DVD-Rs go 8x

DiZASTiX writes "It seems that the next speed level for DVD Writers is here. "The race for Xs is still on and Plextor has gone into the lead with the PX-708A, what Plextor claims is the first commercialized 8X DVD recorder. At this speed, a 4.5 GB DVD+R takes under 9 minutes to record. That is about the same as a CD in just over a minute. What we wanted to know was whether the reliability and compatibility of blank supports suffer from this breakneck speed...""

Comments

I dunno but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most DVD-R's struggle to work reliably at 4x...

When does this quote get old...

[c_oflynn]

Thought this was kinda funny:

from this breakneck speed...

Kinda like when the blazing fast 166 MHz pentiums come out, you know in a year people will be scoffing at 8x DVD speed ;-)

speed is not a concern

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about speed? When will we see DVD-9 DVDs, so we can backup copies perfectly, isntead of having to resort to "shrinking" them to fit on a DVD-5? Is it even theoretically possible to burn multi-layer on a consumer device?

Re:speed is not a concern

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, doesn't anybody read DVD sites around here? Phillips has already demoed a 16X and in RPMs that's roughly equivalent to a 48X CDR, so it's not all that amazing.
And as for the dual layers, that's a known quantity as well. The 8.5 dual layer 8 speed drives are supposed to be hitting the shelves before March 04. As for the price on the dual layer media, well that's another issue. Personally, I'm watiting for it though. No hurry. When the media is good and cheap I'll be good and ready.
And BTW, DVD media production costs for 8X media are currently around US0.30 cents a disc. So, if you're paying fifty cents or more consider how much markup you're forking over.

Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

The present media won't stand it. I've yet to see a 4X writer, standalone or SuperDrive in a Mac, that will be 100% reliable at 4X. And if it's not the media, it's the writing technology.

This would be a major breakthrough if it works. IF. I'm skeptical.

DVD++R

[gmania]

Actually ...

its DVD+R at 8x and DVD-R at 4x

buffer

[iamthemoog]

8x is a pretty damn fast write speed for a 2MB buffer. I know Plextor have introduced a whole bunch of buffer under-run stuff, but I for one would be happier with a bit more. (especially since my hard drive is so horribly fragmented....)

8MB wouldn't (shouldn't?) be out of the question for a top of the line product such as this.

In about three months

[Anonymous Coward]

Both the minus and the plus consortiums have announced such players, and have them in demo versions.

Philips intends to release to oem's its dual layer writer around about the same time it releases its 12X drive - which is sometime in febuary. Expect them on the shelves in March.

(The dual layer writer will only go at 2.4X at first though - and when you're burning a single disc and it takes two hours, you will care about speed.)

the slowdown in writing is dirty media

[Selecter]

If you get any fingerprints, scratches, etc on yer disks they are not going to burn anywheres close to the rated drive speed anyways. Most poeple dont get the benefit of higher speed burns becuase they are slobbish :)

Id like to see two ratings for burnable media. Something like 8X when new and clean, 2X when smeared with grape jam and peanut butter or somethin. :D

Plextor's 708A works just fine at 8X

[Jarnis]

I've had the Plextor drive in question now for bit over a week. Works like charm. Using Maxell's 4x DVD+R discs, which the drive detects to be 'good enough' for 8X, I've now written about a dozen of these with zero problems. It's a Plextor after all, which roughly translates to being the Ferrari of the optical drives...

So yes, based on my personal experience, while Plextor's 708A costs an arm & leg compared to low end DVDRW drives, it works as advertised and burns at 8X without problems to DVD+R discs. Have not tried DVD-R yet, but according to documentation, it's limited to 4X.

DVD-R vs DVD+R

[mm0mm]

is as sticky competition as VHS vs Beta. No matter how fast they are I won't buy a burner until either of them becomes de facto standard. ...oh yeah, I know a lot of burners burn both formats, but it doesn't matter to me. I mean, what happened to DVD-ROM drives nowadays? Does anyone even remember?

Re:DVD-Rs go 8x

[MrDolby]

"[hmm: make a harddrive system where you only carry the platters around and the motor/controller stay in the computer? Damn patent that idea!]."

Wouldn't that be called a floppy disk.

Re:Same "in" longer?

[Pupp3tM]

I'm guessing what you meant to say was that it takes about a minute longer than a CD to burn, but I don't know how that involves the words "same" or "in."

He means it takes just over a minute for the DVD writer to write 700 MB. 4.5 GB in 9 minutes means 700 MB in about 80 seconds, on average.
Hell, if my 52x burner took 8 minutes to burn a CD, I would be pissed.

Always the way

[Frodrick]

"It seems that the next speed level for DVD Writers is here."

Of course it is - I just bought a 4x DVD burner yesterday. 8+(

Re:DVD-Rs go 8x

[RonBurk]

1. price: the cost per GB of DVD-R crossed hard disk prices recently, though they are still very close.
2. durability: DVD is not as susceptible to physical shock and magnetic fields as a hard drive.
3. movability: more PCs can read a DVD-R than have a slot for inserting a removable IDE drive.
4. size: when what you want to store fits fine in 4.7GB, a DVD is a much nicer form factor than an IDE hard drive (so far). (e.g., daily incremental backups extending back for a full month.)
5. movies: I can't create a movie on a hard drive and then stick it in my consumer DVD player (so far).

However, DVD+RW and DVD-RW would certainly be more attractive for general data use if the operating system actually supported them as random access devices. Don't know about *nix, but Windows does not support such access until the next version (XP supports drag and drop, but simply copies files to a temp area, and then waits for you to tell it to do the One Big Burn).

