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Hardware

HP Introduces DVD Recorder 201

Posted by Hemos from the hurm-maybe-time-to-buy dept.
NecroPuppy writes "Hewlett-Packard is introducing the first commercially available DVD recorder, according to this. According to the article, it will be on store shelves in September, and list for $599, and uses the DVD+RW standard." Well, now that I've just bought the supposed to be awesome CD burner from TG (end plug), it might be time to pick this up come September. It'll make backing up a lot easier - since I don't have the Linus method of backing-up.
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HP Introduces DVD Recorder More

HP Introduces DVD Recorder

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  • Media cost (Score:1)

    by O ( 90420 )
    Looks like great fun, but how much is DVD-RW media going to cost? CD-r discs are around $0.15 if you shop around, and I don't think this is going to be widely adopted if a DVD-RW disc costs $20.

    • Re:Media cost (Score:5, Interesting)

      by All Dead Homiez ( 461966 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2001 @07:06PM (#2205937)
      but how much is DVD-RW media going to cost?

      Actually this is a DVD+RW drive. There are at least seven different standards for recording/pressing DVDs and they all have their pros and cons. A summary can be found here [dvddemystified.com].

      Indeed, having so many different standards is sure to slow the adoption of a recordable DVD format. But hopefully, someday everyone will use the same format and the media will be cheap. Witness the price drops (over time) that occurred with CD-Rs, and then with CD-RWs - the drives did not become commodities until the media did. Back in 1996, blank CD-Rs were about $20 each, as a point of reference. Be patient; we will have cheap recordable DVDs soon enough.

      -all dead homiez

      • DVD+RW (the format HP say they're using) looks like a good one though. It's compatible with PC DVD drives and DVD movie players.
        So I expect we can look forward to some sort of protection or crippling of the format so we can't make backups of movies
        • Unfortunately, so does DVD-R, DVD+R, and DVD-RW... With seven different competitive "standards" around, none of them are particularily appealing. The DVD Forum, on the other hand is only backing DVD-RAM, DVD-RW and DVD-R. The only really useful thing about DVD+RW and DVD+R is that it's directly compatible with CD-R and CD-RW, so a DVD+RW drive should be able to write all four types of discs without problem. Unfortunately, only time will tell which format ends up widely adopted and which ones will fail miserably.
      • Be patient; we will have cheap recordable DVDs soon enough.

        By the time we have cheap recordable DVDs, 4-6 GB will be a laughable amount.
      • Of course, maybe it won't matter.

        Maybe new dvd players will just add the new formats to their list of compatible formats. Current DVD players support lots of data formats: dvd, cd, vcd. Better ones support mp3 and svcd/xvcd/xsvcd. Lots of current inexpensive players have more than one laser to support most of the different physical formats: dvd, cd, cd-r, cd-rw, and even the newer dvd-r, dvd-rw, dvd+rw.

        Check out http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers.php [vcdhelp.com]
    • The article says $15.99 per disk.
      The cheapest I can see on pricewatch [pricewatch.com] is $19.
      So not at all cost effective with only about 7 times the capacity if you're just using it for backup purposes.
      • So not at all cost effective with only about 7 times the capacity if you're just using it for backup purposes.

        Depends. I would prefer to have a backup solution that save 7 times more data on the media than one that forces me to change the media 7 times.

        If the media is big enough the backup can (and will be) run unattended (e.g. over night). If you are forced to change media its more probable that your laziness wins over your need for backup and you won't do it often.

        And the big advantage of a backup on a disk is the fast access to the data (instead of serial access on a tape).

        • The other option is the new back-up drive from Iomega [iomega.com] they've released something called the "Peerless" [iomega.com] - a 20GB back-up disk, like the great-grandchild of Zip disks...

          • as long as they manage to make the "Peerless" "click-of-death-less" we should be ok... personally, I wouldn't trust my backup data to anything Iomega makes.
            • as long as they manage to make the "Peerless" "click-of-death-less" we should be ok... personally, I wouldn't trust my backup data to anything Iomega makes.



