

    7. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OMFG

      SSL has been broken in MSIE for a long time, it hit public a few weeks back.

      Why does no one care? This is the most important event of this year so far (no, iraq isn't an event). The popular media hasn't even preteneded to pick it up.

      Every transaction in MSIE is vunerable to an easy to perform man-in-the-middle attack. Borland.com set up a spoof of it in thier download page, just use it in MSIE (tip: it's an invalid certificate) and you will not get any warning at all, and everything will look good.

      This is freaking huge, and apparently no one cares? The stupidity of people never ceases to amaze me.

    8. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by ealar+dlanvuli · · Score: 2

      tag

      --
      I live in a giant bucket.
    9. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by Art_Vandelai · · Score: 1

      Sony is trying to play both sides - sell as many consumer electronics products as possible to get them hooked, then slowly take the capability away from those products to do anything that might harm their bottom line. Sony knows EXACTLY what it's doing. Remember how the WALKMAN only became popular AFTER the rise of home taping, which allowed Joe Public to easily take songs from a big 12" vinyl disc to a 3" cassette tape to play in their walkmen.

    10. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by user+no.+590291 · · Score: 0

      They don't care because SSL's primary use is transport encryption, not authentication of remote sites. The whole security dialog for certificate problems is a scam to make money for Verisign, et al, which run a protection racket: "You wouldn't want anything bad to happen, like your customers' browserst throwing up a HUGE SECURITY WARNING when on your buy page, would you? I thought not. That'll be $1,000/year for your public key certificate."

    11. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sony makes its pitch to control digital content

      OpenMG X unleashed

      By INQUIRER staff: Thursday 08 August 2002, 14:28

      SONY HAS OFFICIALLY announced its own digital rights management technology, OpenMG X.

      Meeja companies keen to implement some way of limiting the use of digital content - generally video and music ? are also competing for the standard way of managing digital rights. Microsoft is making strenuous efforts in this area but Sony with its interest in producing the video and music people may be tempted to pirate is determined to establish itself as the standard setter.

      According to Sony, OpenMG X" consists of the following software modules:

      1. An encoding module which adds digital rights management information, such as the number of times content was copied or played, to music/movie content and converts them into code at the distributors' end.

      2. A server module which distributes digital rights management information on content to the users' end.

      3. A client module for developing application software compatible with "OpenMG X"

      Sony says that as "both a hardware manufacturer and content/service provider," it is seeking "to connect content producers and end users in providing range of services that distribute high-value content in a secure environment."

      Sony says the technology can be applied to mobile phones and PCs as well as its own digital Walkman and PlayStation2 products and wants to leverage its position the console and consumer electronics king to persuade content makers to sign up to its system.

      It says that, since OpenMG X" as an open platform technology, it should support the secure distribution of content. It says it is considering licensing this technology to hardware manufacturers and software vendors.

      I've already posted quite a few times, so I may run into slashdot's 10 post limit per day, so I won't be able to post the link to the article on the burners. I am looking for it now. If anyone else recalls where the article is located, please post it.

      I normally save articles such as the one above, but I failed to save the other article I am talking about. I didn't save it because I was going offline, and expected other news sites to pick it up. Apparently they haven't. So, info on the article:

      Sony announced that they had quietly been building a feature into CD-burners that they had been selling over many months (I recall a six month period being mentioned), that was a drm feature that when CDs containing certain software/or when activated/or whatever method would prevent any copying from the CD to another CD, or from a CD to another device (Rio, portable mp3 player, etc.)

      I don't know if this was made public because they got caught, or because they are ready to start testing system. I tried some keywords of Sony, quietly, CD-RW, burner, prevent copying, etc., but came up empty. As great as google is, it does not spider all news sites, all news articles, and many other items. Newer articles tend to give google problems (as well as sites that don't want to pay for listing or placement taking up to 4 months and longer to get indexed). Don't take my word for it. Try searching for NEWS ARTICLES on google that were published in the last week.

      The article on Sony quietly building copy protection into their CD burners was a news article within the last ten days, and was on one of the many tech sites that publish news that I frequent regularly. I am still checking them now.

    12. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by TFloore · · Score: 2

      This being Sony, I would *guess* that the MP3 player is upload-only. Once you put an MP3 on the player, you can play it on the MP3 player, or you can delete it.

      I'll bet you can't download that MP3 to another computer, using the player as a drive to transport music.

      No, I don't know this, but since it's from Sony, I'd be willing to bet that's how it works.

      Yes, Sony is a big believer in DRM.

      --
      This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
    13. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by tres3 · · Score: 1
      Back when I had an awesome job and could afford some really nice things I spent about $10K on a stereo system. It is an awesome toy and even though I didn't think I'd buy Sony walking in to the store I ended up with a rack of Sony ES (Elevated Standard) stuff. Except for the CD player everything has worked pretty good. That was 12 years ago and it was one of the first digital preamps out there: TAE 1000ESD.

      A few years ago I was researching which DVD player to buy when I discovered the extent that Sony goes to to make sure my rights are as limited as possible. If you want to make your DVD player a region 0 player (it'll play everything from all over the world) then DON'T buy a sony. It requires soldering a new chip on the board for most of their modles.

      Then I looked at the extent that they went through to make their mini-disc system not play nicely with others. The extent that they went to to make DAT's not play well with others and I came to the same conclusion that you have.

      Although they make some good stuff it doesn't always play well with your other toys. I will not buy anything that says Sony on it ever again. This includes everything from new toys to blank VHS tapes. Nothing that says Sony! Ever!

      This is ironic from the company that established the fair use of time-shifting, and thus enabled VCR's and their proprietary Betamax format to record TV programs, by taking the MPAA all the way to the Supreme Court. I guess they're a content company now!!!

      This is also ironic coming from a company that created a Linux distribution for their PS/2 console. By the way...Doesn't IBM have a trademark on PS/2? You remember the computers that had that micro-channel architecture.

      No SONY .. No More
      Regards, tres

    14. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by WWWWolf · · Score: 1
      This being Sony, I would *guess* that the MP3 player is upload-only. Once you put an MP3 on the player, you can play it on the MP3 player, or you can delete it.

      But I would also *guess* that the "portable MP3 CD player" allows the user to remove the CD from the unit, thus allowing them to "download" the music.

