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DVD Recording - Is There a Winner Yet?
Rob writes "Ok, so I've finally gotten my TiVo configured to let me extract and archive video, now I'm wondering what is my best solution? I currently have a CDR that I've been able to use to save both VCD and SVCD. Unfortunately I have a very old DVD player that will only play VCD's. So I decided that it's time to look at recording to DVD, but what is the right answer? Has any format won? I just got back from Fry's and I could get either -R/-RW or +R/+RW and there were even drives that did all of the formats. This is all well and good, since I'll have to buy a new DVD player to play any of them, but which format is most widely accepted? Even if I get a drive that will record in any format what do most DVD players accept? Sure I can make sure that my DVD player will play whatever format I produce but what about my parents and friends?"
If you are going to get a new dvd player anyway, why not just stick with svcd and cdr? DVD recorders are too expensive and the format is unsettled.
I know you want to go out and get that dvd burner now , but if you can get by with your (s)vcds for another year or so the blue laser dvd burners which store a little over 24 gigabytes will probably be about the same price as the current dvd burners. However, if you can't wait (and I don't blame you I want one too), I would by one of the Sony burners that supports all of the formats, they cost a little more though. After you get it installed and have a new dvd player you can try recording in different formats to see what your or friends or families dvd players like best and burn your dvds accordingly.
If your existing player works be happy, but if you are not willing to buy a new compatible player, forget about it, return the DVD burner and stick with VCD & SVCD.
Its very hit and miss for all DVD+R DVD-R DVD-RW & DVD+RW. I've found two occasions where two instances of nominally the same model player ( JVC, Sharp) DVD-R played perfectly on one and glitched badly on the other.
The "format war" is a distraction to cover the fact that the DVD industry sold out to Hollywood and changed the laser wavelength for burned disks and this makes compatability of "old" players designed to the DVD Forum's specs a crap
shoot when it comes to playing burned disks.
Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
here's what you do
1. ditch the dvd idea
2. buy a relatively cheap pc, or if you're crafty, convert an xbox.
3. put a big harddrive in it
4. connect svideo out of computer into video 1 on tv or equivalent.
5. visit doom9.org. and buy dixv pro codec
6. convert tivo format to divx.
7. you're done
While I agree with you that DVD-R is the only standard approved by the DVD Forum, I disagree that it will disappear. I wanted it to go away from the start, trust me - but it hasn't, and I had to get a burner that did both standards if I wanted to find the best price on discs. For example, my PS2 will only read specific brands of discs, ie Verbatim. Verbatim makes both DVD-R and DVD+R discs. I can get a 15 pack of DVD-R for $35 - but Best Buy and Sam's Club stopped carrying them, so they are next to impossible to find. I can however buy a 50 spindle DVD+R Verbatim discs at Sam's for $80, and they are very easy to find. So, I don't see your logic about DVD+R going away any time soon.
I wouldn't count DVD+R so quickly.
IIRC, DVD+R was introduced _after_ the DVD forum approved the dash format. I think it was a political move by the companies that designed the format that lost.
Another fork in your theory is that most computer retailers are heavily biased to the DVD+R recorders, the exception usually being Sony's dual mode +/- drive. When the retail exposure of drives is that heavily biased, I fear the viability of the DVD-R format, I want DVD-R to survive.
The media costs the same and at most stores are equally available though. It seems the plus-only recorders are often at $10 cheaper than the dash-only recorders, but I'm not bothered in paying 5% more for that 5% more player compatibility.
while it's certainly no fun waiting for a format war to end, it's also no fun having to burn separate dvd's for use on separate dvd players. we all know that the ideal solution would be to have one format, across the board, and for that format to be the one which proves technically superior.
multiformat drives may actually be a bad thing in the long run, because they "cement-in" two competing formats instead of waiting for one to die out.
it looked like +RW might triumph when microsoft threw its weight behind the standard originally. i figured MS would use its monopolistic tactics to drive the other standard out and that would be that. then compatibility would be 100% and we could all enjoy the benefits of +RW's extended features.
unfortunately, MS backtracked and is now supporting all the different formats in Longhorn.
I have a Toshiba that I bought after it had been a floor model for a year at a large electronics store. It is a 1997 model that I obtained in 1998. The thing is still kicking.
The picture quality is superb, and it even has component output, although it does not do progressive, nor does it have fiber output for audio (only coaxial digital audio).
It has survived five moves to new locations, including two years in a college party house with 5 guys abusing it on a regular basis.