              Another thing is that you can pull stuff off of it faster than the Sip drives. I have consistently found that it would take about 15-20 minutes to copy 100M off of a Zip drive. Now 20G at that speed......

  • Not the first. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The slashdot article is misleading, as it isn't the first commercial DVD recorder, only the first DVD+RW recorder.

    Apple has been using a recordable DVD drive by Pioneer for a while, and I'm fairly sure Compaq has as well.
  • I just noticed this drive while browsing pricewatch.
    http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/Pioneer/CDA/In du strial/IndustrialProductDetails/0,1444,30~3010~301 0300~796,00.html?
    600$+ and the Pioneer namebrand media isn't cheap either. a spindle of 50 DVD-RW's was just a few bucks short of the DVD-RW Drive at 609$

    I'm not buying now, but I am deffinitely going to wait for all of those "early adopter" and "I'm buying it because I have a small penis" people to buy there share, and pick one up once I don't have to sacrifice my first born child.


    • pick one up once I don't have to sacrifice my first born child


      I agree, by next summer they will be $299 (media will be around $2 per disc), by Xmas 2002 the price will be $199 (disc wil be under $1) and there will be Linux support for the drive. Until then my Sony 8x burner will do very nicely.

    • I won't give a shit even then. I got a 2.5 (5 really) Travan drive for $30. A small pile of tapes is all I need to store the important stuff.

      Put 100(0) Gigs on a disc, or better yet, some sort of holographic cube, and I will be interested.
  • so when the 24x dvd rw coming out.... i dont have 4 hrs to fillup 4 gig at 2x speed. comon u damn r&d bastards... u have em, releasem alredy.
    • The article actually says that the drives write at DVD 2.4x, which is approximately 20x in CD language. The CD and DVD speeds are not the same since a 1x CD is the speed required to play an audio / video CD, and a 1x DVD is the speed required to watch a DVD movie.

      According to the above ratio 1x DVD is about the same as 8.3x CD.

      -- Dooferlad
      • That would still be around an hour per disc. A standard DVD takes about about 2 hr(ss,sl) so a writer at 2x would still take at least an hour o burn.
      • if i had a dvdrw i would not be using it to write CDRs (that much). the sole purpose of the dvdrw is for large backups or to contribute to your personal collection of "backed-up" dvd movies.

  • I read a review of the Pioneer A03 DVD-RW [pioneerelectronics.com] a couple of months ago. (Google's Cache [google.com] of the page)

    The review stated that most new DVD-ROM drives and DVD video players can read these DVD-R disks. A few can also read the DVD-RW standard.

    I know what I want for Christmas!
  • Hehe, couldn't resist, sorry.

    Anyway... If I'm reading the article correctly, this isn't the first DVD burner, it's the first DVD rewriter from hp.

    Especially since Apple's SuperDrive (pioneer) has been out for a while. Compaq, and others, have also joined recently.

    hp does plan to have it in computers by the end of the year, though. That's very cool. Good luck, Carly.

    jrbd

  • You got ripped off, Timothy (Score:3, Informative)

    by alexburke ( 119254 ) <alex+slashdot@@@alexburke...ca> on Thursday August 23, 2001 @03:49AM (#2207042)
    Well, now that I've just bought the supposed to be awesome CD burner from TG

    Not to poo-poo ThinkGeek (I've ordered from them before), but I can get the Sony CRX-1611 16x10x40 CD-RW drive with BurnProof for C$158 (about US$99) at several local computer stores here in Toronto (although one [canadacomputers.com] is my favourite).

    And to think you paid twice as much, plus shipping... ouch...
  • but with so many standards out there (e.g. DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD+RW,... etc.) which will prevail in the long run? A better choice would probably be one of the ones by LaCie or QPS, which they showed at TechXNY, the ones which are a combination DVD-RW/DVD-R/CD-RW/CD-R drive. I don't think they'll be much more than the HP.
    • It's possible that neither DVD-RW nor DVD+RW will prevail, as both kinds of disc can be read in any DVD-ROM drive and all modern DVD players.