      Of course, Sony will probably back down on being nice at some point. Wait until they're hooked and *snap!* trap goes off.

    15. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 2

      In the unlikely event that IBM went after Sony for trademark infringement on the PS-2 brand (I doubt that IBM or Sony actually trademarked that particular string of ASCII), IBM would be laughed out of court.

      Sony could make a pretty convincing case that the PlayStation 2 does not compete, and is not likely confused with the computing platform PS/2. If you could copyright two letters and a number, we'd have much more serious problems on our hands.

      --

      There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
    16. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, if it's suceptable to a man in the middle attach, how fucking secure can the transport encryption be?

      Use your brain, it might help...

    17. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by acceleriter · · Score: 1
      Yeah, it's susceptible to a man in the middle that was able to hijack the domain name for a high profile ecommerce site.

      Use your brain, it might help.

      --

      CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.

    18. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes it is, all I have to do is intercept all packs going to and from a building and intercept all communication with a certain domain, this is exactly what anti-man in the middle tech is for.

      Not to mention anyone with access to a DNS server at an ISP is capable of performing this now..

      Anyone capable of getting on the same subnet as the DNS server would be capable of performing this at my current workplace.

      The fact that it's harder to do than it is to root a windows machine, does not make it trivial or non-important. It's huge, and basically invalidates all semblance of security in IE.

    19. Re:Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      because we all know browser SSL is only ever trusted to cary credit card numbers. Not banking information, or secure corperate information, or...

      Not to mention the fact anyone with access to a popular ISP's DNS server can trivially hijack a domain for many unsavy users.

  27. Blank DVD Media is too expensive... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's a big deterrent for me anyway. $20 for 5 blanks vs. 50 or 100 blank CDRs for $10 ... or $0 after rebate in many cases.

  28. nice.. but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    this wont help 1 format win. This keeps the same thing up. two different competing formats. No matter what happens, the format I pick will lose. Maybe I should do you all a favor and get this drive so that some other standard comes in and takes care of it. It would cost me only $300 to take out both standards.

    The sure fire way to tell that DVD is widely accepted is when you hear "Dude! Your're getting a free DVD writer or Printer with purchase".

    CDR is going to be more popular until DVD prices are down to cd writer prices and one format is singled out.

    Until that happens, i will fuck your mother's asshole

    Free Porn from www.thehun.com

    1. Re:nice.. but by jkfresh · · Score: 1

      my mother is dead

    2. Re:nice.. but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      even better

  29. Can't find a floppy? by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Maybe that's because you have to go out and buy them.

    1. Re:Can't find a floppy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Maybe that's because you have to go out and buy them.

      Buy them? BUY THEM? Why can't AOL go back to mailing them to me, like in the good old days!

  30. Limited Demand, or Lack of Standards? by Cheesewhiz · · Score: 3, Interesting
    "This move could spur the adoption of DVD burners, which have been poor sellers so far, partly due to the lack of a single standard for writable and rewritable media. "

    I disagree that the lack of a single unified standard has had a significant depressive influence on the sale of recordable DVD drives. I think that it's rather a lack of demand.

    In other words, how many people actually have a driven requirement to burn DVDs? While most of us geeks would think that it's an immensely desirable thing, in actuality, the average PC user doesn't have a need for DVD-R technology.

    While the media has been making it sound like all the rage, home-producing video DVDs is actually not yet widespread. It's great use of quality technology, but the average Joe doesn't do it...yet.

    Storage space is extremely cheap -- $100 for 120 GB IDE drives. To the average user, that's an immense, almost dauntingly large amount of space which they'll probably never use. Why spend extra on a DVD recordable drive, and several bucks each on DVD media when you don't need that much space (4.7 GB per disc, usually) in a transportable form?

    The fact is, most people don't need DVD-recordable drives. If they did, they'd purchase one regardless of the lack of a single unified standard, as long as the product does what it needs to. That's a fairly typical consumer mindset with computer technology recently -- "who cares about the standards, because they'll all be different in another month!"

    On the Apple side, it's profitable for them to offer DVD-R technology as a standard, because their users are typically more multimedia-centric, and have suitable user-friendly tools for the most basic to the most advanced users to utilize the technology to its fullest. For most PC-users, it's merely purchasing a machine with superfluous technology.

    --

    -----
    "Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
    1. Re:Limited Demand, or Lack of Standards? by Proc6 · · Score: 1
      I think these people with their 100 gig drives are the ones that NEED DVD-R, actually something far larger. The larger the harddrives get, and the more people are starting to put on them, and really starting to value what they put on them, the more I think we're going to start seeing backup become a hot item. Right now the 100gig drives are new, and people are just getting into filling them up, but put a couple years on the Maxtor 120gig, and watch them start failing all over the place. People who spent countless hours raping Kazaa or downloading movies or storing 5,000 digital camera pics of their child growing up on their 120gig drive with no backup will be an instant DVD-R consumer when the drive fails and they lose "everything".

      CDR sucks to back up mp3 collections, or video of any kind. DVD is barely big enough, we need some blue laser, 100gig+ disc something or others.

      --

      I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!

  31. The great thing about standards by mac123 · · Score: 1

    The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from :-)

  32. Windows XP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...comes with POWERFUL combined DVD burner support!

  33. That's the great thing about standards... by tm2b · · Score: 1

    ...there are so many to choose from.

    --
    "It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
  34. mods on crack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is not a TROLL's post, look at the wink at the end - as Dave Barry wrote in his book about cyberspace, this is meant to convey HUMOR you retarted dickless hopeless worthless crack inhaling imbred moderator! Thanks for your time and have a Disney Day(TM)!

  35. The Name? by suwain_2 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Will they call it... a CD±RW drive?

    --
    ________________________________________________
    suwain_2 :: quality slashdot p
    1. Re:The Name? by wadetemp · · Score: 2

      No, because it would be a DVD±RW drive.

    2. Re:The Name? by kryptkpr · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't it be a DVD±R[W]?

      --
      DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
  36. Sorry... by Nameles · · Score: 1

    ...but now can I make the joke about One burner to rule them all?

  37. Convert SVCD to DVD? by NetJunkie · · Score: 2

    I keep looking at these drives, but from what I've read if you put a SVCD on to a DVD-RW a normal player won't read it. They expect DVD Video on a DVD-RW disc, not SVCD.

