First DVD+R9 Burners Reviewed

Hack Jandy writes "DVD dual-layer burners finally seem ready for the public - today, a review of the Sony DRU-700A was posted by Anandtech, and teasers of the BenQ 830A posted at CDRInfo.com. Unfortunately, the drives seem too slow to to really warrant a purchase."

Comments

lets get rid of the obvious responses....

[hatrisc]

1) But I just bought a other DVD-RW!!
2) They'll come down in price eventually
3) That's way to slow for me! I want gigabytes/sec!
4) Dual-sides? I think we should be writing on the
edges as well by now.

Re:lets get rid of the obvious responses....

[tarunthegreat2]

And the "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these Puppies!",
followed by:
In Soviet Russia, the DVD burns YOU! ,
followed by
I can't afford electricity you Insensitive CLOD!
followed by
1. DVD R9 Player
2. ????
3. Profit!!

Re:lets get rid of the obvious responses....

[dnoyeb]

5) This still won't hold a standard Movie DVD.

Re:lets get rid of the obvious responses....

[Albanach]

I just downloaded 2.6... oh, wait....

Re:lets get rid of the obvious responses....

[Willeh]

We should just make those all inclusive so they don't take up too much space. So, In Soviet Russia, Beowulf cluster of these babies imagines you!

Re:lets get rid of the obvious responses....

[mgpeter]

5) This still won't hold a standard Movie DVD.

DVD Shrink
- (sorry, windows only app.)

Re:lets get rid of the obvious responses....

[Derg]

I concur. Works great. Lets you know when the region coding may give you errors, allows you to choose the audio versions being included, such as dts or whatever if available. can be kinda pokey though, but the built in burning support if you have nero installed is just marvelous. *weep* nifty software.

Re:lets get rid of the obvious responses....

[Matrix272]

Well, I for one welcome our Soviet, Beowulf-cluster DVD burning overlords.

Re:lets get rid of the obvious responses....

[Nintendork]

"4) Dual-sides? I think we should be writing on the edges as well by now."

These aren't dual-sided. These are actual dual layer DVD+R discs that will play in a standard DVD player. With these dicsc, you can make an exact copy of your DVD9 discs (A lot of movies and some video games use these dual-layered DVDs) without spending time trimming off the bonus material, languages, etc. and/or messing with the quality.

Yeah, the discs are probably going to be more expensive, but *shock* some people's time is more valuable. Let's say the discs cost $3 more than a regular DVD-R. Let's also say you spend 15 minutes prepping a DVD9 discs content so it'll fit on a DVD5 disc. $3x4 = $12 per hour you're saving yourself to make a copy that's missing material and you can forget about the video games. Sorry, but I prefer to just toss the original into a DVD-ROM drive, a blank into this burner, and tell it to copy. Yeah, it takes longer to burn, but I don't plan on camping by the burner anyway. I can do this in the morning before I leave for work, another when I come home for lunch, and a third before I go to bed. That's three in a day with minimal impact on my personal time.

-Lucas

Re:lets get rid of the obvious responses....

[joggle]

Err, why would you want to dupe 3 original dual-layered DVDs per day? There are increadibly few pressed dual-layered DVDs that are freely shareable (MindCandy, err.., MindCandy..actually I think it's single-layered...) and personal (copyrighted) DVDs last a very long time if properly stored. If you're backing up data, you're better off with single-layer DVDs (fewer write errors, better/cheaper media, burns faster, etc).

Re:lets get rid of the obvious responses....

[evilviper]

(sorry, windows only app.)

M2Requant will do the same on Unix systems. Transcode even made some changes to it and includes it in their software package as tcrequant.

Doing the actual reencoding doesn't take all that much longer, and the quality is better...

Re:lets get rid of the obvious responses....

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, why would you want to dupe 3 original dual-layered DVDs per day? There are increadibly few pressed dual-layered DVDs that are freely shareable [...]

You poor fool.

MPAA Intervention?

[Sinter]

I'm sure the MPAA will try their best to stop these drives from going on the market. In the same sense that the RIAA tried to stop CD burners when they first emerged.

Re:MPAA Intervention?

[theperplepigg]

I'm sure the MPAA will try their best to stop these drives from going on the market. In the same sense that the RIAA tried to stop CD burners when they first emerged.

That would be a strange move on their part considering the following, from the MPAA website:

"The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) serves its members from its offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. On its board of directors are the Chairmen and Presidents of the seven major producers and distributors of motion picture and television programs in the United States. These members include:

• Buena Vista Pictures Distribution;(The Walt Disney Company)
• Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.;
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.;
• Paramount Pictures Corporation;
• Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation;
• Universal City Studios LLLP; and
• Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc."

I would think there is at least some communication between the different divisions of Sony.

Re:MPAA Intervention?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here

Re:MPAA Intervention?

[91degrees]

I would think there is at least some communication between the different divisions of Sony.

I wouldn't. Large organisations are typically pretty much separate companies. The only parts they share are the sharehlders, who aren't really too interest in exact the product portfolio.

Re:MPAA Intervention?

[ink_13]

As I recall, Sony has a long history of the right hand (say, Sony Pictures or the Sony record label) not knowing what the left hand (say, the Home Electronics divison) is doing.

Re:MPAA Intervention?

[Viceice]

In a stunning example of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing, back in 2000, Sony Sued ... guess who? Sony!

http://www.s-t.com/daily/01-00/01-30-00/b03bu057 .h tm

Re:MPAA Intervention?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Those discs are DeCSS encrypted! It's bulletproof!

Re:MPAA Intervention?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony music is also part of the RIAA.

If you are going to...

[PhilippeT]

burn data that size i wouldn't bitch about the wait. I remeber my 2x cd-r burnner man that sucker was almost twice as fast as the 1x :)

I don't care if they're slow.

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

If they hold a full, uncompressed movie, they're good enough.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[cpjackso]

My DVD-R holds full uncompressed DVD's just fine? (In DVD-5 format).

Run DVD-9's through DVD-Shrink (or whatever it's called).

Chris.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[Sancho]

Did you understand what "uncompressed" means?

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[aidan folkes]

My DVD-R holds full uncompressed DVD's just fine? (In DVD-5 format). Run DVD-9's through DVD-Shrink (or whatever it's called).

All DVD Shrink does is take the existing compressed (and it is already compressed to fit on a DVD-9) video and chuck away some of the data to make it fit a DVD-5.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[NineNine]

Hey Jerkoff... DVD Shrink doesn't just compress, it also allows you to rip out all of the extra shit like "special features", the menus, and French soundtracks so you don't have to compress the movies. And when you DO have to compress (because, say, you want all of the shit on the DVD), then DVD Shrink can do a deep analysis, and make an excellent copy, even with compression. DVD Shrink rocks.

Anyone have any idea when DVD Shrink will be available for DVD-9? I'm waiting for DVD Shrink to support the drives before I buy one.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[mirko]

All DVD Shrink does is take the existing compressed (and it is already compressed to fit on a DVD-9) video and chuck away some of the data to make it fit a DVD-5.
No, this depends on many things and the way you describe is only a possibility.
most "shrinked" dvd I "saw" were severely damaged because of quick and dirty video RE-compression.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[trentblase]

Hate to break it to you, but the movies that come on a stamped DVD... those are compressed too.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[dnoyeb]

They don't.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hellooooooooooooooo target market :) We're not allowed to say that, really, but we do.

To the dvdshrink person - it's a dvd burner. A plus r 9 disk is just a plus r dvd with a greater capacity. As long as your app doesn't freak out and say "There's no way that number is accurate, the disk must be bad" then it should be a seamless upgrade.

Old versions of both Nero and sonic are both perfectly happy here, and have been for some time. There shouldn't be any problems with shrink.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[Overzeetop]

Gosh, is it so hard to tell that he meant "un-re-compressed"? Of course DVDs are compressed, but DVD-9 means the ability to back up a DVD verbatim. There are reasons to want to do this (some are even legal).

DVD-shrink will still have its purposes, though. I've run a couple of my daughter's Disney DVDs through it so (1) she'd never touch my originals and (2) it plays the movie directly - no menus, no commercials, no format setup screens.

I'm actually thinking about how many of AB's Good Eats I can cram onto one disc - they take up a lot of room in the jukebox at just 3 episodes per disc. I just need a way to get a "top level" menu to access all the original content without a buttload of re-authoring. Dual sided would be even better (since the jukebox can flip a disc internally).

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[cabraverde]

If they hold a full, uncompressed movie, they're good enough.

Frame size: 720 x 576
Frame rate: 30 fps
Chroma subsampling: 1.5 (assuming YUV 4:2:0)
Duration: 90 mins

720*576*30*1.5*90*60 / (1024^3)= 93.9 GiB

Conclusion: these discs don't have anywhere near the capacity to hold an uncompressed film. In addition, the drive could not read data off the disc fast enough for real-time playback (max speed was quoted at 16620 KB/s)

Lossless video codecs can get you a ratio of around 10:1 though, so that's a possibility.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[AKnightCowboy]

I'm actually thinking about how many of AB's Good Eats I can cram onto one disc - they take up a lot of room in the jukebox at just 3 episodes per disc.

