Could CDRW Disks Replace Videotapes?

NewtonsLaw asks: "I'm in the process of building a TiVo-like PC that uses off-the-shelf technology to implement video timeshift, MPEG recording, MP3 recording, etc along with Net-radio functionality. Over the past two months I've effectively replaced VHS video tapes with CDRW disks. Once a program has been captured on the PC in (S)VCD MPEG format, I can either watch it by playing back the recorded file or dump it onto a CDRW and watch it on my DVD player, before blanking the disk and returning it to the 'empty' pile. What I've noticed is that most of the CDRWs I've tried only last about 30-40 rewrites before they start showing significant data dropouts (almost always at the start of a recording). Since disks in (S)VCD format don't carry the same level of error-checking/correction as disks written in regular data format, such dropouts are more noticeable than they would otherwise be (of course the up-side is that you get to store 805MB on a 700MB CDR/RW without overburn). What I want to know is -- how many rewrites do most people expect from their CDRW media? I seem to recall seeing a figure of a thousand rewrite cycles being touted by some manufacturers. Is this realistic? Thirty rewrites makes a $2.50 RW disk an economic medium for this purpose but it seems a hell of a long way short of 1,000."

"I've tried CDRW disks from several manufacturers and they're being used in a new Sony CDRW drive which seems to function just fine. I've also encountered a slightly shorter lifetime for CDRW media when used for (S)VCD disks and written by a slightly older HP CDR/RW drive.

And before anyone asks 'Why don't you just play directly from the HD?', I should point out that I have to share the TV gear in this house with the rest of the family so it's just easier to burn their stuff to disk and let them use the DVD player than to fight over access to the TiVo-clone."

Comments

Answered own question

[flynt]

Q: Could CDRW Disks Replace Videotapes?

A:Over the past two months I've effectively replaced VHS video tapes with CDRW disks.

Sounds like "Yes!" to me!

Re:Answered own question

[governorx]

True dat but he is wondering in a more general case. Also, I want to note that video tapes will hardly be replaced in what i am understanding replaced to mean. Eventually, the product may no longer be marketable, but going by example casettes/record players etc. still work and are utilised.

Thesis: If it aint broke dont fix it.
Antithesis: Add functionality to improve quality or ease-of-use even if it works fine.
Synthesis: Up to the consumer and their wallets.

Re:Answered own question

[io333]

Same here. I gave away my VCR that I paid over $300 some years ago. I also gave a away a cheaper one that sat underneath it. Video tape looks horrible compared to a good VCD or DivX. I don't bother with CDRW. CDRs are so cheap I just use them. If I don't want it anymore I'm only out thirty cents or so.

Re:Answered own question

[Anonymous Coward]

* i've effectively replaced tapes with cdrw disks

* my cdrw disks are degrading after X rewrites.

hmmm.

doesn't sound so effective to me.

Re:Answered own question

[Trillan]

Except takes do the same thing, don't they? And with a tape, the first sign you get that the tape is hosed is when trying to watch that episode of Enterprise you recorded a few hours before so you could go out for all-you-can-eat prawns through wavey lines. The video, not the prawns.

I heard around "100"

[delus10n0]

If I remember correctly, the CD-RW blanks I have at home (14x compatable) say they are "guaranteed" for 100 re-writes.

Also, what speed are you burning on these CD-RW's at? Maybe you should try lowering the recording speed and seeing if you still get the drop outs.

Re:I heard around "100"

[FireMotion]

So you mean I should stop buying blank-label CDRW's (died after 4~5 times using 2speed on a Samsung burner)?

I guess it's true what they say. These cheap disks didn't guarantee anything. although, one of my (now dead) CDRW's came for free with a Sony burner. But I guess "free" is cheap too.

Re:I heard around "100"

[Tackhead]

> If I remember correctly, the CD-RW blanks I have at home (14x compatable) say they are "guaranteed" for 100 re-writes.

Off the top of my head - that's a hell of a lot better than VHS, so I'd say the answer's "Yes".

(If you're trying to store 120 minutes of video on a CD-RW, you're going to have to compress it pretty heavily, but on the other hand, you're only competing with VHS quality, so you can probably sacrifice quality for compression.

If I were designing the thing, I'd go with VCD quality - less than 120 minutes per disc, but if your shows are 22, 44, or 66 minutes long (30/60/90 minutes, with the ads cut out), that's a win for the CDRW.

Re:I heard around "100"

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a google search on "cd rewritable media" and nearly every hit says CDRW media can do 1000 rewrites, not 100.

Re:I heard around "100"

[Sancho]

I don't know about VCD. To me, the quality just isn't there compared to a well-kept VCR. SVCD can compete with it's higher (and variable) bitrate, but then you suffer from 35minutes of video (for top quality) per disc.
If you get a DVD player that can play out of spec (S)VCDs, this can sort of change. You can up the bitrate of VCDs, and/or make them VBR to increase qulaity. You can also check out the CVD standard, which is 352x480, VBR, mpeg-2. It's a real standard, and it's only a bit off from SVCD. You save a bit ont he bits (giving you a bit more time per disc) and better yet, the valid CVD streams are completely compatible with the DVD spec, meaning if you ever get a DVD burner, the same streams will can be burned as a DVD-Video.

Re:I heard around "100"

[Anonymous Coward]

1000 rewrites with a perfect writer. Have you tried it? After 20-30 writes, the discs become less and less readable: The drive slows down to 4x or less increasingly often. I'd expect an at most single speed - if at all - readable disc after 100 writes. That's with a 10x writer and quality CD-RWs. I've seen CD-RWs fail completely after less rewrites in first generation writers.

Re:I heard around "100"

[Eric Green]

I've done some work with DVD/RAM media under the UDF filesystem. After about 40 writes, typical DVD/RAM media starts building up a hefty defects list. After about 100 writes, the defects list gets long enough that the media becomes basically unwritable. I am not impressed by the current state of optical disk technology. Given that CD-RW is an early primitive version of what eventually became DVD/RAM, it does not surprise if "around 100" is the correct answer, though I wouldn't re-use a piece of media more than 40 times under any circumstances.

Re:I heard around "100"

[Monkelectric]

hey 100 is *sooo* much better then the first generation CD-RW's (which I was foolish enough to buy). They lasted between 2 and 4 burns, and the way you found out they were broken was by loosing your data. Also those first disks seemed to degrade over time, they would verify correctly a few minutes after the burn, but then after a few days/weeks they were worthless and full of errors (with no abuse).

That scared me off using them for 3 or 4 years, but I recently started using them again and they dont seem to have these problems now.

Re:I heard around "100"

[Wolfrider]

I am betting that the "1000 rewrites" figure came out of a lab, in which the disc was never removed from the drive - and so never collected "normal" dust and/or scratches.

Plus, that disc was one of the "originals" that were probably a little bit over-engineered - and probably burned at LOW LOW speed, (1-2x) to boot.

CDRs and RW's have become a commodity item, made as cheaply as possible, and for the most part insufficiently tested as far as projected lifetime goes, especially when burned at higher speeds.

MHO, more testing needs to be done with modern equipment before "1000 rewrites" gets taken for the "average" lifetime expectancy again. Tom's Hardware, anyone?
.

CD-RW

[jlechem]

My personal experience is that a nice quality video doesn't fit on a 700MB cd-rw. Not unless there is significant amount of compression and then the quality suffers. That is my only bitch, IMO CD-RW's are easy to create, play, and store. Not quite as convienant as tape, but in the future it very well could be!

Re:CD-RW

[dallask]

this is true, but once DVDRW standards really get into place, he/you could just replace your drive and have a 4+gig disk. :)

Wont that be nice...

Re:CD-RW

[FireMotion]

Fit?

On the other hand...

A lot of CD's fit in the same physical space it would take to store a VHS cassette in. And there are "juke boxes" for audio cd's, a juke box for video CD's (CD/CDRW/DVD etc) sounds more likely than one for VHS cassettes.

Re:CD-RW

[monadicIO]

nice quality video doesn't fit on a 700MB cd-rw
This has me wondering - is the quality of video even on a new VHS tape good enough that it might significantly deteriorate when copied onto cd-rws? Of course, all of us law-abiding people are talking about movie^H^H^H^H^H home videos, aren't we?!

Re:CD-RW

[Camulus]

You are correct that the 700MB limit sucks. However, I have had some good experiances with an Apex 3 disk model. That way you can split a Replay Tv'ed mini-series into three svcd disks and take them with you to a friends house to watch and there is just a slight pause between the disks. It worked well for me.

Re:CD-RW

[forevermore]

My personal experience is that a nice quality video doesn't fit on a 700MB cd-rw.

I've been encoding svcd's of my dvd's for a couple of years now (long story short, macrovision + tv/vcr combo does NOT work) and have come to the conclusion that you can put 60 minutes MAX onto an svcd (multipass vbr, 192 or 160 audio) before the video quality degrades to that of a standard VCD. Still, it's cheaper than video tape and doesn't degrade over time.

Re:CD-RW

[killosdnbar]

If you ever watch a VCR tape and a VCD on a low-end TV (no HD now) you will probably be happier with the VCD quality. I even drop the VCD quality to about half the bit rate and I still can't see the difference on the crappy TV, except that VCDs don't bounce around.

Of course my computer monitor is a completely different story.

Re:CD-RW

[blitziod]

cd r's can hold a video tape about the same quaility of a VHS tape. The quality is also slightly lower than the resolution on most TV's. video cd format or VCD is around 250 lines of resolution. The average TV displays 300. VHS tapes are around 250 too.

Re:CD-RW

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Nit - most CDRs degrade over time - unles you buy the archival quality disks, don't expect a 100 years of data storage

Re:CD-RW

[SpeedBump0619]

I have a divx version of "Legally Blonde" (yes, I own a copy of the dvd) which is almost indistinguishable from the dvd. That divx encode is stored on a bright pink 700 Meg CDR.

Now before you go around saying that quality is subjective, and I don't know what to look for, I'd like to mention that I work in the video capture and compression industry (coding drivers for various products, including mpeg-2 [en|de]coders). I'm familiar and, generally, fairly sensitised to the various artifacts resulting from DCT and wavelet compression, interlaced video, scaling, etc.

It sounds like you are used to seeing poor quality encodes. There is an art to getting the best quality out of the bandwidth allocated.

-SpeedBump

PS: I should concede, though, that the "Legally Blonde" divx that I have probably benefitted from the ability to do multi-pass encoding.

Re:CD-RW

[MrResistor]

nice quality video doesn't fit on a 700MB cd-rw.

I agree, but it's totally irrelevant in this situation. This is a homebrew TiVo, and you just don't get nice quality video in a TV signal.

For movies, you're right, and you'd want to keep any recorded movies on the hard drive or burn them onto multiple disks (if you don't mind the break in the action, probably not a big deal if recorded from commercial TV). For TV shows though, which I'm pretty sure is what the article is talking about, once you edit out the commercials you're looking at on average 42 minutes for a "1 hour" show, which will certainly fit on a CD-RW at a quality higher than the source.

BTW, broadcast is actually the highest quality TV signal you'll find, provided you are close to the transmitter. Cable is the best quality most people will get at their homes, though it isn't very good, and Digital Satalite comes in last. The movie channels (HBO, Showtime, Starz, etc) seem to be especially bad. And yes, I am a trained professional.

Re:CD-RW

[Sancho]

I agree, but it's totally irrelevant in this situation. This is a homebrew TiVo, and you just don't get nice quality video in a TV signal.

That's not an accurate viewpoint, though, because the analog artifacts you get from a TV signal translate into even worse artifacts in the VCD.

Digital satellite CAN be very high quality, but it frequently isn't. You can tell the difference by comparing DirectTV, Cable and Dish Network side by side.

Re:CD-RW

[benwaggoner]

analog video "lines" and lines of digital resolution are two different things, alas.

When someone talks about lines of VHS, they're talking about how many discreet changes in amplitude you'll be able to measure on a horizontal line. And when digital video talks about lines, it's normally how many pixels high the video is.

And due to Nyquist, we know the sampling rate required to record a given frequncy is twice the frequency.

So, MPEG-1 NTSC VCD at 352 pixels wide could reproduce a frequency of 176 changes over the horizontal width of the video. So, if VHS is 250 lines, it's actually better on that measure than VCD.

Of course, VHS is plauged by horrible analog noise to the point where I can't watch it, while VCD, although low resolution, shouldn't have any noise at all. There will be some artifacts at VCD data rates, of course.

Re:CD-RW

[benwaggoner]

I'm surprised you can even get 60 minutes on a disc

SVCD NTSC is 480x480, which is nearly three times the resolution of VCD (352x240). MPEG-2 is somewhat more efficient than MPEG-1, and you can use VBR to reduce the data rate for easy portions of the video. But still, when you're using half as many bits per pixel, MPEG-2 is going to start falling apart pretty quickly.

Still, there are lots of good new codecs on the horizon. The Advanced Simple MPEG-4 used in Divx should be supplanted over the next year by MPEG-4 Part 10 (aka H.264). It'll be an open ISO standard, and the baseline profile shouldn't (cross fingers) have any of the patent and licensing issues that held up MPEG-4 Part 2's codecs so long.

You should be able to get at least a 3x improvement in compression efficiency compared to MPEG-2, so a full-length feature at standard definition on a 700 MB disc should be quite doable.

Of course, you can do this with propritary codecs like Windows Media Video today, but this IS slashdot...

Re:CD-RW

[Anonvmous Coward]

I've seen quite a few 90 minute long movies squeezed into a 700 meg file. They all ran at 640 by 480 and artifacting is minimal.

Also, VHS quality is roughly 320 by 240. Once you start playing a TV, the difference isn't so noticable.

I set up a PVR using Snapstream and captured a few shows with it at 330 kbits. (4 hours per CD) Was the quality worse than VHS? Oh yeah, VHS was preferable in terms of quality. However, once the show starts, you forget all that. The loss in quality sounds bad until you've actually experienced that.

Then there are the benefits:

- I have the entire series of Quantum Leap sitting on my computer, chewing up about 12 gigs. I can call them up on a click's notice, or dump them to my laptop. (as a matter of fact, I found that rather entertaining on my last business trip.)

- Never had to change tapes. When the show was preempted or a duplicate episode aired, I just used the delete key and reclaimed my space.

- It'd take roughly 25 CD's to back up my current collection at 4 eps per CD. If I took the time to edit the commercials, that number would (in theory) get even smaller. A stack of 25 CD's a little bigger than 1 (one) VHS tape. It'd take roughly 16 tapes to cover the same amount of footage.

One thing I gave up with the Snapstream approach is the ability to pop in a DVD player and play. I have a computer hooked up to a TV, that's how I watch on a big screen. To be honest, though, I prefer to play off the HD and watch on my other monitor while I'm doing other stuff on the net. I reserve the TV for shows that I really want to dedicate full attention to.

In any case, it's quite workable. I can't wait until DVD's are wherre CDRs are today. There won't be any more quality debate, unless HDTV finally rolls out. heh.

Re:CD-RW

[mindstrm]

Discrete changes of amplitude on a horizontal line would give you horizontal resolution.

The number of lines on an analog TV is fairly clear.. there are only so many visible scanlines.
This can equate precisely to # of digital lines.