    Anyone know some good software to convert SVCD to DVD Vid?

    1. Re:Convert SVCD to DVD? by jkfresh · · Score: 1

      you can extract the audio and the mpeg 2 streams with dvd2avi. you can get this from www.doom9.org on the software page. Since an SVCD is so small, you should be able to stick at least 4 cds on a DVD with no transcoding.. Of course, you need to make menus and stuff like that..

    2. Re:Convert SVCD to DVD? by ebooher · · Score: 1

      Hit VCD Help and learn the true power of the dark side.

      It's a great little website that has FAQ's and help files on everything from Authoring your digital video with menus, Capturing video from cameras, Converting video from all these formats to all those formats, Ripping a DVD for archival, Editing your video and playing your video on your computer.

      --
      "Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
    3. Re:Convert SVCD to DVD? by undie · · Score: 1


      SVCD is 480x480, and DVD (though it supports a few others) is generally 720x480.

      Some players are happy to play 480x480 MPEG-2 video in DVD format. Others will show the video on 3/4 of the screen.

      I've authored quite a few DVDs with 480x480 video from SVCD or DirecTivo, and they play fine in my Philips DVD711 standalone.

      The only authoring software that I've used for this is SpruceUp - not available for purchase anymore but easily found on the net.

      You'll need DVDPatcher to patch the first header of the MPEG to 720x480 before importing the videos - Spruce will crash at the end, just re-patch the header to 480x480 and import again.

      More info on this trick is available at the DirecTivo Hacking forums or VCDhelp.

  38. Prices,,, by OneFix · · Score: 2, Informative

    I was discussing this very subject today. It's pertty much agreed that the biggest problem is the cost of the drive itself, followed by the cost of media.

    My guess it that the price point for wide purchase of DVD Writers is $179...why $179? Well, this suggests that the $199 point would have already been reached...but most think "That's just $200"...no one want's to pay $200 for a drive....And $189 would have also been broken...but some won't buy there...and when you get to $179, you already have 3 choices under $200 and this suggest a good selection. And at the $179 price point, this suggests that there is likely to be a $169 drive in the near future...and you're no longer talking ~$200, but ~$150.

    For some, media cost is a problem, but it's likely to go down as soon as ppl start buying burners.

    The real problem is, lack of cheap drive manufacturers...you know, the Lite-Ons and the Pacific Digitals (Mostly repackaged Mitsumis).

  39. About time . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    After being sent four or five DVD+Rs and DVD-Rs by subcontractors, none of which were readable in standard DVD-ROM drives, and none of which were labeled by the user as anything other than DVD (though of course on the inside package the disks did say DVD-R and DVD+R; one was even labeled CD-R by the user on the outside package, and it was only discovered that it was a DVD when they brought it down to me because it didn't work in their drives, and I pointed out the DVD-R markings), I'll be glad for a drive that can read anything and write anything.

  40. Re:WTF!!! by woogieoogieboogie · · Score: 1, Troll
    When's the last time you saw a Jew blow themselves up along with women and small children?

    The Israelis have much better weapons in which to kill Palestinian children with. Weapons supplied by the US to the tune of $3 billion a year. Now if we were to also give the Palestinians $3 billion a year, they wouldn't be using suicide bombers to kill Israelis, they would be killing Israelis from afar with F-16's.

    Once you graduate grade school and are able to read, you will find that sharon is a butcher who has ordered the death of hundreds of Palestinian children. Sharon should be held accountable for his war crimes and tried before an international court. The UN has tried, but every attempt has been subverted by the US. What is the US covering up? Why the unconditional support of Israel? Why does the US condone the killing of Palestinian children by Israel?

    The Palestinian suicide bombers might be bad, but not nearly as bad as the US sponsered slaughter of palestinian children.

    --
    ... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
  41. Re:WTF!!! by spedrosa · · Score: 1

    What the hell is "bonasi", your crazy bastard...

  42. Aren't you happy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that you nailed Pamela Anderson before Tommy Lee?

    Hepatitis would be a bummer.

    1. Re:Aren't you happy by Scott+Baio · · Score: 0
      It always makes me feel good when someone remembers this.

      Actually, Pam was never the right girl for me. I mean, the fact that she was willing to be seen with me in public a couple of times was cool, 'cause it meant her self-esteem was low enough, but unfortunately, she wouldn't ever get in the sack sober. It can get expensive keeping your S.O. hopped up all the time, especially when you don't have a job.

      Hey, keep the fan mail coming! luv to hear from you people!

      Scott

  43. obligitory 'when will they learn' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    I often wonder if the suits of major companies like Plextor and Sony will ever learn that there is indeed a connection between 'slow adoption because of lack of standard' and 'low revenues for the company.' Perhaps instead of waiting a decade for some group to pull everyone together and etch out a standard, they could in the beginning do two things to make them more money in the long run. First, publish the specs. Second, design said specs in a very extensible, abstract and common sense manner.

    The first move will undoubtedly cause many short termed suits concern. They will think that money is lost from competition, yet fail to see that the competition would then be over implementation much like it is an other aspects of computing... not the format. Consumers want something that is as simple to use but as broad in use and acceptance as possible. If the suits have forgotten this, then they have forgotten who their business is much less what their customers want. That translates into a situation where said suit should have his ass stomped for being a moron and then promptly put someone with business sense in his/her place.

    Next, the actual design if well planned and implemented will lend itself well to adoption by various media makers, hardware vendors, and resellers. This will therefore increase the actual market exposure and increase the potential net amount for the company.

    Example: 1337d0odZ company produces a proprietary and limited (by design and end features) protocol and because of that has access to a market of about 50k. However, if the specs are released and designed well in the first place then the suits worst nightmare will come to pass. "OMG!" the suits will say... we have dropped to only 40% of the market as opposed to the 80% we shared when everything was propietary. Of course back in the realm of logical creatures, we see that the market has actually increased to 500k due to increased acceptance by end users, vendors and resellers. If they are smart, they will have first made deals with media producers, Multimedia (movies, music, data, etc) producers, and secondary hardware vendors to provide package deals to increase the love all around, possibly increasing not only just market share but per unit profit.