      Phillips claims DVD+RW is "more compatible", but both drives write discs that fall within the official spec for DVD players, so that's pretty meaningless.
  • This drive is far from the first DVD recorder on the market. Pioneer has had their A03 out for months. And before that there were high-end professional units. Apple has included the Pioneer DVD-R drive (A03) for months and I think that ComPaq is also shipping a version.

    Now it is possible that the drive from HP is the first for the DVD+RW (instead or the DVD-R or DVD-RW) standard. But it is not the first DVD recordable drive by far.

    ==Paul

  • The Linus Method (Score:2, Funny)

    by Phroggy ( 441 )
    For those of you too lazy to click the link:

    "Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it."
    - Linus Torvalds

  • Since ThinkGeek is owned by VA Linux... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Shaheen ( 313 ) on Thursday August 23, 2001 @04:10AM (#2207077) Homepage
    It's actually quite a serious thing to plug a company owned by your own parent corporation, without giving explicit notice of that fact, or making the plug an advertisement.

    But this is Slashdot, where none of that applies...
  • er... tell me if i'm wrong but haven't there been DVD Recorders around for quite some time? this link to an austrian computer store [geizhals.at] tells me that there are already DVD recorders for about $700. or is the HP recorder one with which i can also recorde TV shows?

  • Not the first (Score:5, Informative)

    by q-soe ( 466472 ) on Thursday August 23, 2001 @04:29AM (#2207090) Homepage
    Apple Super Drive - DVD Recorder - been around about 6 months or so - www.apple.com\superdrive (Approx $999 i think, included with G4 macs)

    Panasonic Sell a DVD recorder for TV use etc - http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/dvd_ recorder/default.asp (designed admittedly for media creators)

    Pioneer have several models (including one with UNIX drivers) - http://www.proh.com/DVD-Recorders.shtml ($820 SRP)

    And thats just a quick search - HP are hardly the first consumer level and the pioneer has been out 6 months - add to this offerings by phillips and sony due out soon and you have a bad claim to HP - i dont mean to flame but can we check stories first - even a 5 minute web search would have proven the claim wrong and stopped the hundreds of posts pointing out the error
    • It says it is the first with the ability to use DVD Rewritable discs, not just burn to DVD.
      • I noticed that - Phillips www.phillips.com announced one about 3 months ago - not sure about release date - anyway isnt this splitting hairs - DVD recordable media is about AU$30 and i shudder to think what RW is going to be worth - the upatke on normal RW discs has been a lot less.

        • DVD recordable media is about AU$30 and i shudder to think what RW is going to be worth

          $15 according to the article (and I have seen the "normal" DVD recordables for $50 for 5). Not all that costly, even if it isn't price competitive with CD-R (which I have been buying at $20 for 50, with a $20 rebate).

          I still want to know what the difference between DVD-RW and DVD+RW is, and who thought it would be a good idea to name them so closely.

          • Please note the AU$ in front of the price - that equates to roughly $15 US - not all of us are american
      • Interestingly enough, the superdrive actually is a rewritable drive. I believe that the first ones had firmware that prevented their use as such, but I have heard of people successfully using them more recently. I'm at a loss as to why Apple doesn't market them as rewritable -- probably because their software doesn't yet support it -- apparently DVD-Studio Pro won't rewrite a disc, but if you use it to create an image you can successfully burn it with Toast Titanium.
    • While HP may not be the first to market. I think the pricepoint they are introducing it at will have a significant impact.

      Me personally I will wait untill the cost of the blanks drop below $5.00 US. By then the price of the recorders will have, hopefully, dropped significantly

    • Re:Not the first (Score:1, Redundant)

      by zsazsa ( 141679 )
      I think they meant to say that it was the first commercially-available DVD-RW. It also is a bit more affordable than the others.