I think you are talking about columns (horizontal resolution)

Re:CD-RW

[benwaggoner]

This really, really depends on the kind of compression you're using. VCD and SVCD use MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, which are very old technology at this point. MPEG-4 advanced simple, which is used in Divx, can provide similar quality at a half or less the data rate. And the forthcoming MPEG-4 Part 10 codec (aka H.264) will be able to do high quality standard definition (720x480) at slightly less than VCD data rates, and entertainment (movies, tv shows) at about 60% VCD data rates.

So, that'll enable putting an entire feature-length film or two hour special on a single CD-RW.

Of course, this is perfectly possible today with propritary technologies like Windows Media. The great thing about MPEG-4 is it is an international standard. And the baseline profile of Part 10 is supposed to be patent and license free, so hopefully we won't see the same confusion and delays that we did for MPEG-4 adoption.

Re:CD-RW

[Anonvmous Coward]

"It sounds like you are used to seeing poor quality encodes. There is an art to getting the best quality out of the bandwidth allocated."

The probable reason for the poor quality encode is that there is some need to play these movies on a television via DVD player. The choices for playback on a DVD player are not ideal. MPEG-1 (VCD) is rather old and is not as efficient. MPEG2 (SVCD) always seems to be used for higher bitrate stuff and is never/rarely used for the lower bitrate stuff like you'd need for a CD. I never did find out if that's because MPEG2's meant for high quality video or if it's because MPEG2 has issues at lower resolutions.

A nice solution to this problem would be a hacked XBOX....

Re:CD-RW

[benwaggoner]

Indeed. Being able to do a 2-pass encode typically reduces the data rate requirements by 10-50% at the same quality level (depending on how variable the content in the video is).

And yes, MPEG-4 Advanced Simple in Divx is a LOT better than MPEG-2 in terms of compression efficiency. It also has postfiltering (like a deblocking filter) that reduces the appears of artifacts.

VCD's very contraint implementation of MPEG-1 doesn't have anywhere near this kind of flexibility. Of course, it DOES offer wide compatiblity with all kinds of devices.

Re:CD-RW

[shut_up_man]

In my experience converting DVDs to DivX video files, 700MB CD-Rs are usually fine to fit an entire ~90min movie, and therefore should be adequate for a 60min TV show.

DVDs are 720 x 480 or 720 x 512 resolution depending on aspect ratio, PAL TV is 768 x 576 (I think) so the resolutions are basically equivalent. Of course, encoding DivX movies isn't realtime unless you have a beast of a machine; the usual method is to sample a rather large hunk of raw footage in MJPEG or something to a hard drive, then encode overnight or whatever.

On top of that, you can halve the resolution, increase the compression, all kinds of stuff to get more screen time on the CD-R, but then you're cutting into your quality. I personally don't mind, I watch episodes of TV shows at half res and it seems fine to me.

The future will be interesting - faster CPUs will eventually mean we can do encoding like DivX in realtime, and the proliferation of DVD burners and even larger media will mean that we can fit more episodes per unit and per dollar - but then there's all the fun of DRM... meh, I'll let someone else talk about that.

Re:CD-RW

[Anonymous Coward]

CD-R's are really only meant for 30ish years of storage.

If you want archival quality CD's, you're going to have to get them pressed in a factory. Those organic dyes in CD-R's won't cut it.

Re:CD-RW

[1u3hr]

In Asia VCD is a very common format. Most movies come in a 2-CD box. (Legal recent movies ar about $4, chaper than a single music CD.) You can get excellent quality (better than my broadcast TV). But if they squeeze more than about 50 minutes/disk the quality is noticably lower.

But for most TV shows, 1 broadcast hour would be fine, especially if you can filter out the ads, leaving about 42 minutes of actual show.

Re:CD-RW

[benwaggoner]

I exactly am talking about horizontal resolution.

NTSC video will display 480 lines out of 525, regardless of the format, be it VHS, broadcast, or DVD. This is why detail is measured horizontally with analog video.

Re:CD-RW

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been doing realtime Divx encoding for around two years now without any problems, using my PC as a VCR for when I go out and there's actually something on TV that I wanted to see.

Granted, the original machine I was doing this on was a dual processor 500MHz box, which was probably a bit better than many had at the time, but now it's eminently doable on low-end hardware.

Mind you, I always used ADPCM audio encoding back then, as anything that compressed better while retaining decent quality caused too many frame drops.

So, I'd say we've been able to do realtime encoding for quite a while now...

Re:CD-RW

[Miksa]

I would be happy if my cd-rs would last 10 years, but I'm not counting on it.

Re:CD-RW

[sh00z]

Still, there are lots of good new codecs on the horizon. The Advanced Simple MPEG-4 used in Divx should be supplanted over the next year by MPEG-4 Part 10 (aka H.264).

But this begs the question that I've been trying to get answered since Quicktime 6 came out with MPEG-4 encoding: how long until set-top DVD players support MPEG-4?

Re:CD-RW

[MrResistor]

That's not an accurate viewpoint, though, because the analog artifacts you get from a TV signal translate into even worse artifacts in the VCD.

You missed my point: The OP's complaint was that you don't get nice video on a VCD, and my response to that was that you aren't starting with nice video from the start. Urine served in a crystal champagne fluke is still urine.

Further, I think it is entirely possible to fit a commercial-edited TV show on a VCD without significant loss of quality.

Notice my exception for movies, as they are simply to big for the media. However, I do have a CD that has both "pi" and "Akira" on it. They look like shit; that audio has artifacts, and the word artifact doesn't even begin to describe the video, but they are watchable at TV viewing distance, and I find the digital compression artifacts much less annoying than the artifacts on, for example, the quality issues of the VHS tapes of "The Tick" which I recently borrowed from a friend. That's subjective, obviously, but I fully expect to be able to fit 2 "half hour" episodes on a single VCD without noticable loss of quality.

Therefore, I consider VCD a perfectly reasonable replacement for VHS, which is what this whole thread is about. Yeah, DVD is better, but it's still too expensive to be a reasonable replacement.

You can tell the difference by comparing DirectTV, Cable and Dish Network side by side.

I can tell the difference without comparing them side by side, because, as I already stated, I am a trained professional. Specifically, I'm repair technician at a company which produces some of the highest-end professional video production equipment there is. A large part of my job is running that equipment at its maximum capabilities, and fixing anything that can't handle that without introducing artifacts.

If you think that any broadcast video signal is "good", then you would be absolutely floored by what good equipment can do, and I'm not even talking about HD. You're welcome to try and imagine it, though. Think 60Mbps after MPEG conversion...

Re:CD-RW

[biohazard99]

I don't know, if someone has a spare tape silo and robot it could probably be done, now I have to wait for my alma mater to get done with it.

Re:CD-RW

[naarok]

I think you're missing the point of VHS. I suspect many(most) people use VHS as a time shifting device. Throw a tape in (or use the one that is always in the machine for this exact purpose) to record a show while you're out/busy/watching something else. Then watch when you have time. This usage does not alow for the "edit out the comercials" step. You need to get at least 64 minutes out of a VCD to even approach being able to replace VHS, and I'd suggest you need to get a bunch more for those who want to record a couple shows while they aren't home. (I say 64, because some stations play a little fast and loose with the time, and I need to start recording a bit before and end recording a bit after to ensure I've go a whole show)

I've seen posts about editing the commercials, fine-tuning the compression, ect. to get enogh time on a VCD, but that doesn't help when you want to time-shift.

Re:CD-RW

[MrResistor]

He isn't recording directly to VCD, he's recording to hard drive and then transfering it later to VCD so he can watch it using his DVD player (presumably on a TV not hooked up to his TiVo clone). Time shift is already taken care of.

It's really not that difficult or time consuming to edit out the commercials before you burn it to disk, and he may even be able to automate it at record-time. Many broadcasters insert a tone signal so that their automated broadcast systems know when to cue their next event (commercial, content, whatever). It's inaudible, so there's no real incentive for the broadcaster to remove it, and depending on the hardware available on the users end it's entirely possible to use those tones to simply pause recording during commercial segments.

Re:CD-RW

[Eil]

I have several full-length divx-encoded movies burned to CD that when displayed on a TV are indistinguishable from a DVD.

But most of these movies do not have many action scenes and therefore compress very well. A full-length action movie with lots of movement from frame to frame can take up 2 or 3 times as much space for the same quality. (Think Royal Tenenbaums vs Blade II.)

The moral is that it is entirely possible to fit high-quality video onto a CD, but there are some limitations that you must be aware of. Personally, it doesn't bug me to change the disc after 45 minutes or so if it means I get decent quality on inexpensive media.

Hard Drives

[He Was Gamecubed]

Just get more hard drives. They have the lowest $/mb and are theoretically supposed to last a long time.

Re:Hard Drives

[Ultraken]

I think you missed the point. He's making VCD disks so other people in his household don't tie up the computer watching videos.

Re:Hard Drives

[PeterChenoweth]

Because it's hard to play a hard drive in a DVD player.

Re:Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

actually its not, you cant beat $20cents for 650 megabytes.

70 gigs, for $30

Re:Hard Drives

[jedidiah]

Then make the computer more distributed. Keep storage centralized to a particular file server and have some small bookpc sitting on top of the TV to decode the digital video with. 120G can go quite a long ways in this regard, nevermind 300G.

Re:Hard Drives

[jedidiah]

Then don't fixate on the DVD player.

Re:Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

I can get CDR cheaper than a new hard drive. Spindle pack of 50 700mb cdr @ $2.99 (after rebate) = ~34gigs.

Re:Hard Drives

[modecx]

I agree. Why is there a need to have a DVD player at all? One could construct a near-silent(with a little more work, it could be inaudible) set-top PC with a Mini-ITX motherboard for very little cost. It varies, but Mini-ITX mobos have everthing from S-video, LAN, to firewire and USB2. Couple the above with a 800-1.0Ghz VIA C3 processor, a largish hard drive, and you have a cute little box that can play DIVXs, MPEGs, or whatever.

Heck, it also has a PCI slot, so you could make this little beast full-function; record, rip, play, burn CDs even. The only problem I see is that the VIA C3 is a bit short of FPU power, which would obviously make for slowish encoding. One would have to do the test with his own hardware and software to be sure it would work.

Re:Hard Drives

[Rader]

For CDR maybe, but not CDRW.

Unless you also throw your hard drives away after each use...

Re:Hard Drives

[martyn s]

how much is $20cents exactly?

Re:Hard Drives

[Zathrus]

Wow... amazing how people don't get it.

If it's on a CD in SVCD format then you can take it to nearly any DVD player, stick it in, and watch. That's it.

If you're limited to a computer then you're paying 4-10x the money for the playback device and you can't transport it. Want to record something for someone else, or to take to a friend's house and watch? Too bad. Want to send a recording of an important TV show to family or friends? Nope. Can't do.

Not to mention that labeling a CD as "Junkyard Wars, Season 5, Episode 3" makes it a whole lot easier for a non-techie to deal with than some obscure location on a poorly integrated HTPC.

Re:Hard Drives

[Ozymandias_KoK]

Man...there wasn't even a linked article for yall not to read. He's sharing the whole thing with his family and prolly wants to KISS. Not everybody wants to learn how to do things, especially as compared to "me put CD in drive".

Re:Hard Drives

[King of the World]

I've read that SVCD per disc is only 37-60 minutes. If so that's a heavy weight against recording movies to it and makes me want a hdd.

Re:Hard Drives

[King of the World]

Source here (down the page for SVCD)

Re:Hard Drives

[Ultraken]

I would think a DVD player is significantly cheaper and more family/kid friendly than a distributed computer connected to a television. Not everyone wants network cable running all over their house. :)

Re:Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no way in hell you're going to be able to encode Divx;-) or MPEG-4 in real time with a C3 processor. I just built a computer to use as a PVR and it drops around 50% of frames when I tries to encode Divx;-) in real-time, and I'm using a 1.47 Ghz Athlon XP.

Re:Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we call those people fools. Sort of like the ones who objected to all those ugly light switches and telephone jacks.

I'm surprised new housing doesn't have eight or ten runs of cat6 going to every room. Even if you never use it all...

Re:Hard Drives

[BRTB]

Ah, but there's where you're wrong! >=]

Sampo DVE631CF with hard drive hacking possibilities (and it already comes with a compactflash slot).

Re:Hard Drives

[modecx]

Nah, I get it quite fine, infact. The guy burns his shows onto CDRW, and after a few uses he has to shit-can them. If he were trying to archive them, he would use a more permanent method. In this person's instance, the CDRW is just a one time transport. Initially, an HTPC might cost a bit more, I'll give you that. However, if this person records enough discs (and having to trash more than a few CDRWs after using them several times indicates that he probably does), he will make up that initial cost in both materials, and time spent recording the damned discs, then erasing them. Not to mention that nearly every SVCD that I have had the misfortune to gander had very poor quality, even on a TV. Of course, his SVCDs may be just fine for him; that's nobody else's call but his.

Furthermore, what's to say that this fellow can't burn his favorite shows for archival/family/whatever in his codec of choice with an HTPC? If it were that important to him, he could still make an SVCD, to take to his friends' house, or anywhere else that had an SVCD compatible DVD player.

It's just another option... For a little more upfront cost, your entertainemnt is much more flexible.
Funny how some people just don't get it, huh?

Re:Hard Drives

[modecx]

Well, it's not my call to make, nor is it my situation. I would personally do things differently. That's that.

On the flip side, if my 70 year old grandmother can learn to effectively communicate over the 'net, anyone can figure out a PVR hooked to a TV. At the very least, I would hope they could. If, perchance things are that bad off, surely the personage in question could take a few minutes to show them. Maybe the case is that he dosen't want to bother?

And before anyone asks 'Why don't you just play directly from the HD?', I should point out that I have to share the TV gear in this house with the rest of the family so it's just easier to burn their stuff to disk and let them use the DVD player than to fight over access to the TiVo-clone."

Maybe you read a differnt submission than I did?

It would seem to me, using this setup that some learning would still have to be done on part of the end users. I would argue that it would be far easier to show grandma how to navigate a PVR than it would be to show her how to encode, write, and erase an SVCD to CDRW. Iv'e been there, my "untranible" father actually learned to burn his CDs. It was much, much more painful than sitting him down and showing him how to use his DirecTV receiver.

Re:Hard Drives

[modecx]

Never did I say it would encode it in real time. Hell, that's a tough task for a CPU 4 times as powerful.. I did however say it would play Divx or whatever the hell... (MPEG4) nicely.

The PVR card could do it's own hardware compression, then batch convert to whatever codec later with the CPU.

Re:Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

I payed $25 for my Pentium II computer. The only thing I had to buy was a $50 video card with TV-out. Plays video just fine. Want to watch it at a friend's house or send it to a friend? That's what broadband is for. And the CD-RW option doesn't disappear once you start using a PC for playing back recordings. Remember, this guy was recording to CD-RW, watching on DVD player, and then erasing the disk. I'm personally waiting for DVD players to have ethernet jacks so you can watch movies off the network, not to mention play MPEG4, DivX, etc.

Re:Hard Drives

[fendel]

Mini-ITX mobos have everthing from S-video, LAN, to firewire and USB2. Couple the above with a 800-1.0Ghz VIA C3 processor, a largish hard drive, and you have a cute little box that can play DIVXs, MPEGs, or whatever.

