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.

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"

[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"

[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"

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

# 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...

[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

[los furtive]

What do you use as PVR software?

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:

[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.

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.

[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:Hard Drives

[PeterChenoweth]

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

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?

[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)

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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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).

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

[Polo]

I did this.

once.

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?

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.

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: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/

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?

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

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...

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...

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.

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.

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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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

Re:Hard Drives

[jedidiah]

Then don't fixate on the DVD player.

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

[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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Shuffle the cards

[sulli]

and it would be excessively amusing!

Re:Hard Drives

[Rader]

For CDR maybe, but not CDRW.

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

You've got a double bit error

[Bill Currie]

! is 041, not 042

What about FreeVo?

[Mitchell Mebane]

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

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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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!

[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.

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

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).

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

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.

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.

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 ;-)

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.

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?

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.

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?????

Whats TiVo stand for anyway?

[myowntrueself]

'Trash in Video out' or something?

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.

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?

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.

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...

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...

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.

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.

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.

divide by 10

[artemis67]

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