CD Burners with Built in Compression

EconolineCrush writes "Bored of new CD-R/RW drives that only seem to decrease burn times by a few seconds over their predecessors? Check out this review of Plextor's PlexWriter Premium over at The Tech Report. With an advertised CD-R burn speed of 52X, the PlexWriter is certainly fast, but its ability to encrypt the contents of burned data CDs and squeeze nearly a Gigabyte of data onto a 700MB disc is what sets it apart from other high-speed burners."

Comments

Bending the standards

[doormat]

The "compression" used here is actually bending the CD spec, as the pits on the disc are smaller than normal. As stated in the article, no other drives were able to read the disc that had just under 1GB stored on the disc. The setting at 120% of normal capacity seemed to work on a few more drives, but still not all. Its prolly just easier to get a DVD+/-RWfor $300 USD instead of going and buying all new CD-ROMs/CDRWs that read the compressed discs (assuming you have a few computers).

Re:Even zipped?

[Danta]

Yes, because its a hardware "compression" technology, i.e. it doesn't modify the data it gets, just fits more of it on the disc: "The process works by shortening the length of the pits being written to the disc; shorter pits means more pits fit on the disc, and more pits means more data. The problem, of course, is that because these pits are shorter than the standard for data or audio CDs, compatibility with other drives may be hit or miss. Plextor does guarantee that the PlexWriter Premium will read any GigaRec disc, but they make no guarantees about other drives."

Re:CD Burners with Built in Compression

[arcanumas]

So if it does not interoperate with other devices it is not really a CD/RW breakthrough but rather an extension to the hell that has become CD-R. It may never be adopted by other firms and you are stuck with disks that become useless once your device breaks.
And i have to agree with you that this is just putting CD-R techology to life-support. DVD is coming our way rapidly..

What happened to those flueroscent 'something' technologies that promised tremendous capacities?

Re:Compressed Data

[James_Duncan8181]

Actually it does it in a rather neat way - by shortening the length of the burnt pits to increase the data density of the disc. This means that it can fit up to 40% more data. This does mean that you have a horrendously non-standard disc, but that's not that much of a problem if they are for you to keep.

And yes, yet another feature is on-the-fly encryption. Note that the article states that you need Plextor software to decrypt, which is a nice vendor lockin for them, I guess.

I just have a suspision that I will be able to decrypt them in Linux about when Satan is building snowmen...what's wrong with encrypting then burning?

Re:Oh boy, I can't wait

[Latent Heat]

And with the 4.7 Gig of the DvD burner already available, why are we messing with such stuff?

Re:CD Burners with Built in Compression

[Surak]

With current DVD-writer pricing who is gonna settle for a CD writer no matter how premium it is?

DVDs have no clear standards at this point. I think I remember someone saying that DVD-RW is the one standard reaching the critical mass market, but is it *there* yet? And the media, last time I looked, was still hard to find and expensive when you did find it.

I agree that this new CD-RW extension is crap, but I don't think DVD-writers are viable until there is one standard that everyone can read.

OR...

[VirtuaKnight]

You could just spend a little extra money on a DVD-R or DVD-RW drive, and gain the ability to burn 4.7GB of data to a disk that uses an already popular format.

Re:1 GByte data with ANY burner

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

Nice information, but irrelevant to the article at hand. Software compression can be done by anybody (gzip). This device uses physical compression of the pits on the written disk. It packs more pits onto the same sized media by making them closer together and smaller. The result is a CD-R that can hold 40% more data.

While software compression is nice, it doesn't work on mpeg, mp3, etc files very well. This new method of hardware compression of the pits on the media does work with this type of file, or any type of file no matter how random the digits.

Re:CD Burners with Built in Compression

[Surak]

See my point? No clear standards. I've seen a lot of DVD-RW drives on the shelves, while hearing that the DVD+RW has the backing of the big players. Out of one side, I hear a lot of consumers are buying DVD-RW, while the players on the other side are backing DVD+RW.

Again, no clear standards. I'll wait it out, thank you very much.

Non-standard, but is that a problem?

[An Onerous Coward]

Most of the posts I've seen claim that this new feature is useless, because the non-standard disks won't read on other drives.

But what if manufacturers decided to jump on the bandwagon, and start supporting these "overcooked" CDs. If other drives started coming out, claiming the ability to read anything below 300% or 500%[*], you've got a new contender to DVD-RW as a backup medium.