Cute, yes. Play DivXs, no. I built one of these things and found I couldn't play DivX files, especially ones longer than 20 minutes, without problems. Stuttering, loss of audio-video sync, freezing... Too slow. Not to mention the lousy onboard sound quality, even using digital audio out.

What was Via thinking when they put S-Video and SPDIF out on this thing? The specs make it look like a multimedia machine, but it's not.

Re:Hard Drives

[modecx]

Hrm, thanks for the input.
I was serriously considering putting one of these suckers together for just that purpose, having read others' success stories with them. Maybe a dedicated decoder would be the way to go afterall... Then again, a higher end Celeron or P3 in a socket 370 version of a mini-itx could surely handle just about any DivX?

Ack, it still might make a swell replacement for my aging NAT box. God knows it would be quiter.

Re:Hard Drives

[fendel]

The only mini-ITX board I'm aware of is the Via Epia, which comes with the C3 processor permanently affixed to it...

If I were going to work on another small-form-factor system, I'd go with one of the newer Shuttle barebones kits at this point. Don't know if the nForce version is out yet, but that sounded promising. (That said... I'm not planning on it. I found that futzing around in Windows on a TV screen was hard on the eyes. If someone would put together a media-box interface designed for TV resolution, one that actually worked, then the idea would be more palatable.)

Wish I could get my hands on a standalone SVCD recorder.

Dead CDRW's

[FireMotion]

Even with normal data, the samsung burner, made the CDRWs I used lose data already after 4-5 burns. I think for permanent storage, normal CDr's are good, but I wouldn't trust CDRWs too much with any of my computer data or audio/video.

Re:Dead CDRW's

[Lovepump]

It may be interesting to comapre the discussion taking place here with this thread:
http://slashdot.org/article.plsid=99/09/01/1548259

# of rewrites...

[dallask]

Typicly I will reuse my CDRW disks arround 10 -> 15 time, but im storeing my programs, mp3 backups, and web dev work... so once its backed up to my satisfaction... I stop...

Personaly I think that to acheve 30 -40 rewrites to a VCD disk with no real loss in quality beats the shit out of a VCR which you only really get 4-5 rewrites out of before you start noticeing quality issues...

Keep up the good work, and keep us informed as to when we can buy the set top version of your system :)

Re:# of rewrites...

[Shrubbman]

Actually, I find with a good 4 head VCR recording in SP you can re-record over the same tape easily 15-20+ times before quality issues start cropping up, and then usually in the audio. That's my experience anyway.

Re:# of rewrites...

[purrpurrpussy]

2 b * 2 b * ~ | 0 =
false

Re:# of rewrites...

[scharkalvin]

I used to have some VHS made for time shifting, they were sold with multiple re-use in mind. I got several seasons of startrek voyager on them (over 50 re-uses) with no lose of quality (in two hour mode though). OTOH average Scotch or TDK brand tapes seem to wear out after less than 5 uses. So it can be done, too bad I havn't seen those re-taping tapes in the store lately. At double the usual price for VHS tapes, they were worth it.

I download anime fansubs

[Bonker]

...From various places. I have a low-end P3550 and a video out-card hooked into my home entertainment system. CDR and CDRW has all but replaced VHS for me.

Re:I download anime fansubs

[Anonymous Coward]

A low end Pentium 3550? what clock does that run at 900 terrahertz? how much heat output? 10,000 time the heat of a rocket nozzle?
(btw I reazize he meant a P-3 550mhz, I couldn't resist though)

Re:I download anime fansubs

[los furtive]

What do you use as PVR software?

Re:I download anime fansubs

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you use as PVR software?

Considering the title of this is Re:I download anime fansubs I suspect his "PVR" is Kazaa.

Re:I download anime fansubs

[Bonker]

VirtualDub.

No, but they can replace paper tapes:

[Anonymous Coward]

-----------
| oo .oo |
| oo o. o|
| ooo . o |
| ooo . oo|
| ooo .o |
| o . |
| ooo . |
| oo o.ooo|
| ooo . oo|
| ooo .o |
| o. o |
----------

Re:No, but they can replace paper tapes:

[Palshife]

HA! At first I thought that was an abacus! Now THAT would be the way to store some high quality video.

Re:No, but they can replace paper tapes:

[teamhasnoi]

Best sig ever - lol!

If the Data is important...

[Archfeld]

then ONE, NO REWRITES. If it is just temp storage I've been able to use a disk like 40-50 times for passive data storage without incident. I do keep the disks in a dark place and DO NOT EXPOSE them to sunlight. I seriously doubt the veracity of using a cdrw 1000 times. Not that I doubt your word, but the vendor hype :)

Re:If the Data is important...

[twilightzero]

I won't even buy CDRW disks - is $.25 (for very nice media) REALLY so expensive that you can't afford to use a new one every time? Is it more expensive than your important data?

I work a lot with small business backups and an audio recording studio. All of the small businesses refuse to touch cdrw and the recording studio is the same story. The good old cd-r is by far your best bet for data integrity. Every time you rewrite a cdrw, you're physically altering the media and therefore introducing more chances for error. From the recording studio's perspective, the BLER rate (Block Error Rate - redundant, I know) is much worse for CDRW disks, so they wouldn't dare use them since the errors would be reproduced when the master is copied to the glass master for pressing. Point being, if you want data integrity, do not use cdrw's, use cd-r's instead.

Once will do

[f97tosc]

There are basically two reasons to save:

1 You don't have the time to watch while the program is being broadcast. Save it on the TIVO hard drive and see it later that night or two days after or whatever. Then delete.

2 You have a genuine interest in the program and want to save it for the future. Then save it on a disc, and don't overwrite it.

Tor

Re:Once will do

[gid]

There's tons of legit reasons for CDRW's. What if I want to save a friends episode, but only until my sister finally comes over, maybe months later to watch it. What if I want to save bunch of simpsons episodes to watch during thanksgiving. Or bigger yet, what if I want to record friends and then take it over to my girlfriend's place?

There's many reasons to save something for the medium term.

Why do people insist on trying to convince users that don't need something that they explicitly asked for? And have perfectly legit reasons to request the said item. Fully assess the situation first next time, and then make suggestions.

Re:Once will do

[mythr]

Because, in general, users are misled. Just because a few actually know what they are talking about doesn't mean that the majority does too. As a long-time employee of a Help Desk, I see new evidence of this every day.

As one of the Men in Black said, "A person can be smart, but people are stupid." Usually you won't have any trouble after explaining why you need it, and they are only trying to save you trouble.

Re:Once will do

[benwaggoner]

Yeah, but given CD-R prices, you can just do a single burn (and have an 800 MB disc to boot), and then just toss the disc after your sister comes over. They're darn cheap if you don't need jewel cases for long-term storage.

Re:Once will do

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I hear what you're saying, but I'm not sure that your status as a "long term employee of a Help Desk" makes you an unimpeachable witness.

Move along.

Re:Once will do

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the best paying job on my college campus. If I had any better options I would be take them in an instant. Unfortunately I need money to pay tuition...

Re:Once will do

[gid]

Why insist on using something inefficient tho? CDR's are maybe $.50 a piece at best. I searched compusa.com real quick and you can get a 10 pack for $5.99. A 10 pack of CDRW's was $9.99. Now you can reuse the CDRW's, so I'm not wasting 50 cents every time I want to save something for any ammount of time, and better yet, I'm not producing as much garbage and am not being as wasteful. Even if CDRW's were maybe $5 a piece, I'd still think about using them because I wouldn't be throwing a chunk of plastic away every time I wanted to save something for awhile. Actually, the better solution might to just put a couple bigger hard drives in that PVR. :)

It's not like you have to do anything special to use CDRW's, they're a solution that exists now, today. Why not take advantage?

More and more....

[Valiss]

Great, now I can pirate music and shows TWICE as fast and with only minimal packet loss!!

=]

Re:More and more....

[Anonymous Coward]

how is recording a tv program = pirating

Re:More and more....

[bobtheprophet]

Obviously by bypassing legal conventional methods of recording tv shows for PERSONAL USE ONLY this user is attempting to subvert the industry and bankrupt the poor television actors! I feel that this must be stopped. What is America coming to, with people recording television shows onto CD-RW's?!?!?!? /sarcasm

Re:More and more....

[Rader]

another actor's child dies of starvation tonight....

Re:FP!

[Spokehedz]

I guess I was a little overzealous with my first post, in an attempt to get the 'FP'. Sorry 'bout that.

What I meant to say was--who cares if you don't get that many re-writes with CD-RW media. Sony has that new DVD-R/RW drive that does both 'plus' and 'minus' media.

Why make it into SVCD's at all, when you can make it DVD's?

That's what I meant.

cdrs

[Anonymous Coward]

I just use CDRs since they're so cheap. Given up on CDRWs - all of my older ones are no longer readable.

Perhaps.

[serial frame]

One of the small-town grocery stores nearby actually sells CD-Rs and CD-RWs at pretty decent prices, and place them next to the blank VHS tapes in the store. Seeing as to how they're becoming more ubiquitous, and devices like the Terapin VCD Recorder (at http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/video/57a6/) are starting to appear, perhaps CD-RWs could give VHS a run for its money, with comparable video and audio quality, as well as interoperability with a computer. For instance, you just missed Everybody Loves Raymond, so you hit KaZaA and somebody uploaded a VCD for you. So yeah, they've got their merits.

Re:Perhaps.

[gid]

The problem with the Terapin VCD recorder is that it looks like it only records up to 74 minutes without user intervention. This make it essentially worthless, because I'd still have to have a vcr around to record thursday night on nbc, or whatever.

Actually, maybe if it had a method to automatically edit out all the commercials you could squeeze 3 hours in to 74 minutes. :)

Re:Perhaps.

[kesuki]

I remember when they showed that on TSS almost 2 years ago... it might not have been that exact model, and it was probably 18 months ago, i don't remember exactly. The only thing I see is that it's now down to an affordable ($230) price tag from it's initial $450 price tag. VCDs are OK quality, but 74 minutes isn't long enough, and the quality isn't good enough... DVDs are almost long enough (2 hours, at lower quality encoding) but until DVD-r can be used with high-bitrate mpeg-4 (capable of storing perhaps 6 hours of video on a DVD-r, at better quality than a 2 hour 4.7 gig DVD-r.) I don't really see that much to rave about... Although VCDs are definitely right around VHS grade video quality...

Re:Perhaps.

[aaarrrgggh]

Really is a shame they don't integrate a HD, with the ability to archive off data to CDR. Then, add in the editing feature and you are good to go!

Re:Perhaps.

[guacamolefoo]

Why go with the Terapin VCD recorder when you can get a DVD recorder from Panasonic for about twice the price?

The time-slip and the ability to record using variable bit rate on a much bigger media, seems to be pretty cool. VCD is ok, but it's not where things are going. I'd rather plunk down an extra couple hundred to get a DVD recorder.

guac-foo

Re:Perhaps.

[gid]

That's the problem with most PVR/DVR's now... They're just not quite what I'm looking for. I don't want the subscription thing for tivo, that's bogus. Sure you can get away without it, but from what I hear, it's built around having it.

I just want a PVR that I can program like my stupid VCR. Start recording at 8pm thursday night, for 3 hours. Is that so hard? I don't want to pay for a lot of bell and whistles that I don't need/make it more expensive/make it more confusing.

Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

You watch too much TV

CDRW's too small for video

[davelee]

I find that the video quality of MPEG-1/VCD to be too low for enjoyment. Perhaps if you could reimplement this with DVD-RAM/DIVX (with one of those new DivX capable DVD-players, e.g. the Kiss DP-450, then we'd be talkin.

MPEG?

[Lxy]

Can MPEG really replace VHS? I know, VHS is pretty crappy too, but MPEG seems lossier than VHS.

I use VCDs quite often, so I'm not dissing MPEG format by any means. I just don't see the attraction of replacing magnetic tape with a lossy format.

The real solution is cheap DVD-RW.

Re:MPEG?

[elmegil]

From what I've seen, the quality of the MPEG has a lot to do with specific settings and filters. I've seen some *really bad* MPEGs of, say, Invader Zim floating around the net, and then I've seen some really good ones. (I mean image quality, feel free to have your own opinion of the content, but don't waste our time ranting about it here).

Re:MPEG?

[aardvarkjoe]

So, do you (or anyone else) have links to good info on the best way to improve the quality? It's something that I was curious about once, but I never really found the info I needed.

Re:MPEG?

[phreak404]

http://doom9.org

Re:MPEG?

[Cheffo Jeffo]

You mean VCD standard MPEG, right (eg. MPEG-1, 352x240, 140 KB/sec) ?

It's the bitrate that's your problem there not the codec (althought there are nicer codecs out there than MPEG-1).

Re:MPEG?

[martyn s]

Also, try afterdawn for information on video encoding and stuff. It takes some work to learn (it did for me anyway).

Re:MPEG?

[rodgerd]

You don't want to replace VHS with a lossy format, so you want to use DVDs?

You do know DVDs are, well, lossy, yes? You could just stream raw vidcaps onto one, but you'd struggle to fit an hour of broadcast video onto a single DVD side.

(Of course, VHS is also lossy, since it effectively discards most of the horizontal resolution)

Re:MPEG?

[Cheffo Jeffo]

Easily enough done by jacking up the bitrate -- like MPEG-2 at 9.8Mbit/s (e.g highest quality possible under DVD).

Alternatively, you can twiddle and tweak with compression settings (depending on your encoder), but I've given that up in favour of just making larger files and abandoning VCD.

Re:MPEG?

[elmegil]

dapcentral has information for their encoding practices, www.vcdhelp.com has a bunch of various stuff. So far I have not personally been able to apply all the information (it's pretty overwhelming, and I always get the feeling some key step is being left out), but obviously some people are based on the results at dapcentral.

Re:MPEG?

[bigdavex]

I don't know, can Linux replace the dipthong?

Re:MPEG?

[KewlPC]

You do realize that DVDs use MPEG-2, right? You also realize that once you burn a DVD, as long as you keep it dust and scratch free, the image and sound quality will never decrease, right? As for it being lossy, as long as you use a high enough bitrate the image quality is far superior to VHS, even when played on the same TV. As other posters have noted, VHS has a significantly lower horizontal resolution than DVD (dunno about vertical rezolution).

With VHS, the quality of the image, sound, and tape itself gets worse over time, no matter how clean you keep it. The mere act of playing it degrades its quality.

Makes life too easy

[bob the Martian]

Once you record onto digital format, making more copies is trivial, so certain rampaging well-funded groups of fools, sorry, _organisations_, might have a thing or two to say about it...

Why not just use CD-R?

[Overt Coward]

Figure $5 for a pack of 50, so $0.10 each -- you can't re-record on them, but it shouldn't cost you more than CD-RWs that start failig at 15 uses or so. Plus, this way you have the ability to create instant archives of your favorite shows, or just discard the used disks.

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[IdleTime]

Where do you get a 50-pack of quality CD-R's for $5.00?

Last time I bought a 50-pack, I paid about $18.

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you do the math he's getting about ($2.50/30 recordings) or between 8 and 9 cents a recording right now.

So he's already beating your 10 cents a recording cost.

Granted with your approach he gets to keep the recordings, so there might be a value to that 2 cent increase in cost.

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[Overt Coward]

Where do you get a 50-pack of quality CD-R's for $5.00?