Or just rip them to DivX format and use a home theater PC as the frontend. No more swapping out discs or need for a changer.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[aonaran]

I don't know how others feel, but 45mins for a perfect DVD-9 copy vs 15mins to burn 2 DVD-5s plus an hour sorting out what goes on which disc beforehand or 8 mins burning one dvd-5 and several hours of recompression ... I think I'll take the 45min dvd-9 burn thanks.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[NineNine]

Hey moron. You CAN put 99% of movies uncompressed on a 4.7 GB DVD.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[Sukh]

MPEG2 Movies are compressed. I think maybe you're getting confused (or maybe I'm confused?!).

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[3rd_Floo]

Or Rip them to DivX and use one of These to save even more time/space! I am! =D

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[Mycroft_VIII]

Eh no you can't.
1/2 hour of Uncompressed video at 640*480*24fps is about 37 gigs. this is without sound added in. but then sound doesn't take up much space compared to video.
So figure you need about 40 of your 4.7gig to hold a two hour movie, uncompressed.
You did know that movies on DVD's (like you get at Blockbuster) are compressed right?

Mycroft

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's simply wrong.
DVDs are always compressed with MPEG-2.
That's how you buy them. You can compress them

• further

when trying to copy a movie, but even if you do nothing the result is still compressed.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[the_2nd_coming]

oh, I want that one!!!

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[Anonymous Coward]

DVD-shrink will still have its purposes, though. I've run a couple of my daughter's Disney DVDs through it so (1) she'd never touch my originals and (2) it plays the movie directly - no menus, no commercials, no format setup screens.

If you were a real man, you do what I did:

rip them all to DIVX and put them on a central server with a multimediaPC attached to the television. Mplayer allows you to either manually fastforward the scary parts, or create scripts to jump overthem alltogether. Plus you never have go looking for the damn things from room to room

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[DroopyStonx]

Currently, your options are to either split the movie across 2 DVDs, or compress it so that it looks like ass.

These new DVD9's don't introduce many new options as the discs will be more than twice as expensive as current DVD-R's. So you can use two $2 DVD-Rs and copy a movie (uncompressed), or you can buy one DVD9 for $6.

So unless you have money to blow (granted, $6 is still better than paying full cost of a new one), and trust me, it does add up, there really isn't much point in the new format.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[tomk]

Copying movies is very important, especially in light of this:

CDs and DVDs Not So Immortal After All

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[mercuriser]

Unfortunately your calculation is flawed.

720 x 576 is the amount of pixels per frame not the amount of storage required.
To calculate the size in kilobytes (KiB) of one frame of uncompressed video, use the following formula:

Frame size K = ([Pixel Width x Pixel Height x Bit Depth] / 8) / 1024

Where 8 represents an 8-bit byte, and 1024 equals the number of bytes per kilobytes. For example, the size in kilobytes of an uncompressed frame of full-size (720 x 576), 24-bits (per pixel) DVD video is:

Frame size K = ([720 x 576 x 24] / 8) / 1024
= 1215 KiB

Then for one second it's just
= 1215 x 30
= 36450 KiB

Therefore for 90 mins it is:
= 36450 x 60 x 90
= 196830000 KiB
= 187.7 GiB

Remember this is only for dvd video not the audio.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[Stackster]

Assuming you mean "Hey moron. You CAN put 99% of allregular, honestly purchased DVD-movies on a DVD-R without recompression", I still must say "Hell no!"

About 80% of all "real" DVD movies I own (a quite varied mix) are DVD-9:s, usually about 6-7GB in size, way too much for a single layer DVD+/-R[W]. After removing all unnecessary parts (extras, spanish and french soundtrack and such), it's still usually 5-6GB. Even some DVD-5 movies are bigger than a DVD-R can take (since pressed discs fit a bit more data).
About one in five movies can be copied to DVD-R without recompression, and about half of those need to have the extras&crap removed.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

> I'm actually thinking about how many of AB's Good Eats I can cram onto one disc

Is there a secret cult of gourmet geeks around here, or is it just that Alton's funky-ass approach to cooking somehow engages the geek mind? 'Good Eats' absolutely rocks my world. I actually have a sysadmin friend who not only tracked down the hard-to-find brand of Alton's kitchen containers, but drove to another state just to get him to autograph it! I wonder how many people here are Alton-style cooks and how many of us would live off Cheetos if they could...

(Oh, and I'm getting one of those Philips players too. Read the reviews at videohelp.com. People are raving about it!)

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[NineNine]

I'm not gonna get into it with you, but I'll just say that I own hundreds of DVD movies, and I back up all of them. Very, very rare is it that I find a movie that with all of the crap ripped out, won't fit, uncompressed on a 4.7 gig DVD. Most DVD's for movies released, say, before 2000, fit entirely on 4.7 gig, because I think that the movies weren't filmed in as high qaulity as they are now (or don't have nearly as much CGI crap).

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[NineNine]

Well, if you know some way of getting "uncompressed" movies from the studio, then you're a better man than I am. I wasn't aware that anyone, except for maybe the cast that worked on a movie has access to the full, "uncompressed" movie. Besides, I can't imagine quality much better than you can get on a DVD.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[DarkSarin]

So this is OT, but hey!

I personally love good cooking. It is smart to eat good food. I don't think cheetos is a good way to live. It's like chocolate. Yes you can get cheap chocolate, but if you had a choice between a snickers and a really good turtle brownie with ice cream, which would you rather eat? I'd take the brownie.

So it is with cheetos--yeah, they have some fake cheese, but I'd rather eat something with real cheese (just about anything, really).

Food is important.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[cayenne8]

I've come to start enjoying Good Eats myself lately. I've always loved to cook....actually was head chef in my own restaurant for awhile...

I like his off beat style, and humor. Its the kind of cooking show I think "I" would have if I had one. Thankfully, I've never been much of one for sweets...but, I'm an entree, sauce and side dish person. Its fun to be a cooking computer geek...I have my old wireless laptop in the kitchen for quick recipe access and email. I'm putting together a web accessed database for recipes. I'm not happy with what I've seen out there...going to add in on the fly nutritional calculations, metric/US measurement conversions...etc.

Best of both worlds....

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[Kippesoep]

I thought PAL was 720x576 (or 704x576) at 25fps and NTSC is 720x480 (or 704x480) at 30fps. So the numbers you specify are off a bit. PAL: 720*576*25*1.5*90*60/1024^3=78.2GiB NTSC: 720*480*30*1.5*90*60/1024^3=78.2GiB (obviously identical, since 576*25==480*30).

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[SomeGuyFromCA]

> Alton's funky-ass approach to cooking somehow engages the geek mind?

Of course it does! It's scientific, it's systematic, it uses cool gadgets, it has nifty visual aids, a few running gags (W, the Angry French Chef) and it avoids just being a formula cooking show with a bunch of gimmick episodes: the faux morning show, Scrap Iron Chef, Down & Out in the Tropics, the muffin show.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

> and it avoids just being a formula cooking show with a bunch of gimmick episodes

And don't forget the classic Blair Witch parody, which was probably the only one ever that was funny.

My favorite thing about the show is how much effort he puts into explaining the *why* of cooking. Every other cooking show in the world will say "Chili is teh yummy!" and leave it at that, but Alton will spend fifteen minutes explaining the chemistry behind the capsaicin/tongue reaction and then another fifteen dissecting the enzymatic science behind Beano and farts. And then, of course, he'll give you a kickass recipe that's almost a science lesson. Alton rules...

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[Nintendork]

"Most DVD's for movies released, say, before 2000, fit entirely on 4.7 gig, because I think that the movies weren't filmed in as high qaulity as they are now (or don't have nearly as much CGI crap)."

The filming is still done the same way unless we're talking about the new Star Wars movies which are digitally filmed. As far as CGI goes, I'd imagine that CGI images would compress better than analog images. Analog images have more data due to the detail in real life, so they aren't going to compress as well.

I'd imagine that the more widespread use of DVD9 discs in retail movies is more closely related to the bottom line of the movie industry. Cost of manufacturing probably went down.

-Lucas

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[mOdQuArK!]

'Good Eats' absolutely rocks my world.

Hear hear! I don't have any real aptitude at cooking, but corny humor aside, he explains things in such a way that stick in my mind better than any other cooking instruction that I've ever tried (at least for his simpler recipes). He also does a pretty good job at describing the equipment to get (including the expensive stuff to ignore), and when and how to use it. By describing _why_ he designed his recipes a certain way, it also gives a better chance of substituting things for some of the ingredients w/o creating a nausea-inducing result.