    With this, the 1337d0odZ are able to amass a pirates cache of profit in the short to mid term while setting themselves for a much smoother ride because of vendor and end user trust, acceptance and recognition (as in brand recognition). If they understand the value of customer service and cross product support then they will do great.

    1. Re:obligitory 'when will they learn' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Never taken much business have you? If you published your complete specs (for drive, not format) you'd be screwed. You ideally want a monopoly. The current problem with DVDR standards is that they were mainly all developed independantly which is what caused the divergance. Toss in some patents and boom you have a bad situation for all involved. Keep in mind I'm currently drunk and thus probably not making too too much sense[hence posting as AC], but that's the primary reason. The goal is hitting the ideal/equilibrium price point. Until a product takes off it's more expensive to produce and thus this point is higher... if you could prove that publishing your complete specs would actually be profitable that would be one thing. Your above example basically states this: We invest a shitload of money developing a good spec, we then release this spec, reducing our Market share from say 100% to 40% and by doing so we increase the total market by a factor of 10. This translates into more revenue(50k - 200k) , but most likely would cause a loss due to all the R&D investment, all of the production investment(to meet increased demand). It also lowers the price point. I'll summarize, we spend 6 mil on R&D(low ball, probably much much higher), another 6 mil on marketing, and 2 mil to put facilities into place to sell 50k units/year. It costs about 2 mil per 50k units we sell/year in production/facilities costs. Our pricepoint for being proprietary is higher due to less competition, we set the price. It breaks down to being about 60/unit for us to make, and we want to sell them for much more to recoup costs as quickly as possible. Our investment above manufacturing is about 240/unit(to break even in the first year), so it costs us 300/unit to actually begin making money. Anyone without having to spend the R&D dollars can produce them for the base of 60/unit. Meaning they can undercut us horribly. So of COURSE we aren't going to paint huge red signs saying here's our specification, mimic it within the first year. Now the second year, we have recouped R&D costs and most advert/marketing costs, so it might be advantages to do so, but we more want other companies spending money on reverse engineering our stuff, just so that the pricepoint remains higher. It makes sense, a sick kind of sense, but I hope I made it just a little bit clear as to why these "suits" aren't complete idiots.

  44. Got lucky on Philips under $100 by Sean+Clifford · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Got lucky in Wal-Mart and picked up 2 Philips DVD+RW burners for $78.84 apiece when they were selling for ~$480 each. Talk about rolling back the prices. They must have screwed up and thought they were selling CD-RW drives 'cause I haven't seen them since.

    1. Re:Got lucky on Philips under $100 by jrcapablanca · · Score: 1

      Ha, that is friggin' incredible. I hate Wal-Mart.

  45. Good point! by Longinus · · Score: 1

    I'm still running on 512k of RAM, no one will ever need more than that.

  46. Re:WTF!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He's right.. When's the last time you saw a Jew blow themselves up along with women and small children? Or, how about a white chritian?

    "White christians" may have not comitted suicide in acts of terrorism, but many sure have committed some. To name a few:

    Timothy McVeigh
    The KKK members involved in the Birmingham, Alabama church bombing of the 1960s.
    White supremacists involved in various "lynching" and "night rides" of the 50s and 60s.

    Even my CAT has more sense than to blow herself up.

    Well, obviously. Cats dont have the appendages to manufacture and don a suicide-bomb in the first place.

    I've never met a normal muslim.

    Youre obviously that same moron posting "white power" messages on the board.

    The reason why you have never met a normal muslim is because you never walked past ten feet out of your trailer-trash home in your white-trash neighborhood.

    Millions of Americans tell you this if they heard your racist filth:

    "Go back to your trailer, white trash."

  47. The real use for DVD/R by smallstepforman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Its suprising to see that some people fail to see the larger picture which DVD-R brings. Walk into any Blockbuster/VideoEzy/Video library, rent a movie overnight, stick it into your PC and start ripping and recompressing, and burn the movie onto your DVD-R. Total cost for movie ownership - $5 for rental and $5 for blank DVD-R. This will get cheaper, since blank media prices will fall. Most video libraries also offer a rent 5 movies for $10 deal, so you can get 5 movies for $35, or $7 each at current prices. Of course, you have to factor in burner and PC ammortisation and electricity, but you get the general idea. When blank disks cost $2 each, you're looking at $4 for pirated movie disks. Great value in any book, when you take into consideration that most movies cost $20 or so. You miss out on the menus and extra features, but you can always burn them onto another disk. The best thing is that you dont get to see the FBI style warnings before every disk (telling you how wrong it is to do what you've just done).

    The best part about this situation is that free software already exists which can rip a DVD and compress it to fit on a 4.38Gb (4.7G) disk at the push of a button. Just hit start, flip disks 2 hours later, and hit burn. If you have a second DVD-ROM, you dont even have to hit burn - insert the two disks (original and blank), and just hit Start.

    Of course, the MPAA will catch onto this soon, but its too late to introduce new counter measures. The cat is out of the bag.

    --
    Revolution = Evolution
    1. Re:The real use for DVD/R by ZeLonewolf · · Score: 2

      Ummm...

      If you rent DVD movies at the video store...can you not simply stick it and a blank in the drive and do a straight DVD-DVD duplication? Why the ripping bit?

      --
      "If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
    2. Re:The real use for DVD/R by Art_Vandelai · · Score: 1

      Blockbuster in Canada sells previously viewed DVD movies for between $12.99 to $19.99 CDN (between $8.50 and $13 US). That's roughly the price of 2-3 rentals. Doesn't seem any where near worth the additional effort to rent the DVD, buy the blank media, search for the software to decrypt it, rip it to a PC and burn it to a DVD. just to save such a small amount of cash. Anyways, the speed of these things still isn't anywhere near what it needs to be - compared to a 700 GB CD which takes 8-10 minutes on the latest burners. They need to hit at least 12X-24X copy speed before they get any real penetration in the consumer market IMHO.

    3. Re:The real use for DVD/R by javilon · · Score: 2

      I am from Spain. We used to have the same prices as you do on DVDs (actually, they tend to be more expensive in Europe), but today I walked into fnac (a big electronics store in Madrid) and found that many DVDs cost 5 euros (roughly $5). I bought a couple of them.

      At this price, I will not invest on a DVD burner.

