Slashdot Mirror
Sony Launches DVD-Burning Appliance
what_the_frell writes "News.com.com has a story about Sony's latest DVD Burner that can be connected directly to your VCR or Camcorder to directly record or back up your recoded home movies, TV shows, etc. It can also be hooked up to a PC via a USB 2.0 connection as well. The article reports that the device effectively removes the PC from the equation, giving users an easier way to make their own DVDs. No word yet if it will record straight from your television, or from your DVD Player to circumvent copy-protection. *wink*" Sony also has its own press release on the gadget.
Why is it that they always use USB, sure its fast at its burstable rate of 480 Mbs, but Firewire sure beats it with a sustainable 400Mbs, that and if your hooking up a digital camcorder to your dvd burner wouldn't you want something that was already in the camera, IIRC most camcorders have 4-pin firewire out ports because they are superior for the data transfer...
Ah, a Video Toaster...(rimshot)
Prior Art and all that jazz
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Its been out a while, just plug in and record. nothing new here...
Actually, attempting to record a DVD using RCA outputs from a DVD playing device will result in a macrovision message being popped up on the screen! It knows... well unless you have one of the Apex players!
burning appliance
or
Appliance that burns DVDs
--
want $10?
Kenwood and Sony makes a indash minidisc player (Kenwood eXcelon KMD-X92 , Sony MDX-F5800 ) as well as sony makes a changer for its in dash units. (Sony MDX-66XLP 6-Disc MiniDisc Changer)
hope this helps
-myke
-DrMyke
"mmmmmmmmm, doughnuts" - H.J.Simpson; super genius
Happiness. What a fantastic device
This device + Tivo has been around since December. Here's the product page for it.
It's made by Pioneer.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
From what I can tell, it *looks* like this device should be able to record direct-to-DVD without the need for an intervening tape. Anyone have any experience with using a device like this that way? Ideally, we'd like to be able to record direct to DVD, and when done, swap the DVD out to a duplicator and make a few copies of it.
For those interested, this would be an idea setup for a couple of classes I'm taking where we have distance learning students. Being able to send them a DVD with a month's worth of classes on it would be a whole heck of a lot better than what we're managing now, and $300 is probably within the budget for a simple solution like this.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
...but is there any reason that someone who already owns a PC-capable burner would want to spend another $300 for this?
I bet you a ninepence you still have a separate stereo, alarm clock, TV and DVD player and books at home, while your PC could very well play music, wake you up in the morning (afternoon?), act as a TV, play DVDs and display ebooks. How comes?
The reason is, a PC does many things, but never does any one of these many things well enough to be something you want to life with day by day. Not to mention the horrendous noise and energy expenditure in the form of heat a PC represents.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This appears to be no different than the Liteon 5005 I purchased several months ago. The only difference is that the Sony appears to use a newer dual layer drive and costs about $100 more.
Don't get me wrong - these are very useful devices. I'm ready to toss my VCR as soon as I dub a few tapes to disc. But it's not groundbreaking new technology.
More leftist garbage from garcia. You whine about "the end of freedom" while saying that companies engaged in business A shouldn't be allowed to engage in business B. Do you even stop to think about what you post? You have a twisted definition of "freedom".
I guess I'm missing something, but haven't we had stand-alone DVD recorders for quite a while now? I bought a DVD recorder functioning exactly like a VCR several months ago. - http://www.dvdrecorder.philips.com/
Most Sony equipment I've ever bought has been top notch. Especially their video gear.
With that said...
My first DVD player for the entertainment center was a Sony. It worked fine, but it was very fussy about what disks it would play. Quite a few disks from Netflix wouldn't play in it and it wasn't because they were scratched. I had problems playing brand new disks.
So I bought a Panasonic unit that was a generation newer. It plays every DVD I've ever tossed at it. It doesn't play VCD or SVCD, which would be really nice, but I don't have problems playing any movies anymore.
Despite that experience, I bought a DRU-530A internal 8x Sony burner about 6 months ago and stuffed it into a FW/USB case. It works great. Firmware updates work fine despite the failed to write buffer error at the very end. Once you reboot it's fine and running the new firmware.
The only problem I've had with the 530 is burning at 8x. My Panasonic player in the living room has a tendency to glitch frequently playing 8x burns. Burn the same media at 4x and it's a happy camper. I'm not too surprised that a player that old has issues with 8x burns. Kinda sucks, though, but I'll probably buy a new player for the rack that supports more formats and, being more modern, shouldn't have problems with 8x burns.
So, despite one bad experience (and it wasn't THAT bad), I'm still a Sony fan. Having done professional video before, there's a reason I've always been a Sony man, their video gear is hard to beat, although Panasonic does really well in that market as well.
No geek should be excited about this. It's inputs are S-video, composite video and analog stereo, along with the USB. If you're copying from your A/V gear or your camcorder, you're restricted to the analog formats. Even if you have a DVD player that defeats macrovision, you're still making a low-quality copy from the analog signal. You can't copy the DD or DTS signals with this either.
This might be a fine device for someone that just wants to eliminate their VCR, but that is all. You can archive your old VHS tapes, your personal videos, or stuff off the Tivo, but that's about it.
Sony seems to be suffering from big misleadingness regarding integration and portability. When I bought my Sony camera, I looked for something that I knew I could use under Linux, so I got an all-purpose CDR-TRV345E DV camera (which accidentally included a USB link too).
The DV part works fine, it works so well that I actually use it to backup my data. The USB drivers are proprietary stuff. If you lose the CD, Sony WON'T give you a copy of your drivers (didn't happen to me, but I found lots of complaints of people on that situation while searching for technical information regarding their "USB Stream", which they don't disclose either).
Additionally, if the software they speak about is that Pixella ImageMixer for Sony, forget about it, you better find something else if you really mean to edit quality video.
Personally I have been sort of disappointed with Sony lately. They were the first brand I used to look for quality electronic stuff, but this is quickly changing.