My only complaint about his shows are that sometimes the information density is so high, it's hard to keep up with my notes. I was killing myself until I realized I could print out his recipes from the foodnetwork.com web site & then write my notes on top of those (d'oh). I've built up a pretty good 3-ring binder with some of the easier recipes from his show, and have been getting comments from my non-immediate family wondering where I learned how to cook.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[SomeGuyFromCA]

>> and it avoids just being a formula cooking show with a bunch of gimmick episodes

> And don't forget the classic Blair Witch parody, which was probably the only one ever that was funny.

ERROR: Uncaught thrown exception (Ambiguous backreference: "the only one ever")

The only gimmick ep or the only Blair Witch parody that was funny?

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

> The only gimmick ep or the only Blair Witch parody that was funny?

The only funny Blair Witch parody, of course. *All* of Alton's parodies are good.

(I tried to re-type my original sentence about six times and still can't parse it out right. Call me France, as I surrender to your 133t grammar-Nazi skills!)

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[SomeGuyFromCA]

I wasn't being a grammar-Nazi, just honestly confused.

Suggestion:

And don't forget the classic Blair Witch parody, which was probably the only B.W. parody ever that was funny.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[mrgreen4242]

According to DVDShrinks Author, 3.1 is the final version, with only bugfixes to be added in the future (and translations). He mentioned it in this post on the official forum.

If he doesn't add official support for DVD-9 drives, you can pretty easily change the target size in 3.1.x's preferences to give you a DVD-9 sized disc. Then just burn it with whatever software comes with the drive, or whatever it is you want to use. (The newer versions of DVDShrink work directly with Nero, if I recall, to automatically burn your ripped disc after it re-encodes, so once Nero supports DVD-9 DVDShrink will burn them as well).

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

> I wasn't being a grammar-Nazi, just honestly confused.

Oh, I didn't mean that as a bad thing. The grammar and spelling Nazis are the only people keeping the entire net from devolving into a completely unreadable mess. (And yet I *still* giggle every time someone posts "YUO ARE TEH SUX0R!" Go figure...)

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[mrgreen4242]

Currently, your options are to either split the movie across 2 DVDs, or compress it so that it looks like ass.

You clearly have not used DVDShrink. I don't know about other software's re-compression, but the newer versions of DVDShrink (and the older ones for that matter) do an AMAZING job, all things considered. No one I have shown a backed up movie to can tell that it has been altered from the original.

The key is to get rid of or make as small as possible the useless junk. For example, most movies special features are junk anyways, and you watch them once and never again, so you can get rid of those, and since all that is left is the movie, you don't really need a menu anymore, do you? That alone will usually get a movie to ALMOST fit on a DVD-5.

Next is the extra audio tracks. Unless you are in a biligual home, and each member NEEDS a different audio track, then you can just pick one and get rid of the rest. Same goes for directors commentaries, MOST of the time. Then you have the AC3 and the PCM audio tracks. AC3 tends to be half the size of the PCM, and sounds just as good over non-31337 audio setups, so ditch the PCM.

After all that your movie will probably fit un-re-compressed, and not it will only need a little.

If you prefer to keep the menus/features, then you can get rid of the extraneous audio tracks, MASSIVELY compress the menus/features, (ya they look crappy, but it's still watchable and will improve your main movie quality) and then compress the main feature accordingly.

The last paragraph is what I tend to do, as on a regular TV (even my computer monitor, displaying the full DVD resolution) and thru my modest audio setup, I can't tell the main movie copy apart from the original. The menu's and features look like a DiVX movie you downloaded, watchable, but not DVD perfect. Not enough to concern me, tho.

Rob

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Besides, I can't imagine quality much better than you can get on a DVD.

Mmmm lossy compression.... my favourite.

Perhaps jerking off to all that low quality porn has made you blind!

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[Asterisk]

If you want to get pedantic, NTSC is actually 480 lines at 29.97 fps. The horizontal resolution is variable.

NTSC DVD is 720x480 at 29.97 fps.

NTSC SVCD would be 480x480 at 29.97 fps.

However, since most NTSC displays use a 4:3 aspect ratio, the most accurate translation of NTSC video into a computer-viewable format would probably be 640x480.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Besides, I can't imagine quality much better than you can get on a DVD.

Ah, ye of little imagination -- its called hdtv and even that is still compressed. Just bigger!

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need DVD Shrink for a DVD-9, you ignorant Phillistine.

You use it now because commercial movies are on DVD-9s and -/+R media is DVD 5. When you have a blank DVD-9, and a source DVD-9, you just do a direct copy.

Now be nice, you twit. Especially when you're wrong.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[evilviper]

Holy hell. Only ~$66 for a Divx player? Why haven't I heard about this before? This should be frontpage on /.

Of course, they're sold out, and will probably come back at the $80+ price. Even at that, it's not bad.

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[AbRASiON]

Well perhaps the movies you buy are 90 minute movies, or poorly mastered movies - or movies with only 5.1 support no DTS or DTS ES
MOST of my movies I've backed up (I'd say about 60 now) about 2 or 3 could be copied WITH extra's at under 4.7gb - then another 2 or 3 could be copied without compression but I had to remove extra's

Look at fight club a full 7.5gb for the movie - lord of the rings etc.
Seriously MOST movies I've backed up need some kind of re-compression unfortunately.

These new drives will rock (eventually)

Re:I don't care if they're slow.

[cfish]

Do you really need high def VBR for Good Eats? Cuz I use snapstream near VHS quality wmv (i know i know) and yield just a little over 100 megs per episode. That's 6 episodes per CD. Of course that has something to do with my replayTV skiping all commercials.

Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or is speed overrated?

I'm not saying I like taking my time with a DVD to do some sweet authoring down by the fire. But it seems to me, at least, data density, features and price are the determining factors. I'm not banging out a couple hundred copies of my greatest DOA:Volleyball matches (Unrated edition) for sale on ebay, so the time it takes to burn one isn't exactly critical.

Re:Is it just me...

[Compact Dick]

But it seems to me, at least, data density, features and price are the determining factors.

Reliability and data longevity are the most important factors.

Re:Is it just me...

[Threni]

> Or is speed overrated?

Sure is. For me it's LSD every time.

Back on topic - can I put a freshly written instance of one of these new DVDs down on the table, pick them up again a few minutes later and read them with no errors, or are they just like regular writable DVDs?

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

A) Small amount of data
B) 700MB or better writers are standard
C) DVD writers are cheap (relatively)
D) If it was more robust feature wise, I'd probably use my old HP 8100 more.
E) I have SCSI and flopticals. Which are fun to play with, and just really convemient.

Burning for archiving is always going to be an ass pain. No escaping it. That is the nature of repetative tasks. I remember installing Borland C++ before I got a CDROM. Like 40 disks. I fell asleep twice while installing the fucker. The trick is to interlieve it with other tasks. So that the long repetative task isn't done in optimal time, but rather that your time is allocated such that you are optimally using it. If, say your job, is dependent on completing a task in optimal time, well then, multiple writers on multiple machines would seem to be the order of the day.

PS - Post AC to a post you moderated and your moderation is undone. And I still have my 5 mod points. Neener neener neener.

Re:Is it just me...

[grisken]

I dont think speed is overrated. Ppl's Patience perhaps? :) But seriously, waiting no more than about 45 mins for 9gb to burn isnt that much.

Re:Is it just me...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Exactly. The computer is way more than fast enough to burn a DVD while doing many other tasks. Even a 1x burn (~2 hours on 9GB) is fine as long as the drive and software is stable.

I don't _need_ DVD-9 capability for backups, but it is nice to know is available in a "pro-sumer" device. In that sense, two DVD-5s at 2x or better would be quicker but that also takes more user time.

I'm willing to take a bargain on 1x media because I don't burn discs very often. If I was into DVD authoring, then it might be more important if you have to beat the FedEx drop-off deadline, so it would be a few more dimes for faster media.

I'll note I didn't RTFA yet, I just wanted to get my two cents in on the speed issue before I read it.

Re:Is it just me...

[evilviper]

Reliability and data longevity are the most important factors.

Then why aren't you printing everything out? Far more reliable and lasting longer than most computer media.

No, I'd say data density is of serious importance. It's important that speed is reasonable as well, although it doesn't need to be lightning fast.

Longevity gets too much hype... Certainly archives need longevity, but the DVD you are recording doesn't need to last for 25 years. Record two, keep one safe, and after 10 years, when the first one fails, make another copy.

To slow compared to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense but how can a device that does something that has never been 'do-able' before too slow...to slow as comapared to what?! What do you use to burn a 9G dvd?

P.S. why in the heck won't this thing let me post on the article BLAH..I don't hve an account why are you discriminating against me becuase I don't wish to register?

Too slow??

[toconn]

Bah! I just got rid of my 2x CD burner last week!

Re:Too slow??

[AviLazar]

Yea i just bought the latest and greatest DVD burner (which i can't use to full speed because I tend to look for the least expensive DVD's, not the fastest DVD's). By the time this thing comes down in price to something I can afford ($100) I will be happy to get rid of my DVD burner. -A

Re:Too slow??

