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DVD Recording - Is There a Winner Yet?

Posted by Cliff on from the narrowing-down-the-options dept.

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?"

5 of 391 comments (clear)

  1. Blue laser DVD? by jrl87 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  2. stick with VCD & SVCD. by Miguel+de+Icaza · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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]
  3. forget dvd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  4. Re:How about region-free and PAL/NTSC? by Shrubbman · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I've been happy with my Norcent DP-300 in this regard. Cheap as anything (I got it for $90 CND, I think it's about $60 USD south of the border, Walmart carries it) and it'll play just about anything you throw at it so long as it's of the mpeg1 or 2 variety, or mp3, or jpg.

    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 :'>

  5. Much Success with TiVo to DVD-R by bergschrund · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Though I don't know that anyone can speak authoritatively, I can speak from my personal experience in doing exactly what you're talking about for about a year now (e.g. downloading from TiVo, adjusting MPEG headers to DVD spec and burning DVD's after manipulation with DVD StudioPro).

    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.