      Do you here me? RIAA? No need to create a policial state. Just price your stuff right!

      --


      When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
    4. Re:The real use for DVD/R by smallstepforman · · Score: 2

      DVD burners only burn one layer, which gives you 4.7Gb (4.38). The movies you rent are usually on a dual layered, single sided disk (up to 9Gb). You need to reduce the movie to fit onto a single disk, by either reducing the bit rate, or by eliminating the extra stuff. Dual layered burners wont be around for a long long time.

      The other prospect is to encode the movies with DivX ;-) , or MPEG4. You no longer need to sacrifice image quality, but you end up with a disk which cant be played from the DVD player in the living room. You can only play it on your PC, or a next gen DVD player (which supports MPEG-4).

      --
      Revolution = Evolution
    5. Re:The real use for DVD/R by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you mean 700mb, not gb, and in the latest burners it doesn't take like 8-10 minutes, it takes like 1.5 minutes. The DVD writer we have at work (we use it for carrying around bootable dvd's with Norton Ghost images on them) will burn a whole DVD in 25 minutes. That's not too long considering you're pumping nearly 5gb worth of data onto the disc.

    6. Re:The real use for DVD/R by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 1

      I don't even like to rent DVDs, much less buy ones that have been through a whole life cycle. I don't know about you folks up north, but down here, people think a rental contract is also a contract to beat the shit out of something until it's in a condition only slightly better than what will get us in trouble. I havn't rented more than a couple cars, but I've seen people to terrible terrible things to rental cars. Usually not malicious stuff, because that could get you in trouble. I've also watched people piss in potted plants in hotel rooms.

      I'm just shitty because one of the first DVDs I rented was American History X, and it skipped some important scenes because of scratches.

      Rather than paying 10+ bucks for a used DVD, I actually buy a lot of $4-$8 used VHS tapes from Blockbuster and smaller video stores. If you go to the little stores, they don't have room to display old movies that they need to get rid of. You can get an armload of good older movies for a steal.

      You don't really need super high quality video to enjoy films like Big Lebowski or Half Baked.

    7. Re:The real use for DVD/R by luminate · · Score: 1

      $5 for a blank DVD-R?! I see them on pricewatch for a mere 75 cents with case which would make this much more attractive. =)

    8. Re:The real use for DVD/R by zoccav · · Score: 1

      stick it into your PC and start ripping and recompressing, and burn the movie onto your DVD-R
      This is exactly what the MPAA wants you to believe. Come on!

      I'm an "older youth". In my times I did copy vinyl to compact cassettes but nowadays I cannot be bothered to even rip CDs.

      The market influencing mass will be coming from the regular "younger elderly" people. They'll produce DVDs and share them with friends and family. Main topics will be: 1) Kids at the playground and 2) "Elderly kids" at the "elderly playground".

      Joe Truck Driver wanting adult movies did change the video market, not the 16 year olds making illegal copies of Cheers.

    9. Re:The real use for DVD/R by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      MPAA won't catch the drift until it's too late... you think they'd learn? who would they be going against now? sony? sony going against sony? blank disks are already under/about 1$ btw. what strikes me is that i could archive entire babylon5 on couple of dvd's.

      i'm currently debating with myself if i should buy 200g of more hd, or dvd-r burner, the dvd-r is cheaper per g in the long run, where's the hd is cheaper in short run(starting costs of buying dvd-r burner)..

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    10. Re:The real use for DVD/R by Sabalon · · Score: 2

      head -c4.7G /dev/dvd | burnit -f /dev/dvdrw

      What's the problem ;)

  48. Sounds like Linux... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Choose your distribution:


    Debian
    Redhat
    Mandrake
    SuSE
    Other

    Choose your desktop:


    Afterstep
    Blackbox
    Enlightenment
    Fluxbox
    FVW M
    Gnome
    IceWM
    KDE
    MetaCity
    Sawfish
    Window Maker

  49. Re:WTF!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mod parent up! and the answer to your question: Jews hold votes. They have a pretty large percentage of the US population. If "Dubya" doesn't support the Jews, he won't get re-elected.

  50. Re:me first! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    troll!? What the FUCK? FP posts are modded as OFFTOPIC, not TROLL!

  51. Watch for Sony to introduce SVDVD... by dpbsmith · · Score: 2

    Just as soon as these burners hit the markets, I expect Sony to introduce SVDVD (Super Video Digital Video Disk), with a higher bandwidth and a richer, emotionally more intense "look" that is often compared to film.

    The SVDVD signal will, of course, be recorded on a special third layer that cannot be seen, let alone read, by any device sold as a computer peripheral.

    1. Re:Watch for Sony to introduce SVDVD... by Eric+Smith · · Score: 2
      Just as soon as these burners hit the markets, I expect Sony to introduce SVDVD (Super Video Digital Video Disk), with a higher bandwidth and a richer, emotionally more intense "look" that is often compared to film.
      The format was already announced last march. It's called Blu-ray, and uses a blue (or is it violet?) laser to get higher storage capacity.

      Unfortunately, the DVD Consortium, in its "wisdom", has decided to push a competing high definition format that uses the current DVD physical layer (book 1 of the DVD spec, ECMA-267), but with higher compression ratios. This seems rather short-sighted.

  52. DVD for music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Until such time as DVD audio players start showing up for home and car use there will be a whole less incentive for consumers to burn their own DVDs.....

  53. Difference between -R and +R? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can someone please explain to me, the difference between the PLUS and the DASH standards?

    1. Re:Difference between -R and +R? by Tigris666 · · Score: 1

      I don't mean to troll, but have you ever heard of google? :)

      Try the FAQ on dvdplusrw.org

      DVD+R (DVD+Recordable) is defined as a subset of DVD+RW. Using dedicated DVD+R write once discs, which will be substantially cheaper than DVD+RW discs, users can record material in the same way as with DVD+RW discs without the ability to erase the disc or re-record onto them. DVD+R discs can be recorded by any DVD+RW PC drive or video recorder, except for the first generation of DVD+RW PC drives (manufactured before April 2002). First generation DVD+RW video recorders need a simple firmware upgrade. DVD+R shares most of the characteristics of DVD+RW, such as the same storage capacity of 4.7 GB and the same usage applications, combined with an ever higher level of compatibility due to a higher reflectivity factor of the disc. DVD-R was originally mainly targeted at authoring applications, and was not optimized for consumer usage. Therefore, various formats ('General' and 'Authoring'), sizes (3.95 GB and 4.7 GB) and versions (1.0, 1.9, 2.0) of DVD-R exist. As with DVD+RW, there will only be one format of DVD+R discs, which are usable in both video recording and data applications.