[RCO]

I knew I should have waited before buying that from you...

How amusing

[edremy]

I was teaching a video editing course to some faculty yesterday and discussing when these would appear.

I haven't been keeping up- I predicted the end of the year. Then again, reading the review I'm not sure I'd want one now anyway.

Re:How amusing

[(trb001)]

You can consider these the first generation of this technology. Just like CDR drives, they'll drop in price eventually, and improve along the way. Never, unless you have extra money in your budget for the year, buy a first generation technology...it's like paying extra to be a beta tester.

--trb

DVD+R?

[Short Circuit]

Did anyone else notice it supports DVD+RW, but not DVD+R?

Re:DVD+R?

[bozzaj]

Did you read the same article? The first page clearly shows both formats.

The only format it didn't support was DVD-RAM.

Re:DVD+R?

[phaze3000]

Only people that didn't read the article, which specifically includes a DVD+R test.

Re:DVD+R?

[Short Circuit]

I didn't finish the article, but the Nero screenshot doesn't list DVD+R or DVD-RAM as a supported formats.

Phase 2: Revealed!

[Anonymous Coward]

the gnomes and their dot.com dreams come full circle on eBay.

How about media ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dual layer burners ? Great.

How about dual layer media ? Any mention of availability and price ?

Re:How about media ?

[tkg]

The 'teaser' linked to in the article predicts an initial price of $5 to $8 per disc. No word on availability, but one could assume they will hit the stores at about the same time as the drives.

Re:How about media ?

[graikor]

Should be about right - when my company was testing DL firmware for one of its drives, the media costs dropped to $25 per disc (from $50), so a final cost of $5-$8 should be about right, and it's in the range where people who are willing to pay a slight premium over SL +R discs won't feel too gouged.

Re:How about media ?

[tantalus]

Actually Taiwan is getting into the media game soon, which should drive down prices. The Japanese company MKM is the only one making media right now. Read about it at digitimes.

Yes.

[eddy]

Yes, it's overrated by most people. Most don't need to burn 50 DVDs/day, and if they do, they've got the funds to invest in more burners.

The problem specifically, I have found, is that people burn at top speed, which makes their system mostly unusable during the burn due to IO load -- so they complain that it takes "too long" as they must 'wait' for it to complete.

What I do instead is burn at a slower rate (2x), which doesn't starve my IO, meaning I can actually do other things while "waiting" for the burn to complete.

PS. SCSI-trolls can stay away.

PSS. My first CDR burner topped out at 1x and had a 64Kbyte buffer. Only stable in Win 3.11 due to the small buffer.

Re:Yes.

[Babbster]

I admit I don't know how it works with DVD-Rs - because I've been waiting for the burning capacity to double before committing - but I burn CDs at top speed (32x) all the time and am able to use the computer (1 GHz) for other things with absolutely no trouble. Then again, my CD-R on a separate IDE channel from my hard drive - is yours?

It's worth noting, too, that if you truly aren't burning a ton of discs a day it shouldn't be that big a deal to take a break while the top-speed burn is in process. Most /. readers could probably use a little more time away from their computer.

Re:Yes.

[eddy]

>is yours?

Yes, and my RAID doesn't have a problem keeping up with the burner at full speed either.

I'm talking about "mere mortals", you know, the 99% of the computer population whose computer runs Win9x, only has a single harddrive which is in DMA-mode only if by some misfortune they'd once run Windows Update. The same 99% that like to complain a lot about their computers.

>I admit I don't know how it works with DVD-Rs

Just for the record, 4x in DVDR-terms is 5540 kilobytes/s

Re:Yes.

[jridley]

I have an 8x burner, but I'm too cheap to buy the media. I can burn at 4x and do firewire video cap (to the same IDE drive the burn's happening from), have SETI running, be browsing under Mozilla web (10+ tabs open) and email, and have Agent downloading and decoding NNTP binaries at the same time, and have a half dozen terminal windows open to various headless boxes, and nothing's suffering. The write buffers are hovering around 97%, no dropped frames on the video, and all my GUI are stable. Win2K, 2.5 GHz Athlon XP.

This is all with totally standard consumer equipment. No SCSI, just a group of Maxtor 160GB drives sitting on a Maxtor/Promise controller in the PCI slot, in an ABit mainboard. Boot/swap drive is plugged into the mainboard.

If you're getting I/O bound on a > 1 GHz machine at 4x write, you may have config problems. Check and make sure your writer is running in UDMA mode, and your drive isn't horribly fragmented.

Re:Yes.

[eddy]

We probably have different tolerances for what is sluggish (I guess there could be a difference between burners also). When I'm burning at 5540Kbyte/s in Nero on my Win2K box I'll have to wait for things which should be instant (opening windows, swapping between application). I'll never trade that for being able to pull the DVDR out and archive it a measly twenty minutes or whatever earlier.

My primary reason for not going full speed is, like for you, media. Slower burn, better burn.

Re:Yes.

[jrockway]

Windows swaps out all of your programs in favor of caching what you're burning. Hence there is a lot of paging going on when you switch apps. This is what slows down your computer (not the actual DVD burning).

Of course, if the burning program was correctly written, you wouldn't have this problem. But reading the docs is a waste of time when you can just not read them and your program works. (Also Windows is completely broken itself, but I won't go there.)

Re:Yes.

[darth_silliarse]

Agreed with the 2x rate, 2x rate combined with quality media ::cough::Ritek::cough:: more or less guarantees a burn that will work with most standalone DVD players. I also (with DVD Decrypter) have a 120MB software buffer alongside the 2MB DVD Burner's buffer so I can do other stuff without ruining my burn...

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope... my SCSI burners absolutely kick the crap out of your ENTIER system.

ATA is for losers... SCSI rulz!

W00t!

Re:Yes.

[Yartrebo]

I don't have any problems burning on my 8x CDR burner (750 MHz Athlon CPU) and running other programs at the same time.

Perhaps it's because I'm running GNU/Linux (Mandrake 9.1) instead of MS Windows. Perhaps my burning program (K3b) is well designed.

Some stuff, like heavy computation (ie., compiling), is risky, but my computer is very responsive and if you pay attention to the little buffer indicator, you can get feedback and Ctrl-C the offending app before you buffer underrun.

Re:Yes.

[radish]

I burn DVDs and CDs at full speed (4x and 52x respectively) all the time with no problems. Just minimise the Nero window and keep on going. The days of having to leave your machine alone while you made a disc are long gone...or so I thought? BTW - WinXP on a regular Athlon box, IDE discs.

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Mandrake, too, and I'd like to get into this. What do you use in Linux for the ripping/compressing piece? Thanks.

Re:Yes.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Hello! DMA mode calling!

I burn at the max speed of my DVD+RW all the time.

I usually IRC or whatever else in the background.

Re:Yes.

[evilviper]

The problem specifically, I have found, is that people burn at top speed, which makes their system mostly unusable during the burn due to IO load

You've got some sort of system problems.

SCSI isn't needed. The throughput of a modern IDE drive is much more than CD/DVD Recorders can eat.

The only guess I even have, is that the devices you are reading from and writing two are both on the same IDE channel (master/slave) which is a big no-no.

Shrinking is not compressiong

[Anonymous Coward]

But when you shrink something you aren't compressing it.

MPAA can cry all they want

[Overzeetop]

I use my drive for data backup. At less than $1 a disc, I do full weekly backups of all my (in-house generated) business data for my engineering firm. At the current rate, I'll cross the 4.3GB threshold sometime in fall '04. These will be out in quantity just in time. I know, there are ways to get better compression out of a (mostly) static data set than backing it all up, but recovery is far faster this way. If my drive dies, I can restore the entire thing in less than 20 minutes. If I screw up a single file, I can just go to the most recent backup - not have to sift through a multi-generational backup set. And with what I saved on dedicated backup software, I can buy a new DVD+9 drive and another year's worth of discs.

(yes, my main applications drive is bigger than 4.3G...it's about 60GB. That's why it gets imaged by Ghost on a removable drive once a week. Yes, I've tested it...swap the primary with the backup and it's transparent. I sleep much better knowing that in the event of a major HD crash, I'm less than $100 billable time from being back in business)

Re:MPAA can cry all they want

[tommck]

How do you back up all your porn on just 1 DVD???

Re:MPAA can cry all they want

[Anonymous Coward]

Backups are Good Thing. Reminds me of the spring 1998. I had just got my 2 months worth of c++ hacking to show some results (very simple 3d graphics, object editor) when I heard the click-click-pause-click-click ...

Guess what? No backups. 50 kbytes of C-code in the bit heaven. I haven't done much of c++ coding since then. One floppy disc 20 cents. Sound of your HD crashing - priceless.

One DL DVD / 50 kbytes => 174080 backups =)

Re:MPAA can cry all they want

[HD Webdev]

How do you back up all your porn on just 1 DVD???

It's probably Midget Pr0n.