Who said anything about quality? :)

For one-off uses like this, generic CD-Rs should be sufficient. I can usually get a 50-pack for $5 or a 100-pack for $8-$10 -- after rebates -- once or twice a month from CompUSA or Circuit City -- the CC 100 packs are frequently even non-generic, such as Fuji.

As far as generics go, I've only had one disk ever fail on me, and that was during the write process.

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[lubricated]

recently I got a 50 pack at bestbuy for $9.99 with a $9.98 dollar rebate. Sales tax was almost a dollar though.

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[dane23]

Best Buy?

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[fermion]

I would second this. It seems to me that a TiVo type system to routinely record shows works well for short term storage. If something needs to be archieved, the show could be quickly and reliable written to a CDR. I haver seen 32X CDR around the net for as low as $15/hundred. Reusing a CD-RW might be cheaper, but it also probably slower.

I would also be concerned about reliability if something were written to CD-R or RW. It seems like the media, unlike a hard disk, does not fail gracefully if a bit of the disk is bad.

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[IdleTime]

Ah, yes, where you actually PAY a lot more and then have to mail in a coupon to get a refund mailed to you after X weeks.

Show me a place where I can go in a dump a $5 on the counter and carry out a decent 50-pack.

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[kesuki]

I might be a little biased, But I can usually get a 50 spindle of Imation discs for only $5, after sale price and rebate. Then again, I live an hour away from the imation factory, and the CD-r they produce have always worked beautifully for me. They're treated on top so they're not as easy to scratch as thos cheapo PNYs that are just silk screened silvers that can barely handle being burned at 16x speed... (I can burn my 16x rated imation at 24x no prob, and my 32x media at 48x, although 48x has it's own problems, with leaving gaps where data should be on 'copies' of course on a data cd made for file backups it doesn't cause a problem.

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[Anonymous Coward]

If a Tivo has a (s)VCD recorder built in I'd get one. then I'd have temporary storage, with more reilability that a PC with a capture card, (software always messes up the recording schedule, not to mention certain channels that air programs 3-5 minutes different than the rest of the networks.)

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[klevin]

Perhaps he wants to keep form tossing a CD-R into the landfill every time he burns a [S]VCD. If he's getting 30-40 burns per CDRW before tossing it, that's 29-39 fewer disks of plastic, aluminum and die that end up on the trash heap.

This way, if his family member (who he's burning the shows for) wants a "permanent" archive, he can still reburn to a CDR and put the CDRW back on the blank stack.

What I want to know is which DVD player he's using to view the [S]VCD's. I recently bought a GoVideo DVD+VCR combo for my folks, and out of curiousity, tried burning some SVCD's & VCD's and playing them. I'll have to take GoVideo/SonicBlue at their word that it will play "commercially produced" [S]VCDs, as it sure couldn't play the ones I burned to CDRs.

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[longhairedgnome]

live near wahpeton do ya?

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bleah. Using the hard-drive and keeping forever or erasing forever seems a good second best to reusing a cd-rw. Last thing we need is to bring back a use-and-discard mentality to everything, the landfills have enough of that as it is.

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get an Apex baby. Actually, I heard some of their new ones don't play VCD's (something about a lawsuit, imagine that). I would check it out though, regardless, I could be wrong. My 1 1/2 year old Apex AD-1500 plays practically anything you can throw at it, VCD, SVCD, CD-R's, CD-RW's and just about anything else. The best part it, it's incredibly cheap. I bought it for about 90 bucks at K-Mart, which was hella cheap back then. Haven't had a problem with it yet. I love Apex :)

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[srsabu]

Unless a DVD player was designed specifically to read CD-R media, it won't. A lot of older players were not. However, most of the ones that I've run across that won't read CD-R will still read CD-RW.

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[checkyoulater]

Perhaps he wants to keep form tossing a CD-R into the landfill every time he burns a [S]VCD. If he's getting 30-40 burns per CDRW before tossing it, that's 29-39 fewer disks of plastic, aluminum and die that end up on the trash heap.

Thanks for bringing this up. It should be as important a reason as anything else, but unfortunately it rarely is.

Re:Why not just use CD-R?

[Foresto]

"What I want to know is which DVD player he's using to view the [S]VCD's."

Several Apex, Sampo, and Pioneer models play CD-R(W) media.

no

[prichardson]

The CDR will never replace vidoetapes for the same reason HDTV is only just starting to bloom and cassette tapes were EVER on the market.

People don't care about quality! If people cared about quality Microsoft would be out of business, Airlines would have decalred bankupcy years ago, and NO ONE would eat fast food.

Unfortuately people care about how little effort they have to excert to get something done. People don't want to deal with CD-R's because, despite an overall decrease in effort required, short term effects are minimal.

On a side note: CDRs would be a great alternative to video tapes. Tape media sucks

Re:no

[stratjakt]

VCD claims to have the same quality as VHS, in that it loses about the same amount of the original signal.

Thing is, with VHS the signal degredation is 'spread out', and it results in a fuzzier image.

With VCD, it's chunked in, and the lost signal results in artifacts, and little squares, and are much more obvious.

Kind of like how a casette tape wears out over time and will slowly become more muted and 'muddy' sounding. A scratched CD just pops and skips and stops making sound altogether.

So it's a matter of opinion which "sucks". Personally when it comes to A/V stuff, I'd take the comparable analog system over the digital one.

Re:no

[f97tosc]

People don't care about quality! If people cared about quality Microsoft would be out of business, Airlines would have decalred bankupcy years ago, and NO ONE would eat fast food.

Your assessment is too simplistic. People care about many things, one of which is quality. Furthermore, they have different wealth and different preferences.

The Microsoft example proves that you can sell low quality software if it is easy to use - it does not prove that it is impossible to sell high quality software.

Similarly, airlines sell first class and coach class seats. Some people eat at McDonald's and others at McCormick & Schmick's.

Tor

Re:no

[p3d0]

I have seen posts from people who didn't read a linked article, but this is the first one I have seen who doesn't even seem to have read the blurb sitting there right on the Slashdot home page.

This wasn't a question of whether CD-RWs would take over the world. It's only about whether they can be used by an individual in place of VHS tapes.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Microsoft example proves that you can sell low quality software if it is easy to use"

But "easy to use" really just means "I already have it preloaded." If you've ever used Windows, you know it's pretty clumsy compared to most platforms. But if someone already has it, then it's easiest to spend an extra few minutes now (and every time you need to do something) than spend an hour installing something else. So it really just reduces down to the original point: short-term time saving.

Re:no

[Goldsmith]

People don't care about quality, but they care about size.

A videotape is a lot larger than a CD, and 10 videotapes weigh a LOT more than ten CDs. CDR, DVDR or something similar will eventually replace videotapes simply for that reason. You make an excellent point that people care a lot more about what is easy and what everyone else is using, but those same lazy people don't want to deal with something clunky and heavy when small and light will do.

I will agree that most people won't use CDR type media until it's as easy to use and as commercially available as VHS. Until then, it will be like most people are unaware you can even use a CD to record video.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't care about quality, but they care about size.

That explains all the breast and penis enlargement ads I get.

Re:no

[sheldon]

Bizarre. I care about quality, which is probably why I'm not interested in using CD-R for video recording. I've been experimenting lately with recording video from my WinTV card to my harddrive, and in order to get reasonable quality I need to record at around 640x480 streaming at somewhere around 4 Mbps. That results in about 2 Gigs for a one hour program.

Can you fit 2 Gigs on a single CD-R? Didn't think so. What I could fit on a CD-R would look like crap on my 51" HDTV set.

As far as the Microsoft comment. The sad thing is, as poor quality as software is these days Microsoft software is higher quality then the competition.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

The comment wouldn't have gotten modded up if it didn't have a cheap shot aimed directly at microsoft.

Quality? Comparing KDE or Gnome to Luna is like comparing a diseased thai shemale to a supermodel. (KDE and Gnome are the thai shemale - hopefully this prevents lamer posts than this one)

Re:no

[elandal]

I've tried recoding DVDs onto SVCDs, and have seen very good quality at about 1800kbps for video. Definitely better than VHS at least, and in many cases close enough to the original DVD that it doesn't matter. Also, if I ever have time to finish my projects (hobby, as in work-comes-first), I have ideas that would give me about 20% (estimate based on a few discs, and would not work on all types of video streams, but would work on most if not all anime) cut on the video bitrate for the same or possibly even a little better quality.
At current rate (1800kbps video + 224kbps audio) I thus get about 50 minutes on an 80min CD-R. Which means that I'm not going to store movies on them, however TV series are OK (assuming episode length of about 40-45 minutes; 20-25 for anime).

However, recording analog signal and compressing that means that You'll first have to clean it up and then work on the compression. Unfortunately even the best magic provided by the encoding tools doesn't work without lots of human intervention.
I can clean up and do all pre-encoding work in about 4 hours per ~45 minutes of material.
Going for straight encoding from signal means that it's going to be crap or requires a high bitrate - on the order of 5+Mbps - thus leaving CD-R burning out of the equation..

If You want to replace VHS (which is crap anyway on Your 51" HDTV set) with optical media, go for DVD(-/+)R(W). Not only will it provide more capacity, but playable on standard DVD sets at high bitrates (SVCD is 2600kbps max - of course many DVDs support higher bitrate SVCD content, but then You're going for 20-30 minutes per CD).

Help me! lavrec and friends

[wiswaud]

Perhaps someone can help me with a little problem as well...

I've been using an ATI TV Wonder and recording shows as well. I'm not building a Tivo-like thingy, it's just for replacing the VCR. And in that sense, it's really quite cool to use 'at' and cron and batch to record your shows.

I'm using lavrec, from mjpeg-tools, to do the recording (fully command-line), but:
- in lower resolution (352x240), it barfs after 37 minutes
- in higher res, (480x480) it's after _7_ minutes!

The 'barfing' in question is lavrec complaining that the audio ring buffer is full.
I've tried runnning lavrec as root with nice --10, to no avail. I've tried with nothing running (no X) and still, same problem, and it's always after the same amount of time! So it's not something stupid like being interrupted for too long...

What do others use for recording?
Have you had this problem? how did you solve it?
Are my resolutions ok? What are the correct ones for VCD and SVCD???

(hey, this is the text that should have been under the main title, instead of a CDRW question... i've had the same problem with CDRW but i don't expect the DVD drive to be that good at reading cdrw's anyways).

As far as CDRW's go, with the prices for CDR's we have now, why bother? Just burn your Alias episodes onto CDR's and you can watch them more than once and not bother with re-writing CDRW's....

Re:Help me! lavrec and friends

[kcurrie]

What do others use for recording?

I went through using various tools and had best results with:
vcr
and
nvrec

Apparently mencoder (part of the kickass mplayer package) will also do the job.

Using nvrec you can start recording a program and then start playing it back via mplayer a short time later as it's still recording with few problems.

I recently bought a ReplayTV
though, and since these babies have ethernet, I should be able to stream my video directly from it using Xine/mplayer over my LAN. I'm moving on Monday and haven't bothered to wire ethernet to it yet so this is untested. To grab/stream video from a ReplayTV under Linux or another Java enabled OS use dvarchive
I've been thinking of setting up a cron job to suck the video off my ReplayTV, use transcode to convert it to mpeg1 and burn it to a VCD to archive shows to CD automatically..

BTW, I've had problems many times with mplayer and A/V sync, while xine will play the same video flawlessly. I hate the xine UI though, and much prefer mplayers sparten interface..

I was thinking about

[trailerparkcassanova]

storing video on punch cards. This would be great for editing as I could just pull out a stack of cards and insert it into another stack.

Has anyone else done this?

Re:I was thinking about

[no_nicks_available]

Normally that would be humurous, but it's quite possible.

Re:I was thinking about

[Jack William Bell]

storing video on punch cards. This would be great for editing as I could just pull out a stack of cards and insert it into another stack.

Yeah, but just imagine the mess if you dropped the stack. Unless you sorted it afterwards you would have more quick cuts than an MTV video.

Jack William Bell

Re:I was thinking about

[IVI4573R]

Yeah great idea, now all we need is a big warehouse to store the punchcards for a single episode......and we need some forklifts....lots of forklifts....and and and....i'll shut up now....

Re:I was thinking about

[samf]

Yeah, but just imagine the mess if you dropped the stack. Unless you sorted it afterwards you would have more quick cuts than an MTV video.

Hmm, maybe this explains that movie, Armageddon?

Re:I was thinking about

[WhiteKnight07]

Just imagine the mess if you tried to move said stack. Assuming a 700 meg movie file, that's 2936012800 bits. Say you get 1000 bits per card, that's nearly 3 million cards. That has got to be heavy.

Re:I was thinking about

[Polo]

I did this.

once.

Re:I was thinking about

[espenss]

Yes, Quentin Tarantino played poker with his stack of punch cards. He lost the game, but his movie got lucky.

Re:I was thinking about

[timbck2]

Imagine the trouble hanging chad would cause in this application....

More importantly....

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you build a tivo-clone? I for one would be interested in the hardware and software choices you made and how you configured it.

Re:More importantly....

[Anonymous Coward]

check out http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pvr/ for the "building" of this thing...

Not exactly what I would call a tivo clone, hell the thing I am building is far closer to a tivo and it is actually building, not just buying a TV card and installing the software that comes with it.

Could CDRW Disks Replace Videotapes?

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Answering your question would be a violation of the DMCA. Sorry, ask Jack and Hillary.

Questions answered here.

[Real World Stuff]

This is an ongoing discussion at Plasma. People with the bucks have been contemplating this for a while. Be sure to read up on the forums for the technical details as well. More info here.

Please note there are solutions that require money. How cheap are you going to be?

DVD-R?

[mgs1000]

Didn't some company(I'm thinking it was panasonic) just come out with a tivo-like device with a DVD burner? Where you record the shows you like on the hard drive, and if you wanna keep them, you burn a disk. I dunno.

Re:DVD-R?

[mgs1000]

Let me answer my own question.

It's the Panasonic DMR-HS2. (Thanks google)

http://www.panasonic.co.jp/products/video/digital/ hs2/

Re:DVD-R?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also get one sans hard disk for about $500. DVD-RAM can be rewritten thousands of times, much more than DVD-RW or DVD+RW, because it is hard formatted. You can also burn DVD-R for permanent storage or for freinds.

Needs to be consumerized..

[WittyName]

Insert disk and hit record, for a price point of $200.00 when it is in volume. And 2.40 for a CDRW?!? Just jump to DVD(+-) RW. They are only $6.00, and getting cheaper, and would hold about as much as a long video cassette at similiar quality. Also, tapes are not reliable either. They are only good for about 100 plays.

Re:Needs to be consumerized..

[Anonymous Coward]

the DVD-RW are only $1.80

Re:Needs to be consumerized..

[jparker]

Check out the Terrapin CD Video recorder (ThinkGeek link). It's slightly more than your price point at $280, but it has all of the basic features you mentioned, except DVD writing. Never used one myself, but it seems interesting.

is it dirt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure the discs are not getting dirty w/fingerprints, dust, etc.? Such things can cause a lot of the problems misattributed to media failure...

Ahh...why bother with RW

[inaneboy]

.13$ a CD-R, and you get to keep it forever.

Re:Ahh...why bother with RW

[mrbuttle]

Where I come from, they're effectively free. Almost monthly, one or more chain stores have 25, 50 or sometimes 100 CDR's free after rebate. So I've only payed tax and postage for mine the last several years.

