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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.
At first I thought this was something I'd have in the kitchen or laundry... still, sounds like a capital idea.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I hit read more and /. told me "nothing to see here, please move along." which by coincidence was exactly what I was about to say. I've had a pvr / dvd burner for at least half a year now. This isn't new stuff, except that it can be hooked up to your computer. And then the article goes on to say that they are eliminating the computer from the personal media loop? Then why do they have connections for it? Is it too much to expect rational reporting, at least?
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
There's no way that Sony of all people would release a device that ignores macro vision, or even the broadcast flag.
That said, If it connects to a VCR, then it probably uses RCA/RF/SVIDEO inputs, which you could clearly use to record from any source .
sinfulshirts. tshirts that make baby jesus cry.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This just seems like a natural progression for me... Standalone CD burners -> standalone DVD burners.
Careful...
Just because it's a neat idea doesn't mean they put quality into its components and/or construction. I've shyed away from buying things from Sony after reading many reviews of their spiraling (downward) quality. Different people in charge with different priorities. Akio, you are missed.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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...
No word yet if it will record straight from your television, or from your DVD Player to circumvent copy-protection. *wink*
Software that manages copyright ownership (or any other software for that matter) doesn't require a PC to be ran. I'd guess that Sony, which has large interests in the motion picture and music industries, has some kind of copy protection with this - with or without a PC.
Its been out a while, just plug in and record. nothing new here...
With SOny being one of the largest movie producers in the world and way up there too in the music bizz, I doubt they will bypass ANY copy protection. In fact I would expect it to be built into the device too.
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.
In other news: Sony launched a recordable DVD burner that records movies and live TV, etc... To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the launch of the same Sony's Betamax product in 1975, the MPAA decided to sue Sony. "It's just like the good ole days" declared MPAA's godfather Jack Valenti.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
What's capital? I never know what you're talking about. Loo, shag, brolly, what the hell is all that?
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
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!
...but is there any reason that someone who already owns a PC-capable burner would want to spend another $300 for this?
In fact, it seems to me that this product is only for people who don't own ANY kind of burner, not even a non-PC set-top DVR:
if you already own a set-top DVR, and you have $300 to burn, wouldn't you rather spend it on a more capable PC-based burner (e.g., faster, multi-format, etc.)?
The main use for this will probably be mastering home tapes and camcorder family stuff onto optic media which is less prone to loss over the years.
OTOH it says it can be hooked up to a PC, I wonder how long before someone zaps the PROM to allow copy of any DVD.
But, still, the price tag makes it an unlikely choice for your occasional piracy trip. This is a family appliance rather than a geek thing, obviously if you wanted to dupe DVD's you'd be buying one of these.
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
burning appliance
or
Appliance that burns DVDs
--
want $10?
It's actually a pretty cool little device. Say I wanted to record something in order to edit it, either from tv, or anything putting out a video signal, like a game console. Instead of having to wire it to a vcr, or complex wiring into the computer, I just hook up the output to this, burn to a dvd, and I've got it to play with anywhere else. Not bad. Obviously, it'll still detect macrovision and not allow regular DVD movies to be copied, but it does seem to eliminate the need all those 'Dazzle' video capture devices that they sell at Best Buy and the like.
The best part is dual layer and PC connections, everything else is already available for $200 at costco and you get TV tuner included. I believe amazon had a DVD recorder with TV tuner for $169 just a few days ago. The costco model (don't remember the brand, its some weird Chinese brand) includes firewire input, so you can plug your DV / Digital 8 cam right into it. Not bad for that kind of money.
What about the IEEE-1394 interface they were so proud of on their cameras? I have one of those i-Link and USB DCR-TRV cameras with a lot of v8/hi8 tapes to burn into some optical media. Why do I have to be forced to use an analog connector between two digital devices? Really expected to see Sony better integrating their products.
I have a DVR-500, and it really, really sucks. It, like all Sony products, stopped working directly after its warranty expired, and now only burns at 1x, sometimes.
It makes loud clicking noises when starting and may or may not work on some media.
The 510 model likewise, sucks. It does the same things, and, as it got older (a friend of mine has one), stopped running at top speed as well.
Do yourself a favor: NEVER BUY SONY. Does it look cool? Yes. Does it work well, at least immediately? Yes. Is it substandard crap? OH Yes. Will it outlive a puppy? Never.
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
Sending friends and family home movies on a DVD is going to be great for the folks who like that sort of thing. As long as these are ``real DVDs'', not some crippled substitute, they'll be great.
For the slightly longer term ... there are garage bands today, and maybe someday there will be garage movie producers. Another ten years of Moore's law will make something like Toy Story possible on a few desktop PCs. I'm really looking forward to that.
See what I've been reading.
better read this before you start recommending Apex products. A lot of people hate this company.
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
An alternative solution might be the adapdtec viedeoh hardware mpegII encoder with built in TV tuner. cost about 100 sterling add in the cost of a seperate burner then the price is competetive.
I can't quite see the advantage of this device as a stand alone unit.
Pirating videotapes maybe, simplicity?
I just can't see the point if you can't edit without using a PC why would you want to buy this device?
getting raw camcorder footage direct to dvd without editing is just going to mean ripping it again from the dvd to edit out all the worst shots.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Here, in Soviet Russia the burner toasts the DVDs!
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
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
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.
they either sell the movies [they own the rights to LOTS and LOTS of movies, new and old and yet to be made.] or if you to rip the movie while you rent it or have a download in the right format, they will sell you the recorder...they make the bucks at one end or the other...that's the Sony solution to the whole copywrong battle.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
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.
Sony... the guys who brought us very expensive DVD players that wouldn't read CD-R/DVD-R media.
Sony, the guys who brought us the Sony Memory Stick and Magic Gate copy protection aka "Slow and Lame."
Sony, the guys who just released the "iPOD Killer" that can't even play MP3's before converting them to Sony's proprietary format.
Sony, the guys who make TV's that enforce macrovision so strictly that they sometimes don't work with DVD players and legal DVDs.
Unless they've turned over a new leaf, this thing will be crippled. I quit buying Sony years ago because of their anti-consumer stance.
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.
Firewire can be usefully faster, for example with an external hard disk; all the benchmarks I've seen show Firewire performance to be superior to USB2 while using less CPU resources (and certainly this is the case with my own external Maxtor, connected to my desktop). The point is, USB 2 *doesn't* do 480Mbs for any sustained period, it is in fact well below 400Mbs and you can see a difference with 'normal' devices. (A 16x DVD is over 22MB/s, e.g. over 175Mb/s.)
:-(
It would be particularly peculiar, however, for Sony to launch something that did USB2 and *not* Firewire, as Sony are a major Firewire supporter - it has been impossible to buy a Sony Vaio without it for the last five years at least, while they have only added USB2 to their laptops relatively recently (typing this now on a Vaio with firewire but no USB2
Annoyingly Sony use the 4-pin no power connector, and have the gall in their more recent laptops to situate a proprietary Sony DC output right beside the 4-pin firewire when they could just go with the standard 6-pin...