Re:MPAA can cry all they want

[evilviper]

I use my drive for data backup. At less than $1 a disc, I do full weekly backups of all my (in-house generated) business data for my engineering firm.

You really should be using removable hard drives...

Hard drives aren't significantly more expensive than DVD-Rs, you don't have to pay for a DVD-R drive, and you can reuse them practically forever.

Get a dozen 100+GB hard drives with a firewire case, and you've got FULL backups for 3 months. Then you erase and use the drives again.

The inital cost isn't significantly more... There are incredible advantages, like being able to backup 100+GBs. No need to swap media all the time (serious expense righ there). Etc.

That's why it gets imaged by Ghost on a removable drive once a week.

And that will be fine until you discover that you deleted something very important more than a week ago...

Better than my current 45 mins per R5

[imidazole2]

Thanks to the lack of session closing, we can burn 2 DVD+R5 discs in less than 15 minutes, or one DVD+R9 disc in 45 minutes.

Not half bad!

Re:Better than my current 45 mins per R5

[Mister Transistor]

Funny you should say that. Half-bad is about the term I'd use when half the players out there won't play a disc with a open session on it. A lot of them won't, nor will a lot of commercial CD players.

I hope this really means that the thing closes the sessions but writes it in one shot. If it really leaves sessions open that is a definitely a source of problems with playback compatibility.

Linux packet writing support?

[PastaAnta]

Hi,

This may be slightly OT, but what experiences does people have with using DVD+RW for packet-writing under Linux? What drives are recommended with Linux?

What I would like to do is to use a DVD drive as a (large and fast) floppy disk - preferrable compatible with InCD and DirectCD for Windows. I have already tried to use my CD-RW burner with Peter Oesterlunds packet writing patch, but with mixed success.

I have read somewhere, that packet writing will not be added to the main line kernel before the drives support Mt. Rainier (EasyWrite), but I have still not seen any drives actually supporting this standard. Do they exist?

- o -

Re:Linux packet writing support?

[Anonymous Coward]

MRW (Mount rainier) for CD is well established.
For DVD it is having trouble gaining acceptance. Mainly because it is a pain in the proverbial to actually fit the data structures it needs into a reasonable amount of RAM.

But it doesn't actually ADD anything for packet writing. All MRW is is bad sector remapping. If there is a defect on the disk, and you write to that area, then it will silently remap to another bit of disk.

That's all mrw does. I can't speak for when support will be in linux for fast packet writing though.

Re:Linux packet writing support?

[karnal]

At that point, it almost sounds like you could do the bad sector remapping in software (i.e. a driver) instead of relying on the firmware to invisibly remap for you.

Of course, the drive would have to give a status message back to you to let you know about the bad sector, but I'm assuming that happens anyways?

Re:Linux packet writing support?

[presarioD]

what experiences does people have with using DVD+RW for packet-writing under Linux

I use dvd+rw-tools but still have to find proper DVD+RW media for my drive. See previous post on same issue...
I use cdrecord for CD+RW and have no problem even doing multisessions.
My main concern is to find the proper DVD+RW media that my drive will support...
Cheers!

available space

[Graspee_Leemoor]

So, who's going to be the first person to explain to me why we can't fit the same amount of data on one of these as movie companies can fit on theirs?

graspee

Re:available space

[Anonymous Coward]

You can now. That's what dual layer disks give you.

Stamped DVDs can be single (4 gig and a bit) or dual layer (9 gig and a bit)

Until these drives came out, writable media was only single layer - so 'only' 4 gig.

Re:available space

[Anonymous Coward]

ding... movie DVD's are DUAL LAYER. means there are 2 dvd-r's on one side. it's magical and a well kept secret. Shh dont tell anyone as they will kill you for letting that secret out.

btw, there is a Secret website that has all this information, almost nobidy knows about it....

it's at www.google.com DONT TELL ANYONE!

someone as smart as you will be able to use that secret information store for finding out some other secrets like... is dvd better than VHS? can I convert my dvd player into a cutting laser? and if I bang my head against the wall really hard will I get smarter?

Re:available space

[TheKeyMaker]

DVD5 has a capacity of ~ 4,700,000,000 bytes
DVD9 has a capacity of ~ 8,500,000,000 bytes

I'd say that's a tad shy of 9 gigs even if you use marketing GB. They like to round these numbers up

DVD10 is a double sided DVD5
DVD18 is a double sided DVD9

For those who want typical numbers for user writable sectors for your recordable media of choice..

DVD+R9 has 0x3FB000 sectors
DVD+R has 0x230540 sectors
DVD-R 12 cm has 0x231280 sectors
DVD-R 8 cm has 0x0AE410 sectors
DVD-RAM has 0x222120 sectors

TKM

DL recording by firmware hack

[TeknoHog]

When rumours of DL burners first came about, I thought of the obvious thing that's also mentioned in the article: Since all DVD players can focus the laser onto two layers, what's stopping any of the current DVD burners from dual layer burning? (Except the lack of firmware, of course.)

Or maybe I'm just desperate having purchased a vanilla DVD burner a few months ago...

Re:DL recording by firmware hack

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the burner.
Writing needs more laser power than reading - so some drives may only be able to focus the read laser onto the second layer.

Another thing to consider is focus blur - when reading the laser also shines unfocussed on the outer layer, it doesn't matter much. But when writing you have to be careful not to apply too much power to the layer you don't want to write to, or you'll end up writing stuff that you don't want.

Finally though - yes, for many drives it is just a firmware upgrade. That is DEFINATELY the case for the BENQ drive. Any 12x/16x drive using that chipset can be upgraded to dual layer with a firmware patch.

Whether they will sell you this patch is another matter - but I know Benq were nice about putting the patch for minues writing out there.

Re:DL recording by firmware hack

[julesh]

I suspect the power of the laser would need to be carefully calibrated when writing the second layer in order to prevent it from damaging the data on the first layer. Standard burners probably don't support this calibration. They may also not be capable of focussing the writing laser, but only the reading laser.

Re:DL recording by firmware hack

[zalas]

I believe Pioneer said a few months ago that they tested the A06 using new firmware and got it to burn onto dual layered DVD-R media.
Furthermore, the Anandtech article did state that they managed to convert a GO-W0808A to burn DVD+R9's:
"In fact, several other MT1818E burners are capable of firmware upgrades to DVD+R9. In fact, using beta firmware upgrades, we actually got our Gigabyte GO-W0808A to burn DVD+R9 as well. Keep in mind that the GO-W0808A retails for less than $110, while the DRU-700A will hit shelves at $199. Although the Sony DRU-700A is a considerable step up from the DRU-530A, we would have to recommend the GO-W0808A if it costs $90 less and performs the same." - AnandTech

Re:DL recording by firmware hack

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just reading about that and they said its was not just a simply firmware upgrade that Pioneer did. They actually did a hardware upgrade as well. The other things you mentioned may be true but the Pioneer one specifically isn't. Sorry A06 owners ;)

Re:DL recording by firmware hack

[klui]

In this month's emedia, a Pioneer VP said that the A09 will be the first to support DL burns. No specifics about +R or -R DL.

Re:DL recording by firmware hack

[ydrol]

Here it is ... cdfreaks I guess the marketing/sales people said "Delete that Program"..

Lordy

"Too slow to warrant a purchase?" what the heck?

[Audigy]

The majority of bargain-priced(?) DVD-+R/W drives out there burn at 4x. 8x drives appeared on the market maybe 6 months back, and the 12x ones have yet to hit the shelves. This one burns at 8x. That's 9 gigs in 30 minutes. What's the problem? That's plenty fast.

DVD Formats

[n-baxley]

This may be slightly off topic, but can someone tell me which is the better burner/media to get, the +R or the -R? Also, I've seen some media that says +R and the RW but it's only write once. What is the skinny on all of these R's?

Re:DVD Formats

[NineNine]

The +R and -R are quickly becoming a moot point. Most burners these days support both formats, the media costs the same, and most players play both. I do a LOT of DVD burning, and quite honestly, I don't care which I use. Most get played in a modded PS2, and it doesn't seem to care what kind of media I use.

Re:DVD Formats

[Anonymous Coward]

One element of confusion is that it is the 'DVD+RW forum' who certify isks as +R and +RW

And guess what - their logo has RW in it. Which, needless to say, is less than clever.

There are historical reasons for this (they originally didn't want to push a write-once format at all - but customers demanded it, having got used to it for CD)

But the upshot is that a disk which is a +R will (hopefully) say so - but will also usually have the DVD+RW logo on it.

Dumb, but there you go. Luckily people who sell spindles are smart enough to put good labels on the outside of the cases.

Re:DVD Formats

[J3M]

As the other poster stated, the difference between the two formats is almost nothing. I believe the -R format is 1 - 2 percent more compatible with standalone DVD players.

It's more of a personal thing. The -R format was developed by the DVD Forum and the +R format was developed by the DVD+RW Alliance. -R was the standard and +R was created by companies not willing to pay to use it. Personally, I use -R for that reason.