I only recently replaced it with a progressive scan Panasonic because of my desire to be able to watch VCDs and SVCDs, and also to have progressive output for my HDTV.
It is now faithfully serving movies to my bedroom TV instead of my HDTV in my living room.
I think that qualifies as very old!
This allows svcd to play on a lot of players that normally don't work with svcd. Basically you demux/remux the file and change the header to vcd but retain the svcd quality. Look on vcdhelp.com for instructions. It's easily done in tmpgenc.net. But besides file storage, I'm not really excited about dvd video storage. MPEG2 is just too big. Think about this, commerical dual layer discs are 9 gigs. Single layer dvd r is roughly 4.5. At dvd compliant formats thats only about an hour of video. Never mind it takes forever to encode. So I encode this massive 4.5 gig beast of a file for 1 lousy hour? No thanks, I'm more excited about mpeg4 players, if they ever get off the ground.
Great combination. The Sony DRU500 burns to all DVD media (except -RAM), and the Panasonic S35 reads all media (incl. -RAM).
Only irritating drawback is the ripping speed of the Sony (2.1 max on pre-recorded media). If you do alot of ripping get a DVD-ROM unit for ripping, leave the Sony to burn, and the S35 to play on your home theatre.
DVD-R is most compatible, and for now, cheapest. You can buy bulk media for around $1.10 including the case from places like www.shop4tech.com. The Sony DRU-500A is the best drive to get, it burns all formats, so you're not locked in. DVD-Shrink is an excellent free program for backing up Dual Layer DVD's that exceed 4.38 gb. I used DVD Decrypter (also Free) and Veritas Backup Now (comes with the Sony drive) to backup movies that are smaller. I've used Nero, but found that it is somehow formatting my backups differently than other software, so those backups have not been compatible in my 3 different players (work in the Apex cheapo, not in the Sony or Toshiba). Those made with Backup Now work in all. As for compatibility, with good DVD players under $100, and cheapos in the $30s, go with what you want. The way you backup your DVDs is going to have much more of an effect than what you play them in. My two cents
Got CDs with mpg files burned as just files instead of (X)S/VCD tracks? It'll play em. MP3s burned on a DVD? It'll play em. Got mpg files encoded with nonstandard resolutions? (512x384, 352x176, etc) It'll play em. I can personally sttest to it's smooth playback of both PAL DVD and SVCD content on NTSC hardware
With several revisions floating around, region coding can be disabled on all models, just requiring a different code to be punched in depending on which model you have. Easily looked up based on the serial number of the unit.
Early, 'golden' models were just using an IDE DVD drive, which some industrious users have managed to hack the firmware for to allow dropping in a HD instead. Macrovision can only be disabled on these early 'golden' models as well, which are sadly hard to find nowadays. Granted, the playback hardware was less powerful in the 'golden' models than the other variants to pop up since, but I'd still like to be able to just pop in a big HD worht of MP3s & JPGs, load up the undocumented 'musical slideshow' feature, and just leave it running :'>
As for the shelf placement, you put the stuff that you want to sell on the "better" shelves. If people are going to bend over and strip the shelves bare of a product anyhow, why bother to put it in a prime location? Stores regularly sell endcap placement to vendors, and I'm starting to wonder whether Best Buy's placement of DVD+R/+RW on the top shelf (for the non-Americans out there, that top shelf is at about 3 feet height) hasn't been subsidized by someone.
To expand on my point, I had no trouble finding those 15-disc spindles of 2X Verbatim DVD-R when they were $3/disc. Then they lowered the price to $2/disc, and they literally vanished. Sometimes I can find them at the tiny Best Buy in San Marcos (halfway between Austin and San Antonio), which doesn't have big city customers to drain the stock as badly. I recently found there the only 50-spindle of 1X Memorex DVD-R that I have ever seen in stock at Best Buy, with zero Verbatim spindles nearby. Clearly people are buying them up wholesale as soon as they get a new supply in.
If you still aren't convinced, then you never will be.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
"Just because Microsoft prefers it doesn't make it better"
No, it just means that it has $54,672,000,000 backing it up.
In order to make this past Christmas a successful one, I wanted to make sure that the "special edition" DVDs I was making for family members were as compatible as possible.
After extensive reading, some experimenting and some real-life experience (both successful and less-than) I can say the following:
A DVD-R burned on high quality media (e.g. 2X Maxell - this brand has the best compatibility that I have read about and personally experienced) in the proper DVD spec (I stick with 1.0 or 1.1) will work on MOST players, including at least one "first generation" Pioneer set-top player.