      --
      Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try. -- Homer J. Simpson
    2. Re:Difference between -R and +R? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dipshit, he was asking about +R vs -R not +R vs +RW!

  54. Widespread adoption? by Winterblink · · Score: 1

    I doubt right away, at least for home use. Chances are that such a drive supporting as many standards as that will be prohibitably expensive for anyone other than businesses. Give it a year or so I guess.

    --
    "I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -Hoban Washburn
  55. The great thing about posting on slashdot... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    is that you don't have to read either the story or any of the posts (look right above yours, bud) to do it.

  56. My experiences... by singularity · · Score: 2

    When I bought my PowerMac, Apple was having trouble keeping the Combo drive (CD-RW/DVD) in stock, and since both of those were requirements of mine, I ended up going with the Superdrive.

    This summer, I was put into a position where I had to distribute about 3.2 gigs worth of material to numerous people by mail.

    Borken up into somewhat logical chunks, the material took seven CD-Rs.

    The solution, obviously, was to burn DVD-Rs. I was amazed at how easy it was and how effectively it worked. At 2x, I burned the material in a little over 20 minutes per disc.

    In the end, I am glad I ended up paying the extra for the Superdrive. The ability to assure that most everyone would be able to read the discs in their DVD drive equipped PC was very nice.

    My big comment: I see no reason for RW for most material. CD-Rs have gotten so cheap that I do not mind burning 30 megs worth of pictures to take to the local print shop for printing. I just throw the disc away after that.

    I do not see a strong reason to deal with slower burn speeds and more expensive media just to be able to reuse what I now consider to be disposible media.

    That might just be me.

    --
    - (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
  57. yeah, they were by Trepidity · · Score: 2

    Four years ago, a few people would buy CD-Rs for pirating audio cds and computer/playstation games. Since they were still quite expensive, they'd charge people they knew $5 to copy discs, thus helping to recoup some of their costs. Sort of like a community-owned CD-R drive, only one person actually controls it.

    Nobody does that with DVD-R drives currently, because it's not really possible to copy a DVD to a DVD-R and have it play in standard DVD players. So very few people want them.

  58. lack of piracy is still a problem by Trepidity · · Score: 2

    Even when CD-R's weren't that easy to use, they at least weren't too difficult either, and worked. You could take an audio CD, copy it to another audio CD, and have it play in any standard CD player.

    You can't do that with DVDs. You can't take a DVD, copy it to another DVD, and have it play in the vast majority of DVD players. It'll only work if you burn your own videos to DVD, or if you have a hacked player of some sort.

    So in a way, the copy-protection thing is working. Sure, you can defeat it, but most people don't bother. They want a DVD that plays on their player, and it's hard to get a pirated one that does, so they just buy a legitimate copy.

    1. Re:lack of piracy is still a problem by glesga_kiss · · Score: 1
      Give it time. None of the existing packages do DVD disk copies because they would have to incorporate DeCSS, which is against the DMCA (or local equiv, we're all at it now).

      However, most early CD->mp3 converters also made use of outlawed technology, using an non-licenced version of the mp3 encoder. You used to have to download the mp3 codec elsewhere and save it to the programs directory in order to use it. It's a bit like the mentality behind Mame, where you must download the game roms elsewhere. There will probably be software available soon to allow copies of some disks.

      There are still a couple of other issues to resolve. Most DVD disks are now dual layers, and hold around 9 gig. Writable DVDs on the other hand are only ever single layer, so you can't just do a straight copy anyway. You'd need to span disks or use double-sided media. Like the hated "flipper" disks of olde, this won't be popular.

      So, you can either re-encode the media to get it down to size (ouch, what's the point of a digital copy then!?!) or wait for larger capacity media to come along. Dual layer writable DVDs may never see the light of day...

      DivX on the other hand; I'm sure it won't be long before PVRs allow DivX playback over a network connection. The industry could be shooting itself in the foot here; instead of allowing users to make a copy of the disk, they will simply download the movie instead. And they lose the original save/rental in that scenario.

      PS I don't don't condone piracy, I just tell it how it it is...

  59. sony by Graspee_Leemoor · · Score: 1

    So do we love Sony today ?

    I love Sony, I love Sony not, I love Sony, I love Sony not ...

    Actually, ever since Sony released the PCG-U1 I have officially been her bitch.

    graspee

  60. but you need a hacked drive by Trepidity · · Score: 2

    It's impossible to do an exact bit-for-bit copy of a DVD to a DVD-R, because the blank DVD-R media has some bits in the header burned out. So most such copies won't play on most DVD players, at least without some modification (either a firmware hack, a modchip, or discovery of an easter-egg in the firmware).

  61. Not so. by Perianwyr+Stormcrow · · Score: 2

    The space for CSS key blocks is nonwritable on standard DVD media.

    --

    What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey

  62. Nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Two words can describe a KKKer like you:

    White. Trash.

    1. Re:Nope by Disevidence · · Score: 1

      So anyone who criticises Pro-Jewish policies is immediately racist?

      Go back to fantasy land.

      --
      Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
    2. Re:Nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe you havent read past comments lately, but this is the same guy who's been posting links here to white supremacist, anti-Semetic sites. So yes, hes a racist.

  63. Why not RAM? by Stonent1 · · Score: 1

    I don't know about you but my CDs have it pretty rough. Getting the hell scratched out of them putting them in different people's computers etc... DVD-RAM would be perfect for me! There's no way to scratch it. For God sakes why won't someone make a mainstream optical media in a plastic case?!?!?! Tapes went from reels to cassettes. Why can't optical media? Again... I hate Zip, Jaz etc because they can come in contact with the head and get damaged. DVD-RAM is the ultimate storage IMHO.