Re:DVD Formats

[Lumpy]

let's start here.....

DVD formats

dvd-R has the HIGHEST compatability in stand alone DVD players. hands down. this is an industry fact that all DVD replication houses stand by if they are going to do a short run on writeable media. long runds are always pressed media.

some people try to say otherwise, but I would trust a company making money replicating DVD's and publishing short run DVD's than some guy screwing around in his basement. also media companiesthat make commercials use DVD-R only as well as the professional Pioneer PRV-LX1 DVD burners that still cost $4000.00 are only DVD-R for video format.

for more information about formats look here

Re:DVD Formats

[johnkoer]

The + and - are just competing formats and support varies for the different formats across drives (mainly older drives). I read somewhere (PC Magazine) I think that +R is around 88% supported and -R is right around 90%.

As long as you are running a relatively new DVD player (purchased after 2001), you should have no problem running either + or -.

As for the burner, most of the ones coming out do both + and - and they can be found for less than$100

Re:DVD Formats

[Anonymous Coward]

For Video use buy whatever is cheapest and buy whatever format your house dvd player supports. For backing up use DVD+R. From a technical standpoint its just a flat out better method and more reliable way to write to DVD's than DVD-R. This isn't an invitation for people to swear how DVD-R has worked for their backups. If you know anything about the topic you'll know that DVD+R was engineered better than DVD-R. The only people who would argue against that are ones that haven't read exactly the specifications for DVD+R and DVD-R.
If you want to know which burner to buy get the NEC 2500A from Newegg which does 8xDVD+R and 8xDVD-R. Its only $85 and is widely recognized to be one of the best drives you could buy.

Re:"Too slow to warrant a purchase?" what the heck

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. It only burns dual layer DVD+R at 2.4x.

the article on one page

[elinenbe]

stop clicking the "next page" links every paragraph and try this out! anandtech.com review [anandtech.com]

Re:the article on one page

[Anonymous Coward]

you know it makes me beleive the author so much less when he dosnt even know that you can use shift-alt-print screen to capture a frame....

exploding discs

[korneel]

i wonder at what speeds we will experience exploding discs, a bit faster and i think the disks will overheat easily. Another thought i had was burning discs with multiple tracks, i.e. with four heads. disk rotation speeds can be the same but writing speeds will quadriple. another problem then will be that conventional drivers will be unable to read them..

Re:exploding discs

[Anonymous Coward]

Badly made disks start at around 20x DVD. you're unlikely to see a burner above 18x for that reason.

Multihead writing is something we've considered - but it almost doubles the cost of the drive (as well as needing fancy algorithms)

However, if it is done (by some other company) then the disks should play back fine on any drive. To mess up a metaphor: It doesn't matter what order you colour the disk in, it still ends up with the same picture on it at the end.

Re:exploding discs

[Grey_14]

A few things:
1. DVD-/+RW drives, dont need to spin the discs as fast, they can read more data, even spinning at slower speeds, due to how the data is compacted on the surface of the disc.

2. Multiple heads and tracks have already been discussed in many a "look a new harddrive" thread, all ended the same, it's too hard (ie. expensive) to syncronize the writing, you could not get coherent data, unless maybe you wanted to consider it as disc partitions, you can have 4gig here, and 4 gig here, but no 8gig files.

3. If you're looking for fast, large mass storage, and dont care if other drives can read them, get a tape drive, until then, backwards compatability is important, I can get a 16x DVD drive for around $30 CAD, it can read (At least) DVD-9's, if changing to a four head writer means all existing DVD drives and DVD Players are obsolete, it's not gonna happen, especially since a 4x head writer would probably cost five times as much (no, not 4x as much) as a regular one.

4. Whats the big hurry to write DVD's?! thats a pantload of data, take the time and do it right!
seriously though, knowing it's going to take a 1/2 hour to an hour to burn a CD (or dvd, I'm going by past experience here though) has made me consider much more carefully what data goes on, as opposed to "andddddddd DONE... oh... SH!T, I forgot this one".

Re:exploding discs

[korneel]

it was just an idea ... :D

Re:exploding discs

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're looking for fast, large mass storage, and dont care if other drives can read them, get a tape drive

Um yeah, right... like the average person has $1000+ to spend on a tape drive with tapes that cost $40-$60 each. A reasonable amount of tape backup (say 500GB worth) is *expensive*.

500GB is only 120 DVD-Rs or so (or around 60 of the new ones... give or take a few).

Hell, for $400, I can buy (4) 150GB hard drives.

Tape has zero cost advantage... unless you're getting into scenarios where you are using up a tape per day.

Re:"Too slow to warrant a purchase?" what the heck

[Audigy]

I did RTFA. I skipped right down to the table at the bottom, and in my skimming, I guess I missed a little bit. Ok, so 45 minutes.

9 gigs in 45 minutes!

That's still plenty fast. 8)

come on now, can anyone remember a first-generation "new technology" burner that had "screaming" speeds? I still have my old 1x Mitsumi CD-R drive around somewhere. I got a 4x in 1999, found that I could burn a CD-R in 15 minutes, and thought I was pimpin'. :\

Damn speed demons.

Hollywood's worst nightmare

[Zog The Undeniable]

If this doesn't kick-start HD-DVD, nothing will. The last obstacle to conventional DVD piracy has been overcome. Never mind the speed - now we can copy^H^H^H^Hmake fair-use backups of full commercial DVDs, including extras and without further compression.

Re:Fact : Windows is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, where is the retarded mod option when you need it.

According to RIAA calculations...

[taxevader]

...thats equal to 244 cd bur^D^D^D pirating devices.

Disney Commercials on DVD

[stecoop]

Your post is the most underrated yet in regards to the Disney commercials and menus. Very few fully know what you mean about ripping Disney DVDs so your sibling doesn't have to touch the original and what a pain all those commercials & menus really are, Especially when you change a DVD every 45 minutes or so. I recently bought my first DVD burner and ripped out those 30 minute commercials with menus; you simply insert the DVD and walk away. My wife kisses me every time the movie automatically start to play and the children get quiet for a few minutes of the day. My burner has paid for itself many times over with the amount of time I saved by not having to forward through that garage.

Re:Disney Commercials on DVD

[timeOday]

Amen! And anybody who doesn't see a valid, legal reason to copy DVD's hasn't seen what 4-year-olds do to them.

Re:Disney Commercials on DVD

[Gadget_Guy]

And anybody who doesn't see a valid, legal reason to copy DVD's hasn't seen what 4-year-olds do to them.

And anyone who hires DVDs from libraries knows that it isn't a problem that is limited to 4-year-olds. I sometimes get R rated movies (I guess they would be NC-17 rated in the US) that are scratched to bits. Or chewed. And I would hate to think what the DVDs from the porno section are like!

I have hired discs that my DVD player just spits back out again. Often, only my DVD burner is able to read it. What's a guy to do???

45 minutes isn't slow...

[jerkychew]

When the article said that the drive's burn speed was too slow "to really warrant a purchase", I was expecting 2+ hour burn times or something. 45 minutes isn't bad at all, considering that this is a new type of burner, with a new (to the consumer) type of media.

Remember waaaay back when the first Pioneer DVD+R drives came out? IIRC, it took hours to burn a 4GB DVD. I'd consider 4 hours too slow to warrant buying a drive, not 45 minutes.

I think the tradeoff of speed vs storage space is well worth it, personally.

Re:45 minutes isn't slow...

[ktulu1115]

I'd agree... I held off my original plans on purchasing a DVD writer for awhile now, waiting until they released dual layer burners.

I think once they design a drive with slightly better performance I'd definately consider a purchase (especially when Plextor releases a model, specifically a SCSI one, those are the best burners IMHO and experience working as a PC tech for 8+ years)

Based on a quick search, I see estimates prices aroudn $200 for this DL DVD+R driver, I was expecting much higher.

Being able to burn 8gb of data in 45 mins onto a single disc with a drive that costs ~$200 seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Re:45 minutes isn't slow...

[Nex]

I thought Pioneer was the-R company, not plus. That their drives only started doing plus recently. Nex

Re:45 minutes isn't slow...

[CaptainSuperBoy]

I agree, I care more about movie quality and storage space than the time it takes to burn. 45 minutes is fine with me, I can wait. Also, Pioneer doesn't make +R drives since they're the big name behind the -R standard.

Re:45 minutes isn't slow...

[h3]

Also, Pioneer doesn't make +R drives since they're the big name behind the -R standard.

Starting with the A06, their drives burn +R/+RW too.

-h3

Re:45 minutes isn't slow...

[Kris_J]

I think the tradeoff of speed vs storage space is well worth it, personally.

I agree. I own a Plexwriter Premium and it can fit almost a Gig on a normal 700MB blank CDr, but it will only burn at 4x speed when it does that. For archiving, who cares? I burn a CD once, it's burnt. I'll be getting a dual-layer DVD burner as soon as they hit Australian shores.