No Way!

[IIskooterII]

Philips Has a dvd Tivo out right now!
Here

Re:No Way!

[IIskooterII]

oh yea and Here is another

Re:No Way!

[KenCrandall]

Actually, this doesn't have a HD in it (unfortunately) and has no TiVo software in it.

Re:No Way!

[IIskooterII]

i ment Tivo like, you can record while watching previously recorded material

30 to 40

[_ph1ux_]

well i know that the specs claim for many many more rewrites that 30 or 40.

but I am also amazed that you have even actually used any of your discs that much. I would expect that if your using the CDs that much - they'd get scratched up and ruined long before you killed them via to much burning.

I know that all my CDs are treated as a trash commodity that i just toss out when it starts getting bad. or I pre-emptively burn another copy of anything that is getting a lot of use - and throw out the other when its scratched up enough.

How much watching do you do to get 30 or 40 burns on a single RW?

CDRW

[Yablo]

you mean people actually /use/ CDRW discs?

Re:CDRW

[M3wThr33]

I think we all do at one point. I mean, most retail burners come with one. At least mine did.

You should use the GNU version of TiVo...

[Anonymous Coward]

You should take a look at the GNU version of TiVo called GnuVo. It's pretty nice except it won't let you watch any shows about capitalism.

Re:You should use the GNU version of TiVo...

[GuyMannDude]

You should take a look at the GNU version of TiVo called GnuVo. It's pretty nice except it won't let you watch any shows about capitalism.

You think that's bad, I've got KatzVo. The damn thing only records shows about 9/11, Columbine and Globalism!

GMD

Re:You should use the GNU version of TiVo...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I'm beta testing VA Software's PVR project called SlashVo. Although I'm having problems using it. Due to all the spelling errors in the guide, the search function is useless. And it keeps recording duplicate programs!

Re:You should use the GNU version of TiVo...

[belloc]

You think that's bad, I've got KatzVo. The damn thing only records shows about 9/11, Columbine and Globalism!

That's funny. Now, to save the copycats the trouble, I've created this easy-to-use template:

"Yeah, well I've got [FILL-IN]Vo. It stinks because it only {derogatory comment about [FILL-IN]}, and doesn't even {other derogatory comment about [FILL-IN]}!

Belloc

Re:You should use the GNU version of TiVo...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea and I've got an RmsVo. It refuses to record anything that doesn't have GNU in the program title.

Re:You should use the GNU version of TiVo...

[emarkp]

You think that's bad, I've got KatzVo

And on top of that, it complains about all of them too.

Re:You should use the GNU version of TiVo...

[jtapper]

Myth TV is also a Tivo style device that allows the pausing of live tv as well as recording shows, a nice xmltv based scheduling system, and a sharp interface.

my machine isn't fast enough (400 Mhz) to run this, but take a peak.

Re:You should use the GNU version of TiVo...

[Anonymous Coward]

You think THAT's bad, I've got a goatseVO, which only records hours and hours of the goatse man :(

No! But this might...

[FreeLinux]

CDRW is too small. Yea yea, compression blah blah. In order for a movie to fit on a CDRW the quality is as bad or worse than VHS.

This on the other hand shows significant promise. DVD recordable, with a hard disk and some nice Tivo like features. Also, does MP3s etcetera...

Sounds cool...

[Frank Grimes]

Sounds like a cool setup; I've wanted to put together something like that for a while. What kind of software are you using? My initial thought was to use the cron daemon as a timer, and write a script to capture video and dump it to the hard drive until I have a chance to burn it to VCD.

I think I'd prefer to use CDR's anyway, since they are cheap enough and I'm only likely to record something that I would want to see over again.

$5 for 50?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where can I buy 50 CDR's for $5?

Would those be quality disks or some garbage brand? (I've found that the really cheap crap often won't even burn, let alone have the right data on it).

Re:$5 for 50?!

[ender_wiggins]

my friend just bought 110 cdr's from bestbuy for 8$. i have picked up plenty of 100packs for free/rebate.

Re:$5 for 50?!

[Rader]

Best Buy sells 100-paks of Memorex for $30, with a $20 rebate. I've successfully gotten all my rebates back in 1.5 months.

That comes to $5 for 50.

Re:$5 for 50?!

[Proneax]

hmm, best deal I ever got ended up costing me about half a cent a piece for cd-r's. They're not the cheap-o type where the film peels off after 6 mo either.

Re:$5 for 50?!

[Rader]

Hey, no arguments here...there are always better deals, have been for years.

The only reason I mention this Best Buy deal is because it's practically a permanent deal there. I can also get it by walking to the store (most great deals are through the internet) and the memorex brand Best Buy carries has always been very good.

I started burning mp3's to memorex (from best buy) starting in 1998, and I can still read them all today, MP3CD#0001 to MP3CD#1203

I can write on my Cd-RWs about 10,000 times.

[teamhasnoi]

I have to use a super-mega-ultra-fine tipped Sharpie.

Here is a good resource:

[Geminatron]

A good place to learn how to convert various media to burnable (S)VCD format can be found at http://www.vcdhelp.com

Re:Here is a good resource:

[scharkalvin]

Mostly freeware windows stuff. Where is software for Linux?

Re:Here is a good resource:

[Nato_Uno]

vcdhelp.com gives lots of good general info. For software, you'll want to see at least:

• vcdimager - writes (S)VCDs
• mplayer (and, more specifically, mencoder) for playing (and recording) video
• mjpegtools - for doing some conversions (including creating (s)VCD streams and stills)

You might also want to check out:

• ffmpeg
• nvrec
• freevo
• zapping (or, more specifically, the mp1e portion of zapping)

That should at least give you a start, but is by no means exhaustive. I use mencoder to record from TV capture card, mplayer/mjpegtools for converting to VCD and SVCD compliant streams, vcdimager for creating VCD and SVCD images, cdrdao for burning the images, and ffmpeg for generating stills. I find that mencoder lets me capture streams while maintaining very good A/V sync.

Your mileage, of course, may vary...

Do you have?

[buswolley]

Do you have an automated commercial cutter to save cd-rw space? Or are you just fast forwarding(not too inconvenient)

Seems you could UP the quality of the recording dramaticly if you cut the commercials out before recording, knowing that commercials take up 1/3 of every hour of TV programming.

What I want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

... when is this guy going to do a big ol' write up of his experiences building such a thing and share it with his in-awe peer group? This sounds like a REALLY neat thing and I'd love to give it a try myself sometime in the future if I have the cash to try it.

CDRs are cheap

[yusing]

With decent CD's at 25c each, record to CD and throw it away ... or don't.

CDRW's are a bad joke ... or else my Yamaha burner is.

Still good compared to video tape.

[Ryu2]

Anyone examined a magnetic video tape's quality after 30-40, let alone 1000 rewrites? It's not too great either.

Making (S)VCDs under Linux

[z4ce]

I've been recently trying to make VCDs under linux from some various episodes of Seinfeld. I got the "mvcdencode" program with mplayer to work. But it didn't /really/ work. The lips were desync'd BADLY, the people moved slowly, aspect ratio was weird. I was wondering if anyone had a good program for making VCDs under linux. The current process seems to be:

* decode it using mplayer into raw yuv and pcm audio
* Rescale, framerate the yuv
* encode the raw yuv to mpeg
* encode the pcm to audio mp2
* use mplex to encode audio and video together
* use VCD tools to create .cue and .bin files for cdrdao

Obviously, using this hack of tools leads to the process being very slow and very vulernable to failure since at each step a separate indermediate must be created. Does anyone know of a solution like tmpgenc under windows?

TIA

Re:Making (S)VCDs under Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I make SVCD's all the time under Linux...the main tool to use and know is transcode, without a doubt.

Kino isn't bad either, but I had big problems with audio sync using that. Transcode (using the BBMPEG codec, the mjpeg codec has sync problems too) works wonders for me, and it's essentially a one-step procedure with that. However Kino is only for firewire/DV users like me.

I grab all my video over Firewire through my camcorder, essentially (using dvgrab). I then use transcode to convert directly to SVCD-quality MPEG2, and then burn to CD.

Re:Making (S)VCDs under Linux

[MarcoAtWork]

I hope somebody replies here, I'm leaning towards buying a TV card for the exact same reason (building a library of seinfeld episodes, why, oh why don't they sell a DVD set) and I really would like to know beforehand that it's going to work...

Re:Making (S)VCDs under Linux

[CastrTroy]

So, what you want is a linux program that does everything without you going out and having to download 6 other programs, to get the job done that can be done by 1 program in linux? keep dreaming... ha ha...

but seriously, cinelerra Heroinewarrior.com
is a nice piece of video editing software. Doesn't really do exactly what you are looking for, but nice none the less. What i think you are really looking for is something like DVD::RIP which does pretty much the whole process for you, except making the Mpg files into bin/cue files. Oh but that only works for dvd, it won't really do much for recorded video... damn. Why can't someone just make good software for linux...

Re:Making (S)VCDs under Linux

[ecloud]

I successfully made a couple SVCDs; but I started with digital video (from a digital 8mm camcorder) and played them on a DVD player (a Sampo model - they are probably the most versatile and hackable players). I didn't have any sync problems, but the video quality left a bit to be desired (it looks short of VHS quality to me, even though encoded at SVCD bitrate, and thus I can only get 1/2 hour on a disc). I did subtitles and of course they were the worst part to encode. I used MainActor for editing and subtitles; but video output from Kino is just as good, it's only that Kino is a bit under-featured at this point, so I got MA as a stopgap (and don't recommend it - it crashes a lot). SVCDs and VCDs can have chapters like DVDs, so it's best to put each chapter in its own AVI file (besides, AVI files have length limits - 2 gigs or something like that).

Here are my notes about how I made one disc:

edit-??.avi are exported from maseq using AVI-mjpeg, default quality, 720x480, 30fps, interlace A, de-interlaced

lav2yuv -A4:3 edit-01.avi | mpeg2enc -f4 -q6 -I0 -r32 -h -o wedding-ch1.m2v

lav2wav edit-01.avi | mp2enc -V -o wedding-ch1.mp2

mplex -f4 -V wedding-ch1.mp2 wedding-ch1.m2v -o wedding-ch1-svcd.mpg

...etc. for other AVI chapters, to produce interleaved MPEG files in the right format for SVCD; then...

vcdimager -tsvcd -c wedding.cue -b wedding.bin -l "Wedding" --volume-count=2 --volume-number=1 wedding-ch1-svcd.mpg wedding-ch2-svcd.mpg wedding-ch3-svcd.mpg wedding-ch4-svcd.mpg wedding-ch5-svcd.mpg

cdrdao write --driver generic-mmc-raw --device 1,1,0 wedding.cue

I wrote a script for this encoding project and went to bed; it took a long time.

I wondered if I got some quality degradation by exporting from MA in motion-JPEG format, rather than keeping it in native DV format, and then encoding to MPEG. Ideally some of the JPEG frames would just directly become keyframes in the MPEG output; but in this case I was scaling too, so that's not possible. Anyway most of the output formats in MainActor for Linux have bugs, and MJPEG happened to work well.

Re:Making (S)VCDs under Linux

[Nato_Uno]

Do you mean "mencvcd"? Which version of mplayer are you using?

When you say "various episodes of Seinfeld", what format are those currently in? Are you capturing from somewhere, or are you using existing video files that you have?

If you're recording from a TV capture card, I've found it vital to specify -fps 29.97 and -ofps 29.97 for NTSC with mencoder, or the A/V sync gets really out of whack.

I've found that the a/v sync for mencoder seems to be very dependent on your audio drivers. I moved to ALSA 0.9 with OSS emulation, did "echo 1024 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq" to enable rtc usage, and now I get perfect A/V sync every time (assuming I feed the correct options to mencoder).

Anyway, I've got some SVCDs I'm really pleased with, so if you give me more information, I'll give you what help I can...

Re:Making (S)VCDs under Linux

[Joe Tie.]

Avidemux might work out. It can load and edit avi or mpeg, and save to either as well as traditional vcd. Unfourtunatly I can't say how it works since for some reason on my system it's not seeing the libraries needed for that.

Re:Making (S)VCDs under Linux

[caldroun]

I bought a ATI Wonder VE from best buy, and It works perfect with Video4Linux, No Problems. Redhat saw it and ran with it. ($49 bucks with $10 rebate) XawTV worked perfect.

I too am trying to make a video recorder. I installed *shutter* Windows to try the software from ATI, it isn't bad, but it is a little buggy.
However I used Nero to burn VCDs.

I am working on a web interface (for my linux box) for selecting channels and format to record in, and also working with Lirc to make a 'remote' to changed the channels on my Directtv when time to record.

I plan on using my Zaurus as a 'remote' to control the recorder.

Re:Making (S)VCDs under Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

For grabbing the video, I use nuvrec, from the nvrec tools. This gave me the best A/V sync (even better than virtualdub for windows).

Try to capture at the highest resolution possible, and downsize your video's resolution on the fly during encoding. If you cannot capture at the highest resolution without dropping frames, at least try to capture as much lines as possible (eg. 352x576). This method will you give you FAR better quality than any fancy virtualdub filter can.

For encoding, there are these options :

1) transcode with the mpeg2enc export (for VCD this is a lot faster than the bbmpeg module). Lots of good filters, probably the most reliable method. You still need to know what you're doing though (framerate, bitrate, resolution). (X)SVCD works too.

2) mplayer with the mencvcd script (also uses mpeg2enc, but is slightly faster). Has some decent filters, though not as complete as transcode. This method is more trial & error, especially with ntsc. VCD only, SVCD seems problematic.

3) ffmpeg -vcd, provided your inputfile is in a format ffmpeg can understand. This is the fastest method by far, but check your results because the quality and A/V sync are not allways good. (X)VCD only, no mpeg2 support.

For methods 1 and 2, you need to use mplex to multiplex audio and video. mplex (or similar programs, like tcmplex) also has an option to correct the A/V sync, if these should be incorrect. In any case, you still need to use vcdimager (or mkvcdfs) to create a bin/cue file which you can burn with cdrdao.

Alternatively, you can use ffmpegrec, also from nvrec, to capture straight to vcd compliant mpeg1 video. A/V sync will be okay, but the quality will suffer.

Note that tmpgenc works rather well in wine, but mpeg2 (and this svcd) support is time-limited shareware.

Seems to burn DVD-RAM

[WittyName]

High Quality Recording on High-Capacity 4.7GB DVD-RAM Discs Yes

And the media is not cheap..

They should put an ethernet port on it, too.

Re:Seems to burn DVD-RAM

[FreeLinux]

It burns DVD-RAM and DVD-R. It reads just about any disc that will fit in the tray.

Your right, the media is expensive but, CD-RW media was $20+ a pop when it first came out.

Re:Seems to burn DVD-RAM

[GMontag451]

DVD-R media isn't that expensive. You can get them for $0.90 a disc.

Dear Lord! where are the perl jockeys???

[Chiggy_Von_Richtoffe]

Okay, (S)VCD, Mpeg? Dear Lord! Stallman would have your head for this! DIVx! sure it's illegal now, but just buy the t-shirt:

http://copyleft.net/cgi-bin/copyleft/t039.pl?1&b ac k

and work from there.

~I use perl, does this mean i'm a camel-jockey?

Re:Dear Lord! where are the perl jockeys???