Space not speed, and price issues

[Space cowboy]

Personally I want more space on a DVD. I'm quite happy to wait twice as long if I can store more. In terms of a backup solution

Your typical HD costs 200 pounds for 250GB.
Removeable caddy for HD costs 10 pounds
One-off caddy container for PC is 15 pounds.

A DVD-/+/RW/RAM drive costs 105 pounds.
A DVD-RW holds 4.5GB and costs 17 pounds for 5 (=22.5 GB)
Total cost of 250 GB DVD media is (105+187 =) 292 pounds.

So, the DVD just about scrapes home as cheaper during the third 250 GB. You may be able to get something off if you buy your DVD's in larger bulk - those prices were all I could see offered, and they're the cheap end as well. The "branded" names make the argument even stronger since "Sony" DVD-RW's are 22 pounds, not 17...

On the other hand, you now have 165 DVD's with your data on somewhere. At that rate, it's surely better to have 3 HD's and a caddy slot on your PC ? In an emergency, you can even get by for a day or so using the data live off the disk.

If, however, you want to pirate DVD's and play them in your home cinema, then sure, that extra 7 minutes you'd have to wait over a 4x drive would seem an eternity...

Simon.

Re:DVD-Rs go 8x

[general_re]

What will you say when you can hook your iPod into your TV and watch movies from it? The parent is dead on: removable media is obsolete and outdated.

So when I want to send my mother a video of her grandson's birthday party, I'll just drop my iPod in the mail for her? Don't think so...

Is maximum speed just a matter of marketing?

[ToKsUri]

I've always had the impression that gradually incrementing the speed of CD/DVD writers (and other products) is just a matter of marketing and not of actually beeing posssible to offer the technology.
When CD Writers started going up from 8x, 12x, 16x, 24x, 32x, 40x, 52x.... it seemed ridicolous! I simply thought the 52x technology was already available when the 8x was out in the stores.
I know that increasing the writing speed is probably not just making the CD spin faster.. but then, what else is it?
It looks like as if with the DVD, everything is repeating. Can someone give me a reason why DVD writers are not faster already apart from marketing reasons and companies just wanting us to buy all different speeds? Is it actually impossible to have faster DVD writers at market price right now? or is it a technical impossibility?

As much media development as the drive itself

[pacc]

Here is a story about how laser output, drive speed and media properties is related in getting faster DVD writers:
http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/nea/200311/co nele_27449 0.html

Re:DVD-Rs go 8x

[fiddlesticks]

Because I tried to insert my HD (internal and external, mind you!) into my friend's DVD player

It wouldn't fit, so I got really mad, and hammered it in. It still didn't work.

Then my friend came back from his vacation, and he wasn't happy. So now I'm looking at these DVD-R things.

Just remember

[sandbagger]

Hi: When backing up your p()rn, write the date on the disc and transfer it again in under two years. Disc rot on a DVD-ROM is like disc rot on a CD-ROM, only better.

Re:DVD-Rs go 8x

[unger]

unless your hard drives are part of a RAID array, i'd say they were *less* reliable than DVDs. i've heard the same reports about DVDs _and_ CDs. i've been working on computers for over 20 years. i've never seen one burnt CD go bad.

i've also only purchased the highest quality burners and media. i just purchased my first DVD burner (haven't even installed it yet). a Pioneer DVR-106D. read the reviews, this is considered to be the most reliable DVD burner out there. i still need to finish my research on reliable DVD media. then i'll make the move from CDs to DVDs.

finally, i have seen many HDs stop working. i'd *much* rather have an occasional DVD stop working than have a 300GB hard drive die. don't forget that hard drive manufacturers recently dropped their three year warranties in favor of one year (i know there are still some three year warranties out there). this doesn't make me more confident in hard drives.

Question for those of you who have these things

[retro128]

The write speed of an 8X DVD is about 11MB/sec, right? Does anyone have problems with their hard disks keeping up with that speed, especially when they are doing other stuff in the background?

What is the point of a 2MB buffer on this thing? It would run out in 1/5 of a second....

That's great and everything...

[DroopyStonx]

...but the focus is in the wrong area.

They're wasting time making the 8X DVDs when what we really need are DVD9's.

So I can write a DVD in 9 minutes, great. Nothing is more annoying than trying to copy a movie/game that can't fit on a 4.7GB DVD and being presented with the choice of: "Compress it to fit on one DVD and have it look like ass, or span it across two DVDs"

Have one, no problems with it.

[Psyko]

I've got one of the plextor PX-708a's and have been using it for about a month and a half now. I've been very impressed with this unit for a couple of reasons.

When I purchased it, it was the same price as 4x dvd burner/combo burner drives at the time.
Covered all formats (like a good combo drive should. DVD_+R/RW, CD-R/RW).
Still had a high burn speed for cd's (40x), quite a few of the high speed combo burners I was looking at would only cut a cd at around 24x.
It's offered with a white or black faceplate (I picked black to match the new pc I had just built) :P

This is the first plextor drive i've owned, usually staying in the yamaha camp. It came with 1-8x DVD+R and my attempts to purchase more at fry's/staples/compusa all failed miserably. Once that one was gone, I started trying to burn 4x rated dvd+r's at 8x and have gone through a couple of 10 packs with no problems. I use this unit in a winxp machine, with Nero Ultra to burn it (I didin't even look at the software that came with it, I think it was a plextor branded app) and have been very happy with it overall.

I started reading this thread and started seeing the usual "But why, 8x is too fast" bla bla bla type stuff, but until we get to the generation 4+ of these devices speed is still going to be the selling point of dvd burners. Remember when the 4x cd burners came out? People were saying they're a waste of money and you don't need something that fast then too. But now, we're at the point where you can pretty much just go and buy a new cd burner without checking the speed and you've still got something screaming fast and rock solid. So stop bitching about device enhancements.