Slashdot Mirror
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?"
All the answers to your questions have already been given on http://www.dvdrhelp.com. Not only do they detail which DVD players accept which formats, but tell you were to get the best deals on media, which formats work the best, and what dvd-r/w+r/w drives work the best.
I don't want to troll, but a simple google search would have easily answered all of your questions.
I think we'd all enjoy a nice cold beverage. -David Letterman
DVD-R has something like 89% compatability - meaning 89% of the DVD players out there will play DVD-R. Almost ALL DVD players made after 1999 will do DVD-R. DVD+R is next with 85% compatability. Note that DVD+R offers a couple more features, but you trade off just a notch of compatability. The +/-RW formats are less compatible... modern DVD players should be able to do it. My friend bought a new DVD player which said in the instructions that it couldn't play DVD+RW, but I burned one anyway and his player was able to play it just fine.
You can find more information and even user testimonials here.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
we have a sony dru-500ax here that burns either format (dvd+ and dvd-). it is our experience that the "dvd-r/rw" works much better than the dvd+ in off-the-shelf dvd players. i have an apex 1100 at home and it will not play the dvd+ discs (verbatim brand 2.4 speed) that i have burnt with this unit, while the dvd- (also verbatim brand 2.4 speed) discs play just fine. we also have another brand of dvd player in our break room (dont remember the brand) and it wont play them either, and its fairly new. we've also had trouble getting the dvd+ data discs to read in some of the computers we have on campus (brand new dell optiplex) while the dvd- work. maybe its just the brand of discs that we are using. hope this helps....YMMV
...record in BetaMax!
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]
Wow, remind me never to cross you. Looking at me might take up too much of your precious time.
On second thought, I wish I knew you, just so I could give you Dickens for your birthday and watch you cry.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
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
...which is the entity that defines the DVD Format specifications, publishes reference materials, creates DVD Format books, administers the DVD Verification Laboratories, and licenses the familiar DVD logo:
"Please note that the "+RW" format, also known as DVD+RW was neither developed nor approved by the DVD Forum. The approved recordable formats are DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM."
Technically, DVD+RW aren't even DVDs, since, in order to be a DVD, it must be approved by the DVD Forum. The +RW alliance, will have you believe otherwise; that they don't have to follow any standards and that the DVD Forum means nothing.
DVD+RW's biggest "benefit" over -RW is that it allows for packet writing - therefore allowing it to be treated like a normal writable volume, having files added to or deleted from it at will, and doesn't require closing the disc. The drawback is that a bunch of companies went out and did this on their own, and DVD+RW is the least compatible format with consumer DVD players. Of course, manufacturers - particularly those a part of this "alliance" - have buckled to provide support for it. A somewhat backwards approach, if you as me. In any case, in the days of cheap 200GB+ drives, I'm not sure why you'd want to use a really slow recordable optical format that holds a comparatively scant amount of data as a writeable volume...after all, DVD-R/RW can hold data as well, just not via packet writing methods.
Many manufacturers are providing DVD-R/RW/+RW drives now, so I imagine this point will be moot.
DVD-R/RW is backed by the DVD Forum, as well as a long list of hardware manufacturers. A few months ago, this would have given this format the edge. Microsoft, however, has recently thrown its weight into the +R/RW camp along with the many hardware manufacturers which were already supporting it. This sort of evens things out.
I assume the reason MS decided to back +R/RW is because of its ability to provide lossless linking in the recording mode that is the most compatable with video DVD players. This feature allows realtime streaming of low bitrate MPEG directly to video-compatable DVD which is something MS probably figures many consumers will want to do.
The fact that both formats have strong backing probably means that we will have to live with both formats for longer than we previously thought unless one camp or the other suddenly backs down, which is unlikely.
As for me, I have a +R/RW, and am so far very happy with it. It is well supported in Linux through the growisofs utility, and I haven't had any problem with compatability of the +R media in video DVD players.
The growisofs webpage mentioned above has a good technical discussion of the lossless linking issue and why this is supposedly an advantage for +R/RW (look near the bottom of the page), although I personally don't do realtime MPEG streaming to DVD.
I was a very early adopter of CD-R with sony's first CD-R drive at 2K$us back then when the CDs were over 20$ a pop.... I was always satisfied with the writer and never in my mind the doubt of "losing data" before 10 years really triggered....
;)
With the pioneer, I went along the logic that they were the first to introduce a "end user" DVD-R unit (at 10K$ back then) so I thought that at the A04 revision it would be a winner... God I was wrogn, that unit pissed me off so much, first, the firmware issues, passing from 1.20 to upwards; you couldn't revert back to older firmware because pioneer locked the firmware with a key, you couldn't put cheap disks into it anymore, and the worst was the princo RW would never record correctly or freeze the drive off and I had to do some weird "leave the cd in while resetting the unit, boot windows, use dvddecrypt in debug and reinit + full erase RW" to recuperate the disk. Anyways, of course if you would use 5x more expensive medias you'd have less problems, but at that price point it was defeating the reason why I bought a DVD-R in the first place ($/megs/reliability). Nightmare aside, what pissed me off the most is when I started seeing reports of DVD failing after a short amount of time, even commercial grade one. Dunno if other people here will post more specifically about that subject but it got me worried to a point where I use cheap medias, and only use my drive as "second layer backup" for the time being and when I have something critical to put on disk I go out and shell more for a brand-name disc, which I find is way overpriced. Of course if you burn 2x on a 1x media with an hacked firmware, you're asking for trouble, but this isn't my case, I always burn at 1X to put every chances on my side.
Drives are comming down in price, which is a good thing, newer models have both +R and -R support so that stupid (very stupid) compatibility thing shouldn't be a problem anymore unless you run into firmware issues like I did. Even if you buy something cheap, READ the forums, read the firmware discussion groups, and like when buying a motherboard to build a server for example, ALWAYS read the tech support forums of the company or "unofficial supports" sites before making a decision if you are planning on using your device for stuff you'd want to keep for a while. This is where I failed, I took the pioneer brand for granted... I can tell you there are a buttload of unhappy customers with the A04 model, A05 came out shortly after with 4x support which was even more upsetting because it wasn't announced a decent time before the release (I would have waited). Now the A06 has dual support (+/- R/RW) But I'd go Sony or even LG before going back to pioneer, the tech support was lame and that firmware issue had ABSOLUTELY no justification, locking a firmware to not be downgradable and introducing support only for your DVD-Rs (1.20->1.31) as a feature is simply disgusting.
As for a standard... it's hard to tell, since all drives manufacturers seems to go for Dual-mode drives, the fight will probably stay there until the next leap happen (like those 20+GB dvds with backward compatibility, maybe they will limit it to 1 standard). The reason I chose -R over +R is because they were 2-3 years LATE into delivering the product from the "supposed launch date", I was planning on working with that about a year after the supposed launch date, 2 years after I was still waiting and I was really upset so I went the other way, and still got screwed a bit
Oh and a good source for firmware discussion/problems for most drives Firmware Page
They were really helpful into hacking that damn device and firmware so that I could downgrade it.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
All sorts of hacks, manufacturer links, FAQs, etc.
... the only one that has no chance of being read in a standalone player.
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.