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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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
You'd still have to buy the video capture hardware, and then you'd probably not be able to transcode and burn in real time, you'd have to have the know-how to prevent it from stuttering as it burned and you'd have to have the know-how to make it playable on a standard DVD player.
So depending on output quality, it may be cheaper, faster, and easier although certainly not as flexible. Yeah, you can probably find a cheap capture card, but how's the quality on that?
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...