In my experience, after testing various conditions on a number of set-top players, it is the media that makes the most difference in compatibility rather than anything else. As long as your MPEG video stream is spec (or corrected) and your audio is also at spec I think you'll be good to go.
BTW I do all this via BSD (Mac OS X) and Linux (TiVo) over a WLAN.
I've poked at Apple's DVD compatibility page, but that seems oriented towards players that will accept discs made by the drive Apple is putting on their new computers; I can't find an authoritative source on what drives will work well with older Macs, but have heard horror stories about drives not working in hardware similar to my Mac.
Has anyone upgraded their "vintage" Mac to DVD+/-R/RW/whatever? How did it go? What problems did you find? Where were the good deals on workable drives? I've seen generic rebranded Pioneer drives as low as $180 (Apple's superdrive also seems to be a rebranded Pioneer, so this is encouraging), but I'm not opposed to paying a little more for reliable compatibility if the no-name ones could be problematic.
Thanks :-)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Actually, the format has died. Sony (only recently) discontinued making the players. Their niche market, I assume, is migrating towards digital recording.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
They just want their movies to work on Uncle Bob's DVD player, puchased 3 years ago... it ain't gonna work with DVD+RW.
This just plain isn't true. If you browse through sites like dvdrhelp.com, which I did recently, you will find two things: 1) the user reports of compatability vary considerably even within the same DVD player model, and 2) if you average the results (which you must do because there is so much "noise" in them), there is very little difference between the two formats in terms of compatability. If one is better than the other, it is by only a few percentage points at most.
I have played +R disks in many players made during the last 5 years, and have not had any problems. The surface reflectivities of the two types of disk are very similar, and a player which is physically capable of playing a -R will almost always play a +R, at least in my experience. Some players might refuse to play a disk which is tagged as a +R, but there are utilities available which will let you change the so-called "book type" field to get around this problem.
I agree that end users will not have any issue with the two types of DVD-R/RW, but there is one difference that probably will make a difference to some consumers. DVD+R/RW is capable of recording with lossless linking in the mode which is the most compatable with video DVD players (see this page (near the bottom) for a technical description of this issue). What this feature means is that with +R/RW, you can stream variable bitrate MPEG directly to the DVD and have the resulting disk be more compatable with video DVD players than with -R/RW, which wasn't designed with this in mind. My hunch is that this is one of the reasons M$ has decided to put its weight behind +R/RW (along with the Mt. Rainier stuff).
The bottom line is that for all users who don't need to stream MPEG directly to the DVD (which probably includes most Linux users), there is very little practical difference between the formats. Both formats have the support of some heavy hitters and neither one is likely to go away anytime soon.
Which software were you using to export video from the Tivo. Everything I've used has had terrible audio/video sync problems....
Every player is different. Check out this site for you current hardware befor buying anything. My Apex-600a does great with SVCD's made from my dTivo and plays DVD+R ok, but not RW material.
http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers.php
Herein we see the old Zip/SyQuest debate playing out once again.
Neglecting DVD-RAM, DVD-R came out first. It has the expanded user base that corresponds with that noteworthy accomplishment. Also, because it's been out longer, it is currently cheaper than DVD+R. The DVD+R format may have certain advantages over -R, but as several people here have mentioned "+R/W is better, but I have a -R drive in my own machine."
-R will win out... for at least a while longer. I give it two years, minimum.
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I'm sick and tired of being responsible for the preservation of the universe and its outlying suburbs.
A store's stock is just the integral of the delivery rate minus the sales rate (clipped between zero and available floor space). They could sell a pallet a day and you'd never know it, unless you see them restock whole the shelf at once. This is common enough to have its own jargon--"flying off the shelves", "can't keep it in stock", "reserve yours today", "act now--quantities limited".
Damn dude, I've got the A03 and it has been bulletproof for over 200 burns. I have made one coaster from using some program called "Alchohol" to burn, but with Nero and others, ZERO probs. The Pioneers are simply the best drives! $189 now for the A05.
Check out the next couple of weeks: http://www.divxplayer.nl/?language=English
Their *next* model, dp550 has all you want:
Standalone model, dvd rw+-, TV-in, web-radio and 100MB lan
(actually, its is TUX in a neat box)
The current model (dp500) lacks recording, but this will be available in the dp550