  64. The end of Compact Disc? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think its about time the good ole Compact Disc
    be put to rest and DVD Discs be the standard
    for movies, music, games, app. software, etc...
    BTW it really pisses me off that any CD player
    besides my computer CD player has a tough time
    playing burned audio CD-RW, not finalized disc's.
    Is there a solution around that would let me
    play CD-RW, not finalized audio with data in like
    executable files while still being able to copy
    and delete files on the disc without getting
    an ERROR in 0ther standard CD players?

  65. Finally by mgeneral · · Score: 0

    While I'd agree that there should be a single standard for burning DVD's, its about time someone has put it all together in package. I, for one, will be heading out to get this unit when it finally does ship.

    I'm sure that other brands will be quick to follow Sony's lead.

    --

    Goals are deceptive - the unaimed arrow never misses.
  66. Compatibility? by Alizarin+Erythrosin · · Score: 2

    When they finally (if ever) decide on a standard for the DVD recordable formats, will they be compatible with current (and future) DVD drives? I'd buy a DVD[+/-]R drive or whatever they call the new standard for backup purposes, as long as it was compatible with other dvd (player) drives I have and may buy in the future. If not, well, then I probably won't buy one.

    --
    There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
  67. Don't Buy From Sony, because: by vandan · · Score: 2

    Sony have been in the poo with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) a number of times now.
    They add 'regioning' to their Playstation 2 games, so you can't play games from different regions on the 1 playstation. They are a member of the DVD cartel who are forcing the same regioning on DVD consumers.
    They are trying to sue people for buying AND selling Playstation MOD chips.
    They are the most expensive brand, but lack the quality to justify the premium.
    Go with a more consumer-friendly company. They aren't hard to find...

  68. Re:WTF!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, they hate jews, so they can't be that bad!

  69. Do you really need to burn both formats ? by StArSkY · · Score: 1

    As long as you can read both formats, and write in the +r/+rw formats, do you really need something that can write both?

    In this regard I would look at the Sony DRU120A or the Ricoh MP5125A. These (from what I have read) can read both +r/+rw and -r/-rw formats, and write in the +R/+RW. Don't confuse this with the earlier ricoh MP51250A which can't do +r

    If I buy new discs (and they are cheap enough), as long as I can read the old ones I don't care if I can't write them.

    --
    lounge around on the blue couch
    1. Re:Do you really need to burn both formats ? by Hast · · Score: 2

      At least in Sweden -R discs are about half price of a +R disc. Seems like rather good reason if you ask me.

  70. About freakin' time... by tcc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    One thing I hate about new standards and most technologies, is that they tend to keep the "final" on a shelf until they can squeeze every single stepping out from pratically useless to the final product.

    CDroms, 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 6x, 8x, 12x, 16x, 20x, 24x, 32x, 40x, 48x, 56x, (and the blowing one from a previous slashdot story? :) )

    CD-R, same pattern.

    Guess what, yes when they did the 1x they probably didn't have a 48x machine working off the bat, but in all of the steppings you've seen above, probably only 3 stepping were required and the rest were physically locked with a firmware, etc..

    Where I am going with this? Well, simple. In some cases, it's acceptable and even good to hold off technology for a buisness model to work and for a company to have enough time to do R&D and accumulate enough revenues to sustain the operating costs, that's the goal of this maneuver.

    But this is where I get upset:

    DVD-RW (or +RW or anything for that matter) we were promised double layer double density double sided. The only thing we got is double-crossed. Right now we're sitting on a 4.7GB medium that was supposed to be 4x that amount (or at least 2x with the double layer and you'd have to turn the disc). DVD's been around for quite a while, yet, I'm not remotely impressed by this technology anymore. I've recently picked up a 99$ dvd player (about time they came down to that price) and why did Y buy it? because it was playing CD-R, CD-RW, VCD/SVCD, MP3 and mpeg-1 video burned on joliette CD. That was the interresting part about it.

    I would have been an INSTANT adopter at an overpriced range if they would have brought the technology they had promised. When the VHS VCD came out, and tapes were costing a bundle, I bought them, I loved the technology, I loved what it could bring me, and I didn't get lied to or hyped with what it would be and got 1/2 of it.

    DVD, when it got out, should have been 9.4GB-ready from the start, more expensive units should have had 2-sided reader/writer and cheaper units needing to turn the disk or buy a 1sided disc. They could have segmented the market like this for the home and pro. They could have kept the readers-only for cheap for mass-adoption and everything would have worked out just fine and probably taken off more seriously. They've had to retain, and now you get technology like TIVO that records a lot more, manages better than handling 30 dvds, and just plain rocks.

    Of course when they'll hit 99$ they will become interresting, but probably Hollywood will unleash that incompatible 2layer-blue-2sided-blabla laserdisc format...

    Anyways my rant isn't about this stuff comming out, it's about WHEN it comes out (blattantly retarded) and how it comes out, the cutdown features, and the fact that it's almost obsolete with other technologies on the edge. Too bad they aren't getting as much competition as the microprocessor sector is getting, because today you'd have HDVD that would support full HDTV signal with full quality and not only READ about it or have one prototype if you got 5 digits to spare. oh well...

    --
    --- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
    1. Re:About freakin' time... by Eric+Smith · · Score: 2
      DVD-RW (or +RW or anything for that matter) we were promised double layer double density double sided.
      Can you cite any references? I've been paying attention to DVD since before Toshiba and Sony settled their differences, and I don't remember ever seeing any claim that double-layer writable was going to be possible, from even a semi-credible source.

      I'm not saying it's impossible, but the technology used for CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, and DVD+R/RW does not lend itself well to writable double-layer media. The writing techniques would tend to affect both layers simultaneously.

      Double-sided media does exist, at least for DVD-R. It's more expensive and harder to find.

      What we really need is a high-density rewritable removable media that isn't pushed by the consumer electronics and motion picture industries. If we're lucky, such a thing could slip under the radar without as much pressure from Hollywood to include nasty DRM crap.

    2. Re:About freakin' time... by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 2

      Um... many of the manufacturers of DVD burners are actually competitors. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that they want to take your consumer dollars. This would lead them to attempt to produce a better product/price and/or better marketting. Have you seen much marketting for DVD burners? Again, I go out on a limb and suggest that they are giving you the best product for the price of their R&D. If they haven't given you something, I suspect it's 'cause it's hard to give you.