We've dealt with backwards compatability issues before--remember when CD-RW came out? People will accept that, to read a 140% disk, they need a 140% or better reader, and life will go on. The problem is, if the specs are kept proprietary, I doubt any demand will be there for this technology.

It may come to nothing, like back when somebody found a way to cram 30 megs of data on an ordinary floppy. But I think the market fragmentation would be worth it if something like this took off.

* Assuming, of course, such a feat is even possible.

We need MORE standardization, not less...

[dpbsmith]

For years now a certain company has been delivering data to the company I work for on CD-R's. And every time, it's a crapshoot finding a drive that can read the thing. Sometimes I can, but my colleague in the next cube can't. Sometimes it's the other way around. Sometimes I can read it in my Mac but not in my PC. Sometimes in my PC but not in my Mac.

This seems to be par for the course. And it's even worse with CD-RW's. And worse yet with DVD media.

Yes, I've heard all the usual folklore. "If you have a reasonably MODERN drive, it SHOULD read MOST CD media--if it's of high quality."

And how can you tell if the blanks are good enough? With gasoline, I glance at the octane number printed on the pump; with motor oil, the API rating.

With CD-R media? Well, some folks say "just use Verbatim," some say "use anything BUT Verbatim," some say "the green dye is best," some say "I just buy the cheapest I can find and never have any problems..." Some say "Just keep testing different brands and stick with the one you find that works best." Right. I have better things to do with my time than QA media.

And if you have problems and complain, the media companies say "sounds like your drive is the problem" and the drive companies say "sounds like you have bad media."

Meanwhile, this company keeps sending us CD's and when one comes in, it's time to spend an hour finding who has a PC that will read THIS one.

We've asked the company to please use high quality media and they assure us that they do.

The LAST, absolutely the LAST thing we need is some harebrained nonstandard compression scheme, and idiots sending us compressed CD's and telling us, "Well, they work fine in MY drive."

Re:They used to do it that way.

[Anonymous Coward]

By far, the GigaRec is not the main feature of the drive. That is similar to saying the main feature of the Yamaha F1 is the DiscT@2 feature.

this thing's blatent violation of the CD-ROM standards

The violation is optional. You can create incompatible CDs if you want.

The principle features of the drive are the audio recording features. In audio recording, only the Yamaha F1 competes.

Again, the drive (as well as the Yamaha) does NOT break any standards by default. The standards-breaking feature is an option.

Flame away at Plextor if you want, but first, read something about the drive. It's actually receiving good reviews in the audio forums.

(Yes, I did have fun feeding the troll.)

Plenty of use...

[DisKurzion]

I don't see why some of you are so adamant about this technology being "useless". The most popular argument seems to be that one should just buy a dvd burner instead of cramming more data on a CD-R.

The last time I checked, it's still over $0.50 per DVD disc (including rebates), while I obtain almost all my CD-R's for free. Right now, I have 300+ blank CD-R's sitting around that I won't use anytime soon, all compliments of Staples/Office Max/Circuit City. I'd rather use that extra couple hundred meg per CD than spend more money on new blank disks. (Plus, for a GOOD DVD burner, it's still in the $200 range)

Don't know about you, but most of the data I back up is for MY computer, so I don't give a damn if nobody else can read it. Worst case, I'll copy the data to my HD, then send it over the network to the other comp.

And for the record I'm delighted at the fact that a company is focusing on other potential improvements to their CD-RW drives than being able to burn a disc a couple of seconds faster than their previous models. Right now, I only have a 16X burner, and most of the time, it's plenty fast for me.

Re:HD-Burn?

[evilviper]

Oh, and it works in most CD-ROM drives that are out already.

Not according to the article it doesn't:
A written disc by "HD-BURN" technology is compatible with a DVD player, and allows the player to read the disc with some modification of firmware.

So, it's only readable by DVD-ROMs, and then, only if they have their firmware updated specifically for it. So, you have something less compatible than CD/DVD, that holds less than DVDs, that is more expensive, etc. I really don't see the point at all.

DVD-RW drives are cheaper per MB in the long-term, and CDs are more compatible, cheaper initially, and cheaper per-disc than DVD. This device doesn't have a single advantage over CD/DVD, it has the _disadvantages_ of both actually.