[Chiggy_Von_Richtoffe]

Me failed english? That's unpossible!

CD-RW figures are a BIT optimistic

[hackshack]

I don't doubt the quoted figures of "1000 rewrites" for CD-RW media, for the reason that the crystalline substrate which stores the data proper should last around that much, chemically. In my experience, it's the physical disc which fails- scratches from handling, pitting on the reflective aluminum layer, etc.

CD-RWs reflect around 25% of the read laser, as opposed to CD-Rs which reflect around 75%, and pressed CDs which reflect close to 100%. When the signal-to-noise ratio is this low, the A/D circuitry has a hard time keeping up even with minor defects- fingerprints and dust are much more deadly on a CD-RW than on a CD-R.

In my experience, the first burn to a virgin CD-RW delivers CD-R-like readability, but once you rewrite it even once, the drive has to work a lot harder. I used to treat my CD-RWs like floppies, carrying them between the lab and my home, playing with them while waiting for an operation to complete, etc. and got maybe 4-5 rewrites on average. I then started keeping them inside jewel cases at all times, exposing them for a few seconds to put into the drive, and immediately got 20+ rewrites out of them.

Also, we were using really bad drives at the lab (some early HP CD-RW burners which often rejected discs) and when we upgraded the machines (to better HP burners, in late 2001) rewritability literally doubled for me to about 40+ rewrites. So the type of drive makes a difference as well IMHO.

Re:CD-RW figures are a BIT optimistic

[martyn s]

I don't get your sig, can you explain it?

Re:CD-RW figures are a BIT optimistic

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, buying the name brand stuff is much more reliable than the uber-cheep cds. Assuming you dont abuse them badly.
Personlly I always buy the imation brand stuff, cause my experience with them has been really good. They arent usually as cheep as the generic stuff, but they arent too expensive if you buy them on sale. Anyone else agree/disagree.

Re:CD-RW figures are a BIT optimistic

[hejpig]

I have been using CD-RW for the last two years as a portable hard disk between different computers. The first one died after 3 or four months but I wasn't very careful with the handling. The next one is still in use and I treat it very carefully. There may be differences in media, the first was a MORE, the second, a TDK. I am a careful user but I would not expect the others members of my family to be nearly as physically respectful.

Maybe the problem is with your drive

[jukal]

I've tried CDRW disks from several manufacturers

I don't even have a CDRW drive myself, but I do know that 30-40 rewrites is way too little. If I were you I think I would blame the drive. Bad laser maybe? Without knowing much, I assume you could also try changing your burner SW it would seem logical that you can either conserve the disk or torture it by the SW - maybe you could for example extend the life and get more bang per $$ by not utilizing each disk 100%. This way, the burner could burn it with a significantly different pattern every time.... Or then again, maybe everything I guessed is utter crap :)

You already can buy the set top version...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the Terapin. They sell 'em at Sam's Club, Costco, among others.

ChopSuey

Fry's CD-Rs on sale.

[billstewart]

Prices vary a lot, but there's often a sale for $7 per 50 CD-Rs.

Units nitpicking

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice quality video isn't achievable below some bitrate. 700 MB isn't a bitrate, it's a bitcount. Your claim would only make sense if you phrased it as "more than X minutes of nice quality video doesn't fit on a 700MB cd-rw". You didn't give a value of X and you got score 4 insightful??

Re:Units nitpicking

[martyn s]

You have a really backwards way of saying "well, it depends how much video you wanna store"

VCD is lossy?

[da_Den_man]

Possibly the compression scheme, however I have found that quality doesn't suffer on the burned disc. It all matters in the quality of the item being recorded/transfered and at what depth and sound. Now, while I wouldn't use CD-RW to do that (I am lazy and would just watch on the computer unless it was an ACTUAL movie I was watching), the medium has nothing to do with the quality of the original copy/mpeg. Yes, if too much compression is ued for the sake of space, the quality of the image (and sound as it is what takes up the most space) will be sacrificed to fit "more" onto one disc. I have found that 45 minutes per CD-R gives me a High quality image, and while it is only 45 minutes, that is just enough to remove the commercials from the captured file.

perfect

[tps12]

most of the CDRWs I've tried only last about 30-40 rewrites before they start showing significant data dropouts (almost always at the start of a recording)

Sounds like you've reproduced the VHS experience accurately.

Answer

[Viking Coder]

how many rewrites do most people expect from their CDRW media

Zero. Actually, I find that CDRW are actually CDW. I can write to them, but I never expect to be able to read back from them. I've tried on dozens of CDRW drives, and I've never had luck archiving for a month or more on CDRW. Sure, "most" of the time it works - but it falls far short of my expected success ratios.

I've learned not to trust CDRW. I always use CDR instead.

Re:Answer

[scharkalvin]

Try using good media. The only cdrw's I've had any luck with
on re-use have been Imation. Memorex sucks. I can't even
erase them after one use.

Re:Answer

[wahay]

Hoorah. I totally agree. I remember using the media that CAME WITH THE DRIVE, burning it once, reloading it in the very same drive, and being unable to read it. I just use CD-Rs too.

Re:Answer

[elandal]

I use CD-RW instead of floppies. They're more reliable - I don't need a stack of them with the same content, hoping that one out of four works..

I don't use CD-RW in any other way. I use them as I did with floppies, and that's it. However, I have used a few (three, I think) discs as my normal mobile media which I can read and write for a while, and haven't had a single glitch. Perhaps some 10-20 writes per disc as of now, so I didn't expect them to fail, either. Standard Maxell 10-pack, 4x rewrite, 650MB.

Re:Answer

[apweiler]

Interestingly, a German magazine tested various brands of CD-R and RW a while back, notably for UV exposure - put them under strong UV light equivalent to, say, a couple of days in direct sunlight, and test them. The RWs were consistently much better than the CD-Rs.
Even fairly cheap CD-RWs have worked better for me than relatively expensive CD-Rs.
YMMV as usual, I guess...

likko vdr2100

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had a likko vdr2100 which is a VCD recorder (it can do semi-SVCD too) since feb '02. I have it hooked to the 2nd output on my tivo so I can record stuff to it. sofar I've recorded over 600 VCDs since I purchased it. I hear it is very sensitive to loss in video signal, but tivo ensures theres always 100% signal(even if the input on tivo was choppy the output is always perfectly clear signal strength). I'm not one to hack together a computer to do this which is why I bought the likko, $449 at lik-sang.com I could not find a U.S. reseller at the time of my purchase. It can do CDRW media(and blank them) but I only use CD-R media, never tried CDRW. I catalog my shows in jfile on my visor(easily exportable to another database/spreadsheet). I have burned 1 coaster in the 600 VCDs that I have made. works quite well. I also picked up a portable VCD(discman-sized) player from lik-sang at the same time(also made by likko), works great. Also picked up 2 dreamcast VCD players(requires no mods to the dreamcast, just put in the CD and go). One of them was crap(the VCD-only player), the VCD/MP3 player worked much better(playback is perfect quality, the other player drops a lot of frames). When lik-sang came back recently I ordered 2 more of VCD/MP3 players as well as 2 VGA converters for my 3 dreamcasts.

so for me, VCDs have replaced VHS, I used to have nearly 250 VHS tapes but I have not watched a VHS tape in more then 2 years. I have no DVDs and never plan to ever ever buy a DVD player or writer. VCD is a good, solid, open format thats been available since about 1993/1994.

I mentioned the likko can do semi-vcd, the resolution it records in is non-standard and recording time drops from 65 minutes to about 35 minutes per CD, that and the fact that VCD is much more broadly available(e.g. my dreamcasts) makes me record everything in VCD format.

this unit is very solid, I am amazed at how well it works, I highly reccomend it for people like me who want to record vcds in real time w/o the pains of video capture on a computer dealing with converting formats and stuff.

(I had a /. account a few years ago but I guess they nuked it since I didn't use it for 6-8 months at a time which is why I post as AC)

Tape and discs

[djtripp]

In the past 5 years since I puschased a DVD player, I have watched a VCR tape on average 3 times a year. Mostly becasue corporate videos came to me that way, and of course Lucas.

In the past years since I purchased TiVo, I have never recorded a tape, unless I was lo-teching for an unfortunate friend.

I still think that CD-R's are a more reliable medium, and still, in most cases a faster medium. But if you get right to it, what happens when you recorded a video on a tape, over and over and over. Or watched the same tape over and over and over, the picture quality gets worse and worse.

Phillips is now selling a DVD-RW for such purposes, so It does look like the video tape has one more nail in it's coffin.

To make a TiVo clone would be cool, but to make one that will output to CD's, CDRW's, or DVD's would be great. (But still it's a waste of time to dupe a DVD if you can't get DTS ot Dolby Digital on it...)

Or from the US site

[burgburgburg]

You can look at the info on it in English at http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/dvd_ recorder/dvd_recorder.asp

Re:Or from the US site

[Jugalator]

Wow, I want one of those. :) (technical specs here btw).

Plays & records DVD-RAM, plays & records DVD-R, plays CD-R/RW, built-in 40 Gb hard disk for 52 hours of recordings... Hmm...!

$999.95 ($29.95 per 9.4 Gb recordable DVD-RAM disc for 240 minutes)

A bit expensive but it's one of those "I need" gizmos. :)

VCR Is really no more

[wakeboard]

I seem to remember reading that the VCR has already begun to be phased out. Circut City doesnt even carry them any more. I remember reading that one of the major makers has already started to slow production of them. I think that with things like DVRs and DVD-R/RW/ect options comming just around the corner ($300 or less) VCD's are just not really going to be an industry supported medium. What do u guys think? I am writting this question in extreme hast as my professor is about to start bitching at my for not paying attention (I love campus wide wi-fi =] ) Got to dip!

Re:VCR Is really no more

[exodus2]

Circut City still sells VCR's they had some a few days ago when I went in to get my series 2 direct Tivo for $139

But they did have many more DVD players

For re-writeable, hard drives are cheaper

[billstewart]

I wasn't sure if the poster was using TiVO or just using a capture card in his PC (my guess was the latter), but hard disks are not only faster and more useful than CD-RW, they're cheaper. Typical IDE prices are $80 for 80GB, which is $1.00 per GB, or $0.70 per 700MB CD-equivalent. (I just paid $10 for 10 CD-RWs at Fry's last week, so this is slightly cheaper.) Plus you don't need to worry about whether the video exactly fits on one disk. And if you're burning it on a disk, CD-Rs are about $0.10-0.15 for cheap stuff.

The one exception I can see to this is if you're using the CD as a data transport mechanism, between your PC in the office with the fast data connection and your DVD player in the living room.

Re:For re-writeable, hard drives are cheaper

[blitziod]

another reason is that a CD burner is cheap and we already have them( most of us). VCD's will play on a DVD player , also a common household item. And if I want to put out a low budget video or show, VCD's are the way to go. MUCH cheaper than DVD or tape!

Re:For re-writeable, hard drives are cheaper

[carlos_benj]

Hmmm. I just paid $10.00 for 100 CDR's at Fry's so that's even cheaper! Gotta watch those Friday sales flyers.

Re:For re-writeable, hard drives are cheaper

[FU_Fish]

Where on Earth did you find an 80GB drive for $80? I can't find 40GB drives for that much around me!

Re:For re-writeable, hard drives are cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

Tad over $80 for an 80GB drive here: http://www.accubyte.com/applications/search/itemde tails.asp?sku=sam-80-54&sc=pi

Re:For re-writeable, hard drives are cheaper

[matlokheed]

>The one exception I can see to this is if you're using the CD as a data transport mechanism, between your PC in the office with the fast data connection and your DVD player in the living room. Even if you're not using it as a transport mechanism. Conveniencewise, CD's beat Hard disks hands down. Suddenly you have the urge to watch some show on a random drive from a stack. What do you do? You have to open the case, disconnect and reconnect wires, and reboot the computer. This smacks of a lot more effort than the "stick CD in drive" method. Even if you're using an external drive mounting system, it's not a great alternative.

And none of this takes into the account that Hard Disks aren't nearly as storage safe as CDs. The hard disk was the first thing I said "uh oh" about for the Xbox and I know people who bought extended warranties based on that single piece of the hardware. In contrast, I've seen CDs that I'd have sworn something (someone?) was gnawing on that played just fine.

CDs are a much better alternative to Hard Disks for just common viewing. I just wish someone would make a set top DiVX player (not the rental thing of the similar name).

Re:For re-writeable, hard drives are cheaper

[tvsjr]

With that being the case, you could use external hard drive carriers and a few drives and record your stuff there. Anything you wanted to keep, you could then burn to CD-R/DVD-R/etc.

A decent machine in your den with the right drive receiver wouldn't cost tremendously.

Serial ATA or SCSI with hot-swapping would be even nicer.

Closed captioning data

[MarvinIsANerd]

Unless your device supports capturing of original closed captioning information onto the CD-RW's - meaning you preserve the information present including the stuff in the vertical blank interval and replay it on playback - you will never be allowed to bring this device to market as a consumer VCR replacement. As far as I know the SVCD format does not have any built in mechanism for this. There are certain things you need to do to meet FCC requirements before this device will be allowed to be sold in the USA market. Same rules applies to closed captioning decoders being required in all TV's 13" or larger.

Re:Closed captioning data

[klevin]

The SVCD spec does include subtitles. However, the existing linux software to create bin & cue files (vcdimager) doesn't yet deal w/ subtitles.

Re:Closed captioning data

[cei]

Line 21. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.

CDRWs? No. Hard drives? Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

CDRWs are too unreliable and have too little storage per disk. Hard drives are very reliable (compared to CDs) and can hold very large files.
Price/Performance comparison:

CDRW disks - $30 for 50 700MB 10x disks - $0.857 per GB - 1.458 MB/s transfer rate (assuming 10x)
Hard drives - $141 for 120GB 5400RPM drive - $1.175 per GB - 40 MB/s transfer rate

Replace your CDs once and it has already paid to use hard drives instead. As an added bonus, you also get a transfer rate equivalent to 274x in a CD drive. All you need is a video card with TV-out.

MPEG? No, Divx...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can MPEG really replace VHS?

No, but Divx can. I get a lot of MPEG files off Kazaa and USENET and re-encode them as Divx. You can save up to 50% in space and usually can't tell the difference in quality.

I have 500+ VHS tapes to move to digital when blank DVD's get as cheap as blank CDR's.

Shuffle the cards

[sulli]

and it would be excessively amusing!

I use CDRWs

[Anonymous Coward]

I use them to make MP3 CDs for my car. I start seeing degradation after about 20 rewrites. They're cheap enough for me not to care though...

You've got a double bit error

[Bill Currie]

! is 041, not 042

Re:You've got a double bit error

[i_am_nitrogen]

Please translate for those of us too young to read paper tape in EBCDIC(?) or whatever encoding.

Probably because

[ChunkBeefpile]

Many (older) stand-alone DVD players cannot read CD-R media. But many of those that can't read CD-R CAN read CD-RW.
I also have a homebrew tivo, and I used to use CD-RW all the time, for that reason.

My solution? Screw the DVD player.
My capture machine now sits next to my TV in the living room, so I just play my (S)VCDs right from the computer.

I'll get a DVD writer when they're fast enough, and then I'll have come full circle.

What about FreeVo?

[Mitchell Mebane]

Ah, but there really is a TiVo clone in the works: FreeVo.

