Slashdot Mirror
New DVD Burners To Double Capacity
clester writes "CNN reports that new dual-layer DVD-burning drives will be released very soon by Philips and Sony that will double the capacity of DVD drives, making a complete copy of your dual-layer DVDs theoretically possible. It will use dual layer technology that will hold up to 8.5GB, and will cost around $230 for an internal and $330 for external, burning all 8.5GB in approximately 45 minutes."
see them pictures
Also, press release from Philips and press release from Sony with even better pictures.
According to the CNN article (which is the nutritional equivilent of sugary cereal), Sony's format is "DVD-R DL". Does this mean:
A) it's the -R (as we've all come to know -R) equivilent of dual layer technology? What happened to Pioneer's -R DL effort? Does this moot it, add to it, or surpass it? Will Pioneer ALSO release a -R DL format?
B) Or is this just a marketing name used by Sony for what is in fact the same DL technology used by the +R group, and the discs/drives will be basically interchangeable among the Sony/Philips standard?
C) Will the -R DL discs be readable in set tops or computer drives that cannot read +R/RW media but can read existing dual-layer media?
$5 per disc smells kind of expensive. I'm impressed enough with the job done by DVDShrink that I don't know if a direct copy of a DVD-9 means much at this point. It WOULD motivate me to replace my Panasonic E80 set-top DVD recorder if SP mode would now mean 4.16 hours of recording, or XP at 2.16 hours, or, if I'm willing to tolerate it, *16* hours at EP mode.
The Sony and Philips drives will use somewhat different discs. Sony calls its variant DVD-R DL. The Philips equivalent is DVD+R DL. Both disc types should be readable in standard DVD drives and players.
You should find the thing much faster when used with FireWire than with USB2. Even plain ole FireWire a (400Mbps) is much faster than USB2 (at 480Mbps) due to latency type issues. I'd _love_ to have an external Firewire b (800Mbps), Firewire a (400), USB 2, USB 1.1 drive cage to maximum portability/compatability.
My NEC drive isn't the best 8x on the market, but I'm _amazed_ at how quiet it is. It also doesn't heat up the discs at all, unlike most every other burner I've ever used. It'd be great for a HTPC project. I think the price has dipped even lower than the $110 I paid for it (from newegg.com).
I'm one of those early adopters ( bought the 6x DVD-R Pioneer drives right after it debuted ). IMO, it is unwise to splurge on this. The early versions produce few good DVDs & a large proportion of coasters. It took 2-3 months for Pioneer to resolve all the errors & issue a firmware patch, & in a few more months, the 8X drive was out, cheaper than 6x, but with problems of its own :)
Best to wait.
Where I come from, 10 * 8.5G = 85G
There we go, site is up - but damn slow:
93% of the players tested play DVD-R
87% of the players tested play DVD+R
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Except, according to Sony's press release, Sony is using DVD+R DL for the dual-layer, and the drive is +/- for the single-layer formats.
To my knowledge, there is no dual-layer standard from the -R group. In fact, a lot of the claims of +R compatibility issues seem to be just FUD from the -R people, though my current drive is -R only (the +/- drives were much more expensive back then), the next will be +/- with dual-layer support.
Just have to choose, Sony or Phillips....
Apparently the issue is that to be read as a DVD-ROM the top abd bottom layers have to have exactly the same amount of content other wise the player will misread it. This is not a huge problem when the size of the content is known before the burn starts, but presents problems for dynamically created media like video recording from a camera or streaming source (like a TV signal).
If the size is not known before writing then the burner must write the second layer out with dummy data before finalization, potentially doubling the burn time. In the case of a video camera it would be unacceptable to make the user wait an hour after filming before he could change or view the DVD.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Blue lasers have nothing to do with dual-layer DVD burning. DVDs are based on red lasers, period.
Encrypted DVDs store the encryption key in a special area on the disc that is not writeable on DVD-R/+R discs. So you can't make a bitwise copy that works. You have to use DeCSS to decrypt it first, thereby circumventing the copy protection scheme.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Does anyone know what DVD burning support is like for linux?
Better than Windows (well, at least in my opinion). And by that I mean you don't need to purchase any tools to make DVDs.
You can burn DVDs, make menus, etc., all with open source tools. It may not be as `simple' as point-and-click Windows tools, but at least you know exactly what's happening at every step, and how each little bits work.
Best of all, you can do everything via the command line (except possibly for creating menus---you can use GIMP for that).
There are a bunch of tutorials online about how to do pretty much everything.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy