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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."
Did anyone else notice it supports DVD+RW, but not DVD+R?
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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.-- Every time you kill a kitten, God masturbates.
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!
-Imidazole2
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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
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.
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.
5) This still won't hold a standard Movie DVD.
DVD Shrink
- (sorry, windows only app.)
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.
AnandTech review on a full page and without much ads
Or Rip them to DivX and use one of These to save even more time/space! I am! =D
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.
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
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Copying movies is very important, especially in light of this:
CDs and DVDs Not So Immortal After All
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.
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
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.
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 :DVD5 4.7GB Single layer Single sided disc
:DVD9 8.5GB Double layer Single sided disc
:DVD10 9.4GB Single layer Double sided disc
:DVD18 17.1GB Double layer Double sided disc
:DVD-R 4.7 GB Single layer Single sided disc
:DVD-RW 4.7 GB Single layer Single sided disc
:DVD+RW 4.7 GB Single layer Single sided disc
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TKM
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).