Re:What about FreeVo?

[bongholio]

Cool, but is there a tivo-like computer available to run this kind of stuff on? I know there are small computers, but I haven't seen any real set-top box computers that are not proprietary (like Tivo, UltimateTV, etc...)

Re:What about FreeVo?

[Yebyen]

Not to mention MythTV... already has a nice program guide, interface conducive to using with a remote and irxevent, etc... It can record to an extremely hacked NuppelVideo codec or some mpeg4 codec. Check it out if you haven't.

Network

[xagon7]

Use the HD still.. or get another one.. and dedicate it to the Tivo like device on another channel in the Server....run cable or use a wi-fi card for the data transfer.

Re:Network

[xagon7]

Just get a cheapO $200 PC and add TV Out for the out to the TV and the DVD player would be unnecessary, and you would get the added benefit of playing MANY more file types-- including DivX

Re:FP!

[martyn s]

I guess I was a little overzealous with my first post, in an attempt to get the 'FP'.

Why, are posts sorted by zealousness, from greatest to least?

Related topic: DVD-RW

[PCM2]

This is the first time I've really read a discussion of CD-RWs and whether there's a purpose to them. I've always been under the impression that CD-Rs were so cheap and CD-RWs were so unreliable after a few erasures that it wasn't really worth using them. You guys seem to pretty much confirm that.

But on the other hand, has anyone done any of the same tests with DVD-RW media?

I just made a back-up of the Documents and Users folders of my Mac OS X box to a DVD-RW blank. It's sort of a "low priority" backup ... I doubt any of that stuff would be completely unretrievable if my hard drive died. But better to have more copies than less, right?

Right now I'm storing that disc in a plastic "keep case" (like the kind DVD movies come in). It sits on my desk, and I have no reason to take it out or carry it around unless my hard disk dies.

When the contents of my hard drive change sufficiently to warrant it, I plan to erase the DVD-RW and write a new back-up from scratch.

The thing is, DVD-Rs are getting cheaper, and DVD-RWs are notoriously unstable (meaning, high failure during writes, and the impression I'm given is that after it fails once, it's a coaster for good.)

What do you guys think? Dumb idea?

Has anyone noticed...

[Audacious]

That this is not one of the things the RIAA and MPAA ever say? According to them - they last forever and always make perfect copies. Maybe this should be brought to their attention?

And yes, I've written and pointed this out to my reps. :-)

When companies talk about MTBF, or number of re-writes, or anything like that you have to remember these few rules:

1. They were done under ideal conditions and not your normal, everyday, household conditions.

2. They count every time they were actually able to do whatever. (Like in being able to write to the CDRW disk they will count even partial writes in order to boost their numbers.)

3. They don't care if they make outrageous statements. It takes a very long time to prove them otherwise. (Take the cigarette industry - PLEASE! Look how long it's taken to prove them wrong. [And they are STILL fighting it in the courts.])

It used to be that if you cut whatever the company said in half you could be close to what the actual figures were. Now it's about a tenth of what they say. Not that all companies are like this. But there are quite a few.

Re:no X0X

[Anonymous Coward]

Every airplane I've flown in has about 20 seats. There is no first class. I'm not bitching, but not everyone flies to NY,NY. I fly from Podunck, Idaho to Barnsville, Iowa.

SVCD beats crap out of VCD...

[Jasin Natael]

Lots of users here are complaining that VCD format discs don't meet the quality of the still-standard VHS tape for personal recording. I agree. SVCD, however, is a tremendous step forward in quality.

Even though it is more expensive, if you're a geek looking for GOOD quality and compatibility in a recording device, without spending gobs of money on DVD-R's every time you want to record "Smallville", try one of these set-tops that supports SVCD:

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvr.php

Although, personally, I'm waiting for a DVD-Recorder that supports SVCD format on DVD-R's. Four hours of record time would rock. That, and the ability to record at DVD quality on a DVD...

Re:SVCD beats crap out of VCD...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Although, personally, I'm waiting for a DVD-Recorder that supports SVCD format on DVD-R's. Four hours of record time would rock. That, and the ability to record at DVD quality on a DVD..."

You can already do something close to that now:

1. Capture video as DV or (preferably) HuffYUV/uncompressed AVI.
2. Encode to 1/2 D1 (352x480 NTSC) at 2.5Mb/s VBR MPEG-2 video/128Kbps Dolby-Digital (aka AC3).
3. Author to DVD-Video

You will get around 4 hrs. of video at SVCD quality. It is important to make the video 1/2 D1 resolution. At full D1 resolution (720x480 NTSC), 2.5Mb/sec MPEG-2 will be too blocky.

And the good thing about this is since you are burning in DVD-compliant format, pretty much any DVD player that works with DVD-R will play it.

SVCD format is not nearly as compatible with the players out there.

Re:SVCD beats crap out of VCD...

[Jasin Natael]

Sorry. I was a little underinformed about formats. CVD (China Video Disc) is 1/2 D1 on a CD, and is supported by many of the standalone recorders on that page. I just need to do some research and find out how the format differs between CVD (which I can make already) and 1/2 D1 DVD's...

I've already had to ask that same question

[cookie23]

I built a similar system myself, basicly a tivo built out of a shuttle SS51G and a all-in-wonder. The problem I've foud is that the CDRW is just too small to replace a VHS. A MPG and standrard VCD quality is about 600 MB per hour, so a CDRW only holds an hour of TV per CD. Thats great for 1 hour long show but it doesn't work too well when you want to store a movie or a longer show. Also I mainly store serries of shows (like star trek) , its far better to have a dvd+r with several episodes of the same show then have to swap through many cds.

Why not just use CD-R's?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can buy a 100 pack spindle of branded Verbatim 80 minute CD-r's at Sam's Club for $25. That's a quarter per CD. Why would you want to rewrite? If you don't want the CD's, just throw them away.
That's my opinion.
JJ

Re:I was thinking about-IBM slogan "Think small"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm waiting for nano-scale ferrite-cores to be implimented. Or pico-vacumn tubes.

Simple Solution

[timeOday]

I don't bother with CD-RW, I just use CDR. I only buy them when they're "free after rebate," which between OfficeMax, Staples, BestBuy, and Compusa, is about every other week.

FYI: SVCD is not MPEG-1!

[LightStruk]

There are two misconceptions being propagated in
the comments today-

1. SVCD is just like VCD: low-res MPEG-1.
2. DivX is feasible for a free Tivo-clone.

Here's the truth -
1. SVCD is glorious 480x480 MPEG-2, not 320x240
MPEG-1. You can fit an average of 45 minutes per
disc, enough for a 1-hour TV show without ads.
2. DivX is incredibly CPU-intensive to encode,
and relatively CPU-intensive to decode. divx.com
does not currently offer a Linux version of the
encoder. In addition, good luck going from
NTSC to fullframe, fullmotion DivX on anything
but the fastest PCs.

Re:FYI: SVCD is not MPEG-1!

[NewtonsLaw]

I'm the guy who posted the story and I'm documenting my experiences and the project at aardvark.co.nz/pvr/.

What you say has some merit -- SVCD is certainly streets ahead of VCD in terms of image quality.

However, DivX is not quite the ogre you make it out to be.

For a start, it takes no more CPU to encode DivX format as it does to do a *good* job of multi-pass MPEG encoding.

On a 1.8GHz P4, TMPGenc takes around 6-8 hours to encode a 100 minute movie into an MPEG2 file to SVCD standards using multipass variable-bit-rate encoding.

You can get faster multi-pass MPEG2 encoders but they are *expensive* -- TMPGEnc is free for MPEG1 encoding and costs (from memory) just $49 for the version with MPEG2 capabilities.

By comparison, the same machine usually does a multi-pass DivX encoding in just a fraction that time.

In respect to playback, the DivX codec is quite nice insomuch as it allows some optimizations and post-processing to be performed as the video is played. This means you can create a video file that is able to be played back on a variety of different machines with different CPU-powers -- such that the faster machine will produce a better result but the slower machine will still play without pauses or stuttering.

In the past couple of months I've downloaded and evaluated hundreds of MB of applications, drivers, documentation, etc for all manner of commercial and freeware PVR solutions. These will all be compared on my site shortly.

I'm also about to publish my findings on the Haupaugge PVR card which does hardware-based MPEG1 and MPEG2 encoding -- thus freeing up the PC's CPU and allowing more "headroom". This is important when you're trying to do things such as timeshift or concurrent record/playback.

Linux-based software solutions are also being evaluated but unfortunately (damn it!) there are only two or three that appear to have much merit.

Given Microsoft's agenda to hog-tie all video and audio with DRM I'd really like to come up with a Linux based (and preferably OSS) option that is reliable, functional and ergonomic.

The truth will (eventually) be revealed :-)

Re:FYI: SVCD is not MPEG-1!

[benwaggoner]

1. Actually, NTSC VCD is 352x240. This is converted to 320x240 on in-window playback on computers, of course, in order to maintain the 4:3 aspect ratio.

2. Well, we needed SOMETHING to do with Moore's law! Heck, my dual Athlon 2100+ MP machine did a 16-hour render last week...

Re:FYI: SVCD is not MPEG-1!

[Anonymous Coward]

One question -- why are people in this discussion using the term DivX when they mean MPEG4? Sure, DivX is one available MPEG4 codec, but there are several others that are at least as widely distibuted (like, say, the MPEG4 codec's in QuickTime and Windows Media). So I can understand why DivXNetworks wants to blurr the distinction between their product and the standard it's based on, I'm not why anybody else would.

For example "it takes no more CPU to encode DivX format as it does to do a *good* job of multi-pass MPEG encoding" doesn't make sense. Perhaps you meant "it takes no more CPU to encode MPEG4 format as it does to do a *good* job of multi-pass MPEG2 encoding"? Or perhaps "it takes no more CPU to encode MPEG4 using the DivX codec as it does to do a *good* job of multi-pass MPEG2 encoding using TMPGEnc"?

As another example, nobody sane would want a "DivX(TM) Compatible DVD Player" (see the headline onthe announcement of the KiSS DP450) -- why would I want a player that only played video encoded with a proprietary codec -- but an MPEG4 Compatible DVD player is very cool! Also, the terms "DivX certified" and "full compatability with all versions of DovC video" and claims like "DivX video compression technology ... offers 7-10 times greater compression than MPEG-2 technology" are all crazy. There's no such thing as a "DivX Video" -- it's an MPEG4 video!

And people say that Apple's marketing is over the top! At least they know the difference between a standard and an implementation...

Re:FYI: SVCD is not MPEG-1!

[NewtonsLaw]

DivX was one of the first *free* MPEG4-compatible codecs available on the Net and it also has its own DivX file format -- creating a true MPEG4 file is an option.

For that reason, DivX does not necessarily equal MPEG4 and due to its rather widespread adoption it represents a defacto standard all its own.

why cdrw?

[Lumpy]

when I buy 40X cdr's at 0.09USD each it makes buying CDRW's a really dumb idea.. and this way I get to archive forever that show/event, toss it or "Horror!" give it away and thusly destroying all the income generated by the starving artists that created that show/movie... (I'm evil and the cause of the economy downturn!)

I have 3 CDRW's here and none of them have ever been opened... there is no need to and they are not worth it.

Isn't CD-RW too small for capacity?

[antdude]

I don't think CD-RW has enough room to hold enough to replace VHS.

Re:Isn't CD-RW too small for capacity?

[runswithd6s]

If you would like to see a nice comparison of VCD, DVD, and DivX recordings, take a look at the grid table at http://www.vcdhelp.com/comparison. This site has lots of good info, a definite bookmark!

DVD-R

[RatBastard]

I got a Pioneer DVD-RW drive and just put stuff to DVD. Sure, DVD-Rs cost a bit, but I only put things I want to actually keep on them. If I'm not going to hold onto the video for a while I jkust leave it on the hard drive.

I didn't go with (S)VCDs because my DVD player (XBox, actually) doesn't play them.

The cost of entry is higher, but the quality is far superior than VHS (unless you're trying to record off of the local Fox station, but that's their fault).

Could you pst a link or something.

[/dev/trash]

I'd like to know how you did this. What software/OS you are using. I have a machine that I wanna convert to a Tivo-clone. Pausing and skipping commercials is not that important to me but I would ike to get some of my VHS tapes on CD too.

Re:Could you pst a link or something.

[NewtonsLaw]

Try this link.

I'm planning to update the site with all my latest findings later this week -- including a review of a Haupaugge tuner/capture card that has onboard hardware MPEG1/MPEG2 encoding.

Linux-based options are also being reviewed as I type this ;-)

Re:Could you pst a link or something.

[/dev/trash]

Cool.
Linux would be great, that way I won't have to partition the Debian box to install Windows.

Do i in real time!

[Anonymous Coward]

Last year, I've written my thesis work about recording VCDs in real time. I have a simple command line tool you can run to record analog TV (with small changes probably from any source) to your CD writer. The code is GPL, based on VCDImager and somewhere in the VCDImager repository.

The thesis text is a bit dated by now but you can still find it at http://users.evitech.fi/~arndb/project/htmlmain/

Arnd Bergmann

Re:Terabyte on a punch card

[garyebickford]

15 years ago a friend w/ PhD in Library Science, told me that according to research at the time (1985), it was technically possible to store a terabyte on a single punch card, the kind that has one 35 mm film frame built into it, used by systems that automated storage of CAD drawings on these high-density microfilm/punchcards. (The CAD drawings were not that high density, but equiv. of 200 dpi x 36x48, or about 69Mbits)

VHS source

[benwaggoner]

VHS has a ton of analog noise. This means that you'll need to encode the digital copy at a substantially higher data rate to get the same effective quality, and you'll have a pretty low ceiling on maximum quality.

The difference between even S-VHS and VHS is huge.

So, grabbing off DVD or straight from a high-bitrate PVR would be quite a bit better. And if you have to go through analog, make sure you're capturing via S-Video instead of composite. Otherwise areas of saturated color will get that annoying cross-hatching effect. It's isn't so noticible on TV, but man is it obvious on a computer monitor!

Re:VHS source

[benwaggoner]

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Alas, I don't know of any really good algorithms to fix this problem in post. The best thing to not use composite equipment (not an option or you, alas).

Turning down the sharpness on your TV (a good thing to do with any digital source) can help reduce the effect.

Re:VHS source

[Kalzus]

Hi there.

The phenomenon you're talking about is called "combing". Sometimes, a piece of NTSC hardware (likesay a capture card or composite monitor) will implement what's callled a "comb filter" to attempt to remove it. The effect is the worst with horizontal borders generated by a digital source (such as an older game console like a Sega Genesis/Megadrive), but it can be found in any NTSC image where two high-saturation primary colors are located right next to each other.

The "sure" way to avoid this is to not to employ composite baseband anywhere in the image generation, which unfortunately means part of it is out of your control entirely. Hence, comb filters. If your capture software can do a software comb filter, or if you can utilize a piece of software that can before you perform the final compression, that would be one way to go.

CD-R more ecconomical than CD-RW

[aaron_pet]

Ok... 2.50 each for CD-RW...

that burn at 8x (10 minutes)

300 minuts of burn time... 2.50 cents spent

lets pretend that 60 minutes was worth 5.00 of your time. that's 25 bucks. 27.50 for CD-RW

oops.. how much time does it take to erase those RWs? maybe double you're time? .25 for a CD-R 1 burn at 40x.. (3 minutes)
7.50 for 30 burns and 90 minutes of burn time...
Thats 15.00 for CD-R... and oh wait.. you get to keep those!