Full article without ads

[Anonymous Coward]

AnandTech review on a full page and without much ads

As seen on mythbusters

[stecoop]

Exploding disk was demonstrated on Myth Busters Episode 2. I watched this episode and they ran the cds around 60k rpms; it was quite hard to get the cds to fragment. They finally got them by compressing the center to a hub which i suspect caused undue stress to fracture the cds but they did fragment and they had a dummy which showed sever laceration from the flying debris

Episode 2: Cell Phone Destruction, Silicone Breasts, CD-ROM Shattering
In this episode, Jamie and Adam test several explosive theories. Can chatting on a cell phone while pumping gas cause the pump to blow up? Our mythbusters put themselves at risk so you don't have to. They also put silicone breast implants to the test at high altitude. Will they burst under pressure? Finally, we'll learn once and for all if high-speed CD-ROM players can really shatter a compact disc.

What about compatibility

[PhracturedBlue]

The article doesn't talk about it, but apparently DVDR9 has poor set-top player compatibility, at least currently. Whether this can be fixed via firmware, better media, or not is still unknown. Sorry I don't have a link, but I think both cdrinfo and dvdplusrw.org have comments about it on their boards.

Re:What about compatibility

[graikor]

That's true, to some extent. Hardware manufacturers are relying on the software vendors to fully fix this potential issue.

Basically, the way the new DL media works, it can only be properly read on a set-top device if both layers are written to. So if the data being written is significantly less than the full 8.5GB (as in 1-3 GB, and yes, this is wasteful, but if you buy a spindle of DL media and you end up needing to burn a small disc...) the software can either:

1.) figure out how to split the recording evenly, and spread it across that way (but there is a limit to how small the data area can be from the hub) or
2.) Write normally on one layer, and pad the other layer out with blank data.

Either way works fine, and it shouldn't be an issue if you mostly use DL media when SL media is too small for your project.

Er...

[yoz]

I would think there is at least some communication between the different divisions of Sony.

This would be the same Sony whose music division created copy-protected CD albums that couldn't be used with the electronics division's Net-MD player's ripping system, yes?

Buy dual format

[swb]

Don't buy a single format burner -- buy one that does +/- R/RW.

My personal opinion is that -R media has a slight edge in compatibility with a few older DVD-ROM drives and a few more older DVD players; DVD-R is endorsed by the DVD Forum and its specification is "official." This distinction is disappearing as new players and -ROM drives almost always support both formats.

I use -R exclusively, but primarily because I got a -R/RW drive dirt cheap, I knew worked in my DVD player, and it's the only write-once format supported by my set-top DVD recorder, the Panasonic DMR-E80H. It also only supports -RAM media for rewritables, which means that my next drive is going to be a +/- R/RW/RAM drive (if I can find one, most of the ones I've seen have been -R/-RW/RAM).

The nicest thing about the -RAM discs are the caddied discs; I can just toss them in a drawer and the caddy keeps them safe with no handling. Other than that, they're expensive and hard to find (especially in a caddy).

My personal guess is that - and + formats will remain "tied" until Blu-Ray or DVD-HD writables become affordable.

what about divx?

[ClioCJS]

Moderators, go ahead and mod this "irrelevant", but I've been wondering for awhile:

Is there an EASY EASY EASY EASY EASY way to drop a divx movie into a dvd layout and just burn it as a standalone dvd?

What about xvid?

Sort of like how in nero you can drag mp3s into a layout and burn it to audio cd.

Re:what about divx?

[beatnitup]

You have several options: 1.) New DVD players do have divx support but don't support xvid as of now. 2.) Mod your xbox, it will play anything you throw at it including ogg

Re:what about divx?

[ClioCJS]

That wasn't my question, and that's not an acceptible answer. I want my relatives to be able to see my divx wedding videos, even the ones who don't have fancy schmancy modded Xboxes or the latest dvd players.

But thanks for the typical elite-geek-slashdot response. You wasted both our time.

Re:what about divx?

[Anonymous Coward]

NeroVision Express will do this with very little fuss. Mostly Drag, Drop, wait several hours, burn.

There are also other packages like Ulead DVDmovie Express, Vegas Video etc.. And as always there is the hard way with manual re-encoding with small, hard to use utilities.

Re:what about divx?

[ClioCJS]

Thank you Mr. Anonymous.

Re-encoding also introduces additional video artifacts, and I'm a quality maniac.
(TO an extent.) So U-Lead DVD Express will let me drag-and-burn-right-away a divx? Sweeeeeeet.

Re:what about divx?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want the burned DVDs to play in a standard set-top DVD player (one that only understands MPEG2 compression and not DivX), there's no escape from re-encoding. The only difference is whether it's done with a stand-alone encoder or part of an all-in-one burning utility.

Re:what about divx?

[ClioCJS]

Hmm, well I understand that. That makes sense. I just want it to be a "one-click" "all-in-one-program" solution.

(I.E. the difference between dropping mp3s into nero and burning vs having to convert the mp3s to wavs yourself.)

I understand mpeg4 != 2 (4 != 2).

SO I should have said "on-the-fly encoding".

But sounds like you know the answer. ULead will do this? Do I need the most recent version?

thanks,
-Clint

Re:what about divx?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not an acceptable answer? Who TF are you? Build your own DVD player then.

Listen jackass he told you what you wanted to know so what's the freaking problem? He only wasted your time if you didn't want to know the answer to your problem.

I'll say again since maybe you were just being obtuse for some reason. IF you want to play divx videos than are burned on a DVD then you need to A) play them on a computer that has a DVD drive and the divx codec B)play them in a modded Xbox C) play them on a recent DVD player that supports divx. Whether you think any of the above is acceptable doesn't matter for jack shit since they ARE the only optoins.

Feel free to keep asking the same question over and over hoping for a different response though. Its always fun to watch people act dumb.

Re:what about divx?

[ClioCJS]

by "some some" i meant "NOT some". Shoulda used preview.

Re:what about divx?

[Asterisk]

In a word: No.

MPEG2 is part of the DVD-video specification. No other video formats are part of the DVD standard. There's no way that you can burn DivX video to DVD media and make a disc playable by standlone DVD players that aren't specifically equipped to play DivX files.

The only way you achieve what you want is to convert your DivX video to 720x480 MPEG2 at 29.97 fps (or 720x576 at 25fps for PAL). If your DivX video is lower resolution, or if the framerate is different, the resulting MPEG2 is going to wind up being very poor quality. You'll also need some DVD-mastering software to create the DVD disc layout and compose the VOBs from the input video and audio sources. This adds up to processing your video through at least 2-3 different applications, and running time-consuming rendering operations.

So it can be done, but not easily, and may not yield good quality results.

Re:what about divx?

[ClioCJS]

Now there's an informative answer!

but surely some programs must automatically do the required conversions?

maybe even automatically create a rudimentary menu? something like an autogenerated webpage with links to each "avi" (I know they're not really AVis once on the disc)

Re:what about divx?

[Anonymous Coward]

you are really gay, he was just giving info

Re:what about divx?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got ulead free with my DVD drive. It usually works, but not nearly as well as NeroVision

And re-encoding your divx file is unlikely to introduce anymore artifacts than are already present. It won't look any better, but it won't work any worse.

I think you can try it for free with a limitation of burning at 1x or something. Check it out. Its the best thing out there short of $2,000-4,000 DVD fabrication studio software. (though I hear iMovie is pretty nice too) Perhaps even windows movie maker will do this (which is free from windowsupdate if you run XP).

Good luck.

Re:what about divx?

[beatnitup]

thanks, good to know that some people aren't actual dick heads.

Would a SATA-based drive perform better?

[Ride-My-Rocket]

I don't know much about SATA, so pardon the newbie question. But I've heard that SATA (Serial ATA) and/or SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) will make computers easier to upgrade, at comparable or lower cost, and is more scalable than the current (Parallel) ATA in use.

My question, then: in a SATA-based system, where legacy (P)ATA has been phased out entirely, would you be able to do other things AND burn a CD at the same time with little / zero impact on performance? Also, is SATA meant to replace AGP, too?

Re:Would a SATA-based drive perform better?

[Viceice]

To answer your question, NO. SATA is still IDE and it has a CPU overhead associated with running it.

Being able to move around alot of data and not cost a very hight overhead (About 30% in SATA's case) is what SCSI is for.

Re:available space -- 8.5GB vs. 9GB?

[tachyonflow]

I think the parent poster is asking why these new DVD+R DL discs are only capable of storing 8.5GB (7.95 real GB?) of data, as opposed to the 9GB or so that we usually hear of "pressed" movie discs holding.

This was confusing me, too, but I found this chart in the DVD FAQ which does seem to indicate that pressed dual layer DVDs are also limited to 7.95GB.

Can any DVD experts confirm that pressed dual layer discs have the same storage capacity as DVD+R DL discs?

What about price and compatibility?

[DroopyStonx]

No one mentions those, but they will be an issue.

