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The Ulltimate DVD Burner?
prostoalex writes "The DRU500A by Sony burns DVD-R/-RW, DVD+RW/+R, and even CD-R/CD-RW discs. The price sticker is relatively high, but for those worried about the compatibility issues of DVD burners this one looks like a solution." FYI: I recently ran a poll on this very topic.
The supplied link leads to a Sony-page with a $349 (USD) price tag. I'm not sure that is "pricey". If it really reads/writes all of the formats, then this is just what many people are waiting for, at a decent price.
Plus, this drive may be so new that they have tested it with high-speed media, and it will not burst into flames 8^)
Being from Sony, though, I would be cautions about any DRM features that the drive may have hidden deep inside that firmware...
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However, don't expect it (or the available software) to be either as simple or as nice as the iDVD interface and layout.
(One thing the Macintosh people have down pat is interface. My GOD! it's easy!)
Linux comaptibility is most likely trivial, though, on the upside. Just treat it as a CDRW that has a 4.7 GiB capacity and write to it in UDF packets instead of a Rock Ridge or Joliet stream, it should work.
Don't expect any firmware cracks for this beast either. Sony hardware is pretty hard to crack (Techtronics, probably the best site for getting modded DVD players, has to go and do chip replacement and other nasty-level cracks on standalones.) Besides that, I would presume (since Sony is one of the core members of DVD Forum) that this will automagically region code any video-format DVDs' you create, unless such coding is already required in the writable DVD specifications.
It sucks that for DVD's there won't be a company that can readily capitalize on the market and the product like MP3.com did with music.. then again, music is easier to forge than movies are...
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
Availability: On or before 11/01/2002
Can't wait... it'll save me a drive bay!
And just a reminder, that a 'full' recorded DVD is only half the size of a normal DVD movie (4.7 GB instead of 9.4 GB).
Although there is software that lets you rip DVD movies to your PC and shrink them to fit on one DVD+/-Recordable disc, you can't make direct disc-to-disc copies of your favorite movies.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Step 4 should read "Burn all files ripped from the DVD to one or more new blank DVDs", because most movies are bigger than the 4.7 GB of space you get on a blank DVD recordable.
If you're willing to give up 5.1 audio and settle for stereo, and lose all the close captioning, menus, etc., you can sometimes get a movie onto one recordable DVD, but I haven't had much luck with that yet.
Pr0n DVDs on the other hand...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
You can get SCSI versions of DVD-RAM recorders which is the best backup format and is used in home DVD-recorders for TV. I'm not sure if you can get DVD-R in SCSI. I use an IDE DVD-R/DVD-RAM drive which works fine under Linux and Windoze. My Hard Disks are SCSI (my next computer will use IDE disks!)
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
http://www.dvdplusrw.org/
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
However, DVD and CD speeds are not directly comparable. According to this page, 1x in DVD terms is 11.08 Mb/s, while 1x in CD terms is a well-known (150 KB/s = 1.2 Mb/s).
Assuming max burn speed, burn times for a full 4.7 GB DVD disc would translate as follows:
11.08 Mb/s = 1.385 MB/s
4,700 MB / 1.385 = 3393 seconds = 56.5 minutes @ 1x
This gives us ~28 minutes to burn a full DVD-RW @ 2x, ~23 minutes for a DVD+R/+RW @ 2.4x, or ~15 minutes for a DVD-R @ 4x
Translating the DVD speed ratings above into CD terms, we get the following CD-equivalent write speeds for the drive:
22x DVD+R/+RW, 36x DVD-R, 18x DVD-RW, 73x DVD-ROM Read.
Take these numbers with a grain of salt though. After calculating the above, I found this page which says 1x DVD = 1250 KB/s (= 10Mb/s using drive manufacturers' definition of 1MB = 1000KB). Whatever. Close enough.
It's worth noting that not all "full" DVDs use 9.4gb dual-layer media, infact many will fit just fine on 4.7gb media (cheaper to master).
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