The only reason to use CD-RW is to replace floppy disks... burn a little now, burn a little then...

and then you shouldn't delete stuff... just make a new copy of the file... (I guess CD-R's can be written to more than once.. so why use CD-RW at all?

Rainer might make CD-RW's ok...

I guess you'd use a CD-RW for stuff that you really do want to delete... but then why not just destroy the CD?

how many rewrites people expect from CD-RW?

[Anonymous Coward]

100,000

Oh, excuse me, I thought you said DVD-Ram. You actually said CD-RW in drm/broadcast flag enabled/firewire drm restricted Sony drives.

My mistake

Big Difference

[evilviper]

If you are recording straight to disk, you're stuck. When you record to hard drive, you can edit the video, change your mind and delete it instead, etc. That's what I want. A Tivo with editing capability, and the ability to burn the show to disc in a universal format.

Data Dropouts

[NimitzTreeCat]

I have been doing something similar...capturing using VirtualDub, encoding with TMPgenc, then authoring and burning in Nero. I burn to a CD-RW disc to make sure I have the menus set correctly, and to check the encoding params I am using. I was experimenting this way for a while with just one (1) hi-speed CD-RW disc, and after a while it started dropping bits. I tried doing a COMPLETE/FULL ERASE instead of the quick-erase, and the problem seems to have disappeared. Burning to 4x discs always seem to give me dropouts, no matter how I erase the disc beforehand.

Why are you using CDRW?

[brunes69]

Why are you using re-writes at all? You can get a spindle of CDR's nowadays for $16.00 CDN on sale. (Must be $10 US?) That's 10 cents a disc, and you get to *keep* them. You are meanwhile spending 2.50 on a CDRW that you say can only be burnt 30 times, or 8.3 cents a burn. Seems to be it just isn't economical at all, when you could be spending pretty much the exact same amount and archiving all yoru movies instead of wiping them.

Re:Why are you using CDRW?

[Squozen]

Sod economy, I don't want to be polluting the planet with hundreds or thousands of non-degradable discs containing old Linux distros or rips of films I've since bought the original for.

I figure, we have the money to afford PCs and burners, surely we can stretch to buying CD-RWs and reusing them...

Anything happening with VPVision

[benwaggoner]

Folks,

Say, did anything ever come of On2's VPVision? It was an open-source PVR product based on their VP3 codec (which is now being used in Ogg Theora).

http://www.on2.com/vpvision/vpvision.html

Downloadable source and everything! Only for Windows, though.

Anyone ever check it out?

Re:Closed captioning data-Subtitles.

[Anonymous Coward]

" The SVCD spec does include subtitles. However, the existing linux software to create bin & cue files (vcdimager) doesn't yet deal w/ subtitles."

http://www.vcdimager.org/pub/vcdimager/vcdimager -0 .7_UNSTABLE/NEWS.txt

Are you certain?

a $2.50 CDRW???

[frovingslosh]

I would suggest switching brands and stores. If you're really talking about CDRW media and not rewritable DVD media (and the writeup makes it clear that you are), then you are paying way too much. I see spindles of CDRW media at 25 for $9.99 frequently and sometimes see it on sale for less (quite a change from my first 5 CDRW for $75).

On the other hand, CDR media is much much less, often "free" after rebates. If you're really getting as few as 30 writes on a $2.50 media then writing to CDR might not only be less expensive, but you could build up a nice collection of old movies and TV shows.

Re:Closed captioning data-Subtitles.

[MarvinIsANerd]

that is fine but unless this guy's encoder takes the captioning data from the video blank interval and converts them to the appropriate subtitle format for SVCD (which I doubt it does) i would say my point still stand. plus i question whether or not converting from one format (VBI closed captioning) to another (SVCD subtitles) is acceptable in the eyes of the FCC... something to look into if you're developing this kind of thing.

oh at about one line of a frame per card?

[myowntrueself]

lets see, 24fps, 600 lines per frame,
thats 14400 punch cards per second.

My guess is that it'd catch fire after about
a minute... from the friction.

Also, on a related note, are you some kind of sick tree-killer?????

Re:oh at about one line of a frame per card?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's a bit optimistic

Re:oh at about one line of a frame per card?

[trailerparkcassanova]

No, I'm just your everyday tree-killer.

Re:oh at about one line of a frame per card?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, on a related note, are you some kind of sick tree-killer?????

(In cartman voice)

Are you some kind of tree-huggin' hippie?

Whats TiVo stand for anyway?

[myowntrueself]

'Trash in Video out' or something?

Kind of off-topic, but...

[Scott Hale]

I am very interested in creating a system like this (I have a box already destined for the job sitting in the corner). I'm curious to know what hardware/software you are using to do all this. The idea of an all-in-one recorder, playback, burner, etc... interests me.

Reason why your media doesn't last long

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be noted that DVD drives use a different laser color than standard CD drives. This change partly explains the increased density of DVDs, but it also makes it harder for DVD drives to read CD media. To make matters worse, the dye used in all CD-RW media is almost entirely invisible to DVD lasers. In truth, you are lucky to get the DVD player to read your media even the first time, and you can't possibly expect what manufactures rate their media for. I would be willing to bet, however, that if you put the "damaged" CD-RWs into a standard CD-ROM drive, it will read a near bit for bit replica of what you initially burnt.

It should also be noted that by burning all the raw sectors (2384 bytes vs 2048 bytes per sector) of the CD-RW, you are eliminating all the redundant error detecting and correcting information, so you end up with the data instability of audio CDs. Scratches most definately will become visible errors in your video because there is no redundant information to rebuild the perfect copy. Surely, media manufactures don't rate their media for 1000 rewrites of 100% bit for bit perfection throughout the entire CD, but rather, 100% bit for bit perfection after the CRC data is stored and used when read back.

I don't seem to ba able to get over 40 rewrites

[Pieroxy]

No matter what brand I used, TDK, Memorex... After 30-40 rewrites, the CD starts showing problems on my MP3 CD player as well as in my DVD player...

By the way, I rewrite in 8X with a Yamaha 2100 drive, and the drive doesn't show any errors while burning.

Re:no X0X

[Pii]

Christ! How'd you find Slashdot? Do you compose your posts by beating a drum? Smoke signals? RFC1149 (or RFC 2549 (Qos!))?

Re:I was thinking about-IBM slogan "Think small"

[Anonymous Coward]

My money's on nano-wax-drums.

Re:Once will do - No

[Snaller]

You miss his point entirely. He doesn't have a tivo, and he doesn't want to watch the stuff he records on the computer. He wants to watch it via his DVD on tv. therfore the more times he could reuse a cd the better.

You're PAYING for CD-Rs???

[Andy Dodd]

If you don't give a damn about quality (i.e. one-off burns, not too concerned about speed), you'd better not be paying more than "free after rebate" - Subscribe to a few sales circulars and you should be able to grab a free 25 or 50-pack every 2-3 weeks.

Use a FireWire based IDE docking station

[DrTrogg]

I just puchased one of those FireWire (or USB 2.0, I suppose) connected IDE docks for a harddrive for this very purpose. Cost me all of $65. The access rate is nearly 50 MB/s now and that's more than plenty. I have a slower machine doing the raw recording from the TV, then I unplug it and bring it to the other machine if I want to do some compressing and encoding. 120 GB from one machine to the next in about 30 seconds - hooray for sneakernet !

On a tangent

[Alien Being]

200 disc audio cd changers are pretty cheap. Has anyone converted one to work with generic (cd|dvd)(r|w)* drives?

Re:MPEG? No, Divx...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 500+ VHS tapes to move to digital when blank DVD's get as cheap as blank CDR's.

All pr0n?

Re:MPEG? No, Divx...

[Anonymous Coward]

All pr0n?

Well, duh.

Dirt maybe?

[miffo.swe]

I guess dust and fingerprints can make it hard to record so to keep them clean can extend the number of rewrites. Have you tried to null write the disk at lower speed? In general writing at lower speed should make the tracks better since all disks have balance problems and wows a bit.

Okay..

[mindstrm]

I'm not implying you don't know your analog.

The parent post was talking about vertical resoltion.

Lucky me...

[MsGeek]

I got one of the post-lawsuit AD-1200s. Can't play VCDs, won't play VCDs. Thanks a bunch, Philips! Philips owns the patent on the VCD process...anyone remember CD-I? That's the origins of VCD. Philips got ticked at Apex and forced them to remove VCD compatibility. They never bothered to license it from them, oh well...

Re:Lucky me...

[egriebel]

I got one of the post-lawsuit AD-1200s. Can't play VCDs, won't play VCDs

As many will probably mention, I have an Apex 1100W purchased from Walmart, 60 bucks. It will play anything I throw at it, including a generic MPEG-2 stream burned as just a data-format CD. On any media, CD-R or CD-RW.

Of course, it should, since it's just a basic DVD reader, HW MPEG decoder, microcontroller, and some software in EEPROM.

Re:Lucky me...

[Helter]

The funny thing is that I own a Phillips DVD player and IT can't play VCD either.

Re: ASCII

[Anonymous Coward]

01100110 'f'
01101001 'i'
01110010 'r'
01110011 's'
01110100 't'
00100000 ' '
01110000 'p'
01101111 'o'
01110011 's'
01110100 't'
00001010 'LF'

Mt. Rainier

[C64]

A burner with Mt. Rainier support (i.e. CD-MRW) might be useful for you. The format keeps a defect map, and can intelligently write around the trouble spots. Sure, you give up some space, but that seems a small price to pay to keep your RW's useful for beyond "a mere" 30-40 burns.

Personally, I'm waiting quite anxiously for the DVD-MRW drives to come out...

Why not CD-R's people ask?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I didn't realize at first, and obviously many people posting here, is that CD-R has a lower reflectivity than CD-RW and a lot of DVD players can't read them (my Sony DVP-C660 included). That's why people use CD-RW. Also, cheap CD-R discs can go unreadable within a year because they are made from subpar materials (I have experienced this first hand). That's why I avoid the "free-after-rebate" types and off-brands that I've never heard of.

live in fear big media

[akb]

What I like most about this question is premise must strike fear in the hearts of the MPAA and other big media goons that are reading it. The premise is a recipe for a p2p video experience. The MPAA and the perpetrators of the DTV fiasco are hoping to eke out some more life for themselves by trying to convince people they need better quality and they want to pay more money for it, oh, ignore the chains that come with it.

But your question demonstrates that you don't value what those hucksters are trying to sell you, you want flexibility. And it just so happens that flexibility means you can download video in a reasonable amount of time and store it on cheap media, ala mp3.

I had a Dr Who hankering the other day, hadn't watched it in years. I don't own a TV, I probably watch a sitcom every 3 months or so and am blown away by the crap on TV, I've never been in a household with cable. I downloaded maybe 15 vhs-ish quality Dr Who episodes as divx over a couple nights and watched them over the course of a week, haven't felt the need to watch them or other movies since. Now that's an experience that big media has no interest in providing me.

where to dead cdr's go?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, CDR's were like other products of technology and were not recycled. I suppose when we can dump our techno-waste on China things like that aren't much of an issue. Hey, at least CDR's aren't toxic (I think).

Re:where to dead cdr's go?

[Carrot007]

Unwanted (used) cdr's make usefull makeshift throwing stars.

That is recycling enough ;-)

PC-Based TiVO thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that software sourceforged or what? How do I setup that up!?

Where do I read more?

Thanks!
Steve

Re: vcd/dvd player

[Anonymous Coward]

The pre-progressive Pioneer players are the best you'll find for compatability and quality on an interlaced set. They're built to spec and will play everything CORRECTLY, including all varieties of vcd on all varieties of burnable media.

If you need progressive you might have to look harder, though. Pioneer's choice in deinterlacing chipsets is rather poor, but their interlaced playback is the industry standard for quality. So save your money and pass on progressive unless you need it.

Slightly OT:Mpeg2 encoders for Linux?

[JeffVolc]

I have looked at WebVCR+ (http://webvcrplus.sourceforge.net) in the past and would love to get it working. I haven't been able to, but that's a different story. It would be nice to capture direct to SVCD format.

What mpeg2 encoders are there for linux? I know http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net can do it, but can it capture on the fly?

Any others? I really hate the thought of capturing in one format, re-encoding into SVCD, creating the SVCD image, and burning.

I see all the video stuff for linux still in the beginning stages, like early MP3 creating when you had to rip and THEN encode your music. Now Grip makes it silly easy (GRIP FOR DUMMIES(tm): insert CD, check tracks, left click button). I hope in another year I'll have an SVCDvcr(tm) program like Grip. All the tools are almost there... but not bundled yet.

Jeff

Re:Slightly OT:Mpeg2 encoders for Linux?

[NightEyez]

I've been looking at the DVD Creation Station which runs around $200. There is an encoder chip built in so you don't have to mess around with software compression. Plus its a lot faster and real time.

I have SlashVo

[gosand]

You think that's bad, I've got KatzVo. The damn thing only records shows about 9/11, Columbine and Globalism!

I have SlashVo. It only records re-runs.

Why not just CD-R

[Rothron the Wise]

Seems to me that something that you're not going to keep forever is best kept on the hard drive.

I can't see myself having an archive of video that I at any given time would want to overwrite that wouldn't fit on an 180GB HD with MPEG4 compression.

Given the price of a CD-R it seems a bit pointless to overwrite things.

Economy 101

[billcopc]

Let's run down some numbers for media costs:

The average CDRW blank costs 2-3 bucks. The average CDR blank costs 15 cents. Therefore you can burn 13-20 CDRs for the cost of one CDRW. If the video data you're recording is worth burning, then it might be worth collecting too (entire star trek series or something). My suggestion is to source a truckload of cheap CDR discs (think 2000+ qty, get a discount). CDRW is flaky, slow and unreliable. You can burn a CDR in about 2 minutes with the latest 48x burners, while CDRW is still stuck at 10-12x. This one's a no-brainer.

Re:FP!

[Spokehedz]

Again, sorry about that. I was just trying to get the coveted (?) FP on slashdot.

Methinks that this will be modded to 'Offtopic' soon. But then again, it's off the front-page and I don't think that many people read the posts from days past.

DVD quality

[codeDr]

If DVD quality was important, it would come in a case
that was opened when the media was stuck in the drive.

I've been told that the consumer market doesn't like enclosed media. At least with VHS, I can let the 3-year old insert and play their favorite tapes.
You think I'm going to let the kids play with DVD's ?

Here's one for the Conspiracy Theorists: Bare Media is a plot by the Content Distributors to sell more product!

divide by 10

[artemis67]

He said "30-40," not 3-4...

Re:Closed captioning data-Subtitles.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think it is FCC good, it is how DVDs seem to do it. (For playback purposes only, I haven't seen what the stand alone recorders do)

KTBY is a joke!

[delorean]

unless you're trying to record off of the local Fox station, but that's their fault).

HA! I read that and thought "sounds like someone from Anchorage!" Sure enough, you've got a GCI address.
KTBY is such a joke-- they do really well but don't spend any money of hardware. Even the shoestring local Christian station looks soo much better. Here in Houston (TX) Fox is outstanding, UPN is amazing, and NBC looks crappy/grainy though the studio is smart.