One DVD9 will be more expensive than purchasing two separate DVD5s. What's the point in using it, then? I could see if current DVD-R prices dropped to 50 cents a disc and the DVD9's took over the $1-2 range, but it doesn't look as if it will be that way.

And compatibility... if your DVD player is able to play DVD-R and DVD-RW, would it play DVD-R/RW DL without any issues? It might be fine for data backup, but if you can't copy movies and watch them, then that's a problem.

Re:What about price and compatibility?

[Superliminal]

Naw. Remember when CD-RWs first came out? I rejoiced, not because I ever planned on using a CD-RW (I still don't,) but because I knew that CD-R prices would promptly nosedive. And they did.

So, while you probably won't see me burning dual layer DVDs any time soon, all of us (well, all of us with DVD+/-R drives) will no doubt directly benefit from these drives and disks being on the market.

Re:What about price and compatibility?

[tommck]

WEll, When you want to pir^H^H^H backup a dual layer movie from Netflix^H^H^H^H^H^H^H your movie library, you don't want to have to compress the video first. Now, you won't have to.

That's why it won't matter that it's more than one layer disks.

Re:What about price and compatibility?

[Asterisk]

I could see if current DVD-R prices dropped to 50 cents a disc and the DVD9's took over the $1-2 range, but it doesn't look as if it will be that way.

Why not? When I bought my first cd-burner in 1997, the price of a single CD-RW was $15-20. Now they're about 50 apiece. Why wouldn't DVD media similarly drop in price?

Not flawed...

[cabraverde]

You just calculated the figures for 24-bit RGB. As I said in my original post, I was assuming YUV 420 - as this is the most common format for uncompressed video.

In this example the Y (luma) component is 720x576, but the U and V (chroma) components are subsambpled to 352x288 each. This results in half the amount of raw data versus 24-bit RGB at virtually no loss in perceived quality.

Re:Not flawed...

[raynet]

But you just compressed the video signal by subsampling the U and V components. True uncompressed video has full resolution also on U and V.

But it really doesn't matter because the original poster meant unrecompressed MPEG2 video.

Re:Not flawed...

[cabraverde]

But you just compressed the video signal by subsampling the U and V components. True uncompressed video has full resolution also on U and V.

Rubbish. You assumed I started off with YUV444. U & V subsampling is only 'compression' if you originally captured those components at a higher resolution and then downsampled them. That's usually not the case (eg the 'raw' format of my digital camera is a 12 bpp YUV).

Would you consider 8 bbp RGB to be compressed because it has a lower sample precision than 16 bpp RGB? Maybe - but it depends on the capture format.

You're right about the OP.

Re:Phase 2: Revealed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Law and Order SUV already define the 3 winning steps.

1. Collect Homecoming Queen underwear
2. Sell to perves on eBay
3. Profit

There's NO WAY to get LOSSLESS 10:1 compression

[StandardCell]

DV format, which uses lossy a Discrete Cosine Transform intraframe compression similar to MotionJPEG or I-frame only MPEG-2, only nets roughly 5:1 compression. The best anyone can get is maybe 2:1 compression with something like HuffYUV, but there's too much random data in video to be able to attain a LOSSLESS 10:1 compression.

In fact, that's been the big advantage of DV - the lossy compression in that format is a great balance between data rate and visual loss. Lots of broadcast media use DV25 (4:1:1) or DVCPRO50 (4:2:2) as their source, and it's nearly impossible to tell the difference between it and lossless on an average interlaced tv set.

Re:There's NO WAY to get LOSSLESS 10:1 compression

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, thanks for the correction. I forget where I got that 10:1 figure from, but it's way off.

From a quick google, these guys claim 5:1 on good quality YUV422 material. But you can bet they chose their test material carefully.

Re:There's NO WAY to get LOSSLESS 10:1 compression

[Kiryat Malachi]

Hey, I can get near to infinity to 1 compression, losslessly, if I pick my source material... after all, a white screen compresses *very* nicely with RLE. :)

Intervideo DVD Copy

[bonch]

DvdShrink's quality is awful.

Honestly, I only use it to strip out what I don't need to make an uncompressed backup. Then I fire up Intervideo DVD Copy to shrink down and burn--it has absolutely the best compression I've ever seen. Often times you can't tell the difference between the original and the copy. Not to mention, it's much faster than DVD Shrink's "Deep Analysis."

Hell, yeah

[bonch]

Seriously, I've been putting off buying a DVD burner until these new dual-layers came out.

First thing I'm gonna do is backup my Extended Edition LOTR DVDs (all 8 of 'em...soon to be 12 when ROTK comes out). I'm sick of fumbling with those big foldout booklets, and the collector's geek in me doesn't want to be handling all that stuff all the time and instead keep it in the box.

*Rolls eyes*

[Anonymous Coward]

Well gee, aren't we clever. I wish people would read into the spirit of the sentence rather than nit-pick the details in order to sound smart. Though that's just hopeful thinking on Slashdot.

Re:*Rolls eyes*

[Anonymous Coward]

No need for the sarcasm. For someone who works in digital video but doesn't make a habit of ripping & re-encoding DVDs, it was not a deliberate mis-reading of the original post. Although it has turned into nit-picking, naturally.

Re:available space -- 8.5GB vs. 9GB?

[TheKeyMaker]

User writable sectors 0x3FB000, 2048 byte sectors.
8,547,991,552 bytes (7.96GB) less the overhead of your file system of choice.

Sony DL Info

DVD Formats

Disc Max User Capacity Note
120 mm :DVD5 4.7GB Single layer Single sided disc
120 mm :DVD9 8.5GB Double layer Single sided disc
120 mm :DVD10 9.4GB Single layer Double sided disc
120 mm :DVD18 17.1GB Double layer Double sided disc
120 mm :DVD-R 4.7 GB Single layer Single sided disc
120 mm :DVD-RW 4.7 GB Single layer Single sided disc
120 mm :DVD+RW 4.7 GB Single layer Single sided disc

TKM

media won't be available until summer or later too

[MoFoQ]

to add insult to injury, media companies won't start production until summer (june/july) or later.

DVD+RW unstable

[presarioD]

I have a SONY CD+RW/DVD+RW combo and lo and behold I bought a SONY DVD+RW disk last week and suprise suprise the drive could not write on it!
I get buffer underuns and all that...
Mind you that I tested this with Roxio on my XP boot side, and with dvd+rw-tools on my RH9 boot side. Same problem!
Way to go SONY! Thanks for the support!
Thank god DVD+R works on the drive...
Cheers!

Fragmented?

[Gldm]

Not a problem, I've been known to do all my routine maintenance stuff at the same time. That means burning files from a drive on the fly (no ISO first) while defragmenting it. Usually I'll watch a movie or some anime too cause it's boring. Sometimes I can almost get my CPU use up to 30%. The new fancy buffer underrun protection on most drives makes it less of a challenge though, I remember the days before that it'd really impress people. I'd be playing team fortress and the map would end and I'd be like "BRB, CD's done burning, gotta put the next one in!" I miss the days when my P2-300 was nice and new, nowadays it's just taken for granted you're not getting a coaster unless your dog eats your disc while it's burning or something.

P.S. Thanks 3ware and DPT before them, and Ricoh Plextor and Liteon.

Re:Fragmented?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're doing anything that touches the filesystem while you're defragmenting, then you're a moron, and that's all there is to say about it.

Starwars Extended Editions

[stecoop]

In addition to backing up DVD I would like to add all the cut scenes from Starwars I & II on the bonus disk back into the movies creating my own extended Starwars editions.

Wrong

[tommck]

Unless you're flipping your DVDs to play them, this will hold them.

DVD-9 means single-sided, dual layer... That is an 8.5 GB DVD.

I haven't seen any double-sided, single-layer disks in a while (that's the one that's 9.4 GB).

T

Re:Wrong

[dnoyeb]

when you buy a movie, how can you know what its required space/format is?

Your saying this DVD burner can't burn all movies without compression, but it can burn some?

Re:Wrong

[tommck]

I'm not sure if it's on the box, but when you put them in a DVD-ROM drive, you can see how much space it takes up. If it's less than 4.7GB, it's gotta be a single-sided, single-layer disk.

If you see more than 4.7, it's going to be a single-sided (cause you haven't flipped it!), double-layer which is 8.5GB,

If you see 4.7 on one side, then you flip the disk and see another 4.7, it's a 9.4 ...

Some movies you buy have the widescreen movie on one side and the 4:3 ratio on the other. These are usually 9.4 disks. In order to read them on a PC, you'd have to manually flip them. (Think 5 1/2" floppies before double-sided drives)

Make sense?

BUT, Can You...

[DynaSoar]

read a double density recorded DVD in a single density DVD drive and access all 8GB?

P.S. Tuff...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called accountably. If you played by the rules set forth and registered as others have for access to "members privileges" and was refused membership because you are simply foolish, that would be discrimination. For you to expect "full access" behind your anonymity is the very reason registration is implemented. Sign up or remain an "Anonymous Coward".

Suck on that.