      Otherwise one of them would have done it.

      --

      There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
  71. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  72. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  73. Re:goatse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You owe me new underwear buddy!
    That was fucking HILARIOUS!!
    How and why do you come up with stuff like that? The creative process fascinates me.

  74. I want one! by Eric+Smith · · Score: 2
    Alright, so it's not as cool as sharks with frickin' lasers, but it's still pretty cool.

    So far, though, I've been pretty satisfied with my Pioneer DVR-A03. It supports DVD-R/RW and CD-R/RW. I can't really say that I've missed DVD+R/RW capability.

    However, having more vendors shipping DVD-R/RW drives will obviously help drive down the price.

    What I really want (aside from the aformentioned sharks) is a laptop DVD-R/RW, CD-R/RW drive that will fit in my Fujtisu Lifebook P-2040 subnotebook. It came with a Toshiba SD-R2102 combo drive that can read DVD and DVD-R media (I haven't tried other DVD formats), and write CD-R/RW. But being able to burn DVD-R on the go would be a nice improvement.

    Even though laptop DVD-R/RW drives have been announced, I'll probably have to wait until Fujitsu offers one for a Lifebook, because they use a custom bezel. Unless maybe I can use the bezel from the SD-R2102. Time will tell.

  75. Easy... Regex by JohnsonWax · · Score: 2

    DVD[+-]RW?

  76. Re:WTF!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, some of them didn't. And "white trash" is the perfect adjective to describe you.

  77. Re:dvd prices in spain by out_to_lunch · · Score: 1
    You found that many DVDs cost ...$5 which I read to mean films on dvd, not raw media.

    If I understod you correctly, then what kinds of titles were available at that price ? Older stuff ?

    80% of demand from the public is for 20% of recent hit titles, which is priced far higher.

    Anyway, your conclusions were correct - Do you hear me? RIAA? No need to create a policial state. Just price your stuff right!

    --

    "Congress - the best democracy money can buy"

  78. Market uptake has little to do with standards by CrystalFalcon · · Score: 2

    DVD burners are slow on uptake because there are different standards, you say?

    Gee. Here was I, thinking the reason I didn't buy a DVD burner was primarily the cost of the media, compared to CD-R. As long as I don't need to master a DVD, but just need data backup, CD-Rs come at 35 cents a gig, whereas DVD-Rs are around a dollar a gig still.

    So my question to myself is "Would I pay three times the money for a disc burner, and three times the price for the media, to get them on DVD format instead of CD?". My answer to that question is "no".

    I don't care too much about the competing standards - both DVD-R and DVD+R can be read in a regular DVD reader, and as long as that's the case, the media format would be a non-issue when selecting a DVD burner, as far as compatibility goes.

    I cannot imagine I am the only human on Earth to reason this way.

    1. Re:Market uptake has little to do with standards by richie2000 · · Score: 2
      I cannot imagine I am the only human on Earth to reason this way.

      What, you're HUMAN? That would explain the biohazard sticker on your fridge, you inferiour member of a squeamish species! (Say THAT out loud quickly ten times!) ;-)

      --
      Money for nothing, pix for free
  79. Nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's great and all...but what the hell is the difference between all of them? Joe Consumer doesn't give a rats ass that there is DVD+R or DVD-RW....he just cares about burning the damn DVD.

  80. Way too much effort by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2

    I could do the same thing for years with VHS but I never did. Thing is pretty much when I rent a movie, I see it once and then I'm done, I don't care to have a copy. Too much effort and an unnecessary fee for the blank to make a copy. If I wanted to won it, I'd buy it and get a higher quality copy. Well DVD-Rs aren't big enough to hold most commerical movies. You'd have to srtip out all the extras and audio tracks to make most fit and teh big ones you'd have to reocde to a lower bitrate. No thnaks, I want all that stuff, I'll buy the DVD for teh few I want to own, and just rent the rest.

  81. Sony is evil by scharkalvin · · Score: 1

    Don't buy Sony CDRW or DVDRW drives. Sony is Evil. Don't buy Sony digicams or computers either. Sony is a member of the MPAA/RIAA block. They have no interest in YOUR rights. They cripple their machines to block fair use (even if it is hidden). Maybe you shouldn't buy their TV's either if you want to time shift your tv shows. Think DRM and digital tv. Doesn't mix with Sony.

  82. Get with the program here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Forget about that DRM stuff. Sony just put out a neat-o new shiny object.

    The boycott is off again!

  83. Nice idea, but Sony ? by billcopc · · Score: 1

    It's about time someone woke up and did this, but why does it have to be Sony ? We know their interests lie elsewhere. Sony, creator of dozens of proprietary formats that never flew out of the mother's nest. Why would they suddenly turn around and start working with others ? And their cd-r track record is, well, pathetic. I remember using a 2x Spressa burner, which sucked goats even for its time. Then I tried a 12x, still badly crippled and lacking many current features and abilities.

    Now what, they'll make a DVD burner that only burns on Sony media, and only lets you burn what it wants to burn ? I mean, these guys made the PS2, which is plagued by DVD-R backups (tee-hee :) Will this DVD-R unit be somehow protected from duplicating PS2 games ? It's a stretch, but coming from Sony I'm prepared for the worst.

    --
    -Billco, Fnarg.com
  84. I'd buy one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    if I could burn a DVD and play it in my entertainment center DVD player. I want to burn DVD-ROMs, not DVD-RAMs.

  85. Ricoh 5125A, Second generation DVD+RW/+R, $328 by GodWasAnAlien · · Score: 1

    I bought one from esbuy.
    Sony's (+RW) drive is this drive rebranded.

    the Minus RW format is bad. The writers are slower, and it doesn't write in a variable bit rate format that a DVD Video player can read.

  86. See its nobs like you... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That get us all this copyright "protection" shit that just fucks up legitimate uses of the equipment. Do us all a favor and eat glass before you pirate another DVD M'kay?

  87. Re:WTF!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What is the US covering up? Why the unconditional support of Israel? Why does the US condone the killing of Palestinian children by Israel? .

    Because the US supported israel from the start and is too egotistic to admit if it makes a mistake.

  88. Don't forget Firewire. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 2

    Don't forget Firewire. You can get a Firewire external enclosure for $120. This will make your hard drive hot-pluggable.