      Ian
    • The article (but not the poster) says this is the first DVD+RW drive which is important. DVD-RAM won't play in video DVD players, and DVD-RW only plays in the newer DVD players. DVD+RW is supposed to work in all of them. That's their big selling point and the reason they thought the world needed another standard. I've been waiting for these for quite a while as its the best format for recording/storing home movies in terms of quality and durability.
      • The article is wrong. Pioneer's A01 (AKA Apple SuperDrive) does DVD+RW, and has been out for 6 months.

        You can buy them for about $650, IDE internal.

        They also just released a newer A03 model.
    • HP has several devices on the market that have no manufacturer supported Linux drivers. This might be good for backups, but only if it's useable.

      I think that HP's assessment of the Linux market is defined by their announcement yesterday of a $3,000 version. They see Linux as being for servers. Consumer items may well get a very short shrift.

      My guess is the Linux support is out of a totally separate division from the consumer stuff. Abd the two groups either don't talk, or are rivals.

  • Just incase anyone is interested, the DVD+RW specs are here [philips.com].

    Also, from the little I have read on zdnet [zdnet.com] it appears that DVD+RW is promising, being usable for video, data, etc. although not officially sanctioned by the DVD Forum (but with backers like HP, Phillips, Ricoh, Sony, Thomson MM, Verbatim, and Yamaha who needs the damn DVD Forum ;).
  • When will we ever have something to record live feed TV though, and keep it around. Tivos machines are nice, and all, but I need to record Jay and Silent Bob when it first premires on the boob tube. That way I can dig out Katz' review out of the dust and laugh myself stupid again... (You are going to keep doing reviews, right Katz?) ;)
  • Amongst the posts in this article I have seen a large degree of confusion.

    HP have released a DVD+RW writer device, this writes DVDs. It is not just a DVD reader which writes CD-R or CD-RW. I assume that this device can also write CD-R and CD-RW, but it is more than that, hence the higher price tag.
  • The MPAA or who-ever is in charge will keep the media prices high after DeCSS. I don't see any other reason why they should be expensive, yes i know cdrs were but thats different, dvdrs are probably produced in the same factories with little modification to the machinery (anyone know about this?). Anyway, dvd sucks - 1.44 floppy for many people was replaced by cd-r: 1.44Mb vs. 640Mb is a big difference. 640Mb vs. 4-5Gb dvd is not. What happens in about 4 years when 4Gb is worth nothing? or when HDTV _finally_ makes an appearance but no-one can fit it on their disks (with out compressing it down or shrinking the image lol)

    -tfga
    • hey, i heard that you can use ordinary CD/R in this drive, to record DVD on. You just have to punch the whole in the correct place, and there yo u go, 7 * the capacity.
    • There IS a difference in the dyes, wavelength used, etc. The prices of the dvd blanks will be high for a while until mass production kicks in, then they will come down. They WILL be higher than cd's just because they hold more and you will therefore be willing to pay more......
      Interesting that the DVD recordable market is skipping the write once units and going directly for the re-writables.
  • That's *expensive*. I have the same drive, bought here in Europe, except it's the scsi-3 version. I paid $180 for it.. TG "our price" for the scsi version is 279.99 so I guess the IDE version is equally overpriced.
  • http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11071171&m=488 &cat=511&scat=514

    DVD-R disk is $11.99
    DVD-RW disk is $14.99

  • Two other ~$600 DVD recorders, Linux support (Score:4, Informative)

    by Adam J. Richter ( 17693 ) on Thursday August 23, 2001 @07:26AM (#2207226)

    If you want a ~$600 DVD recorder, you already have a couple of other choices.

    At $629 [pricewatch.com] on PriceWatch [pricewatch.com], the Pioneer DVR-A03 [pioneerelectronics.com] that a number of posters have already mentioned writes DVD-R at 2X, DVD-RW at 1X, as well as CD-R and CD-RW.

    At $535 [pricewatch.com] on PriceWatch [pricewatch.com], the Panasonic LF-D311 [cdrominc.com] writes DVD-R at 1X and DVD-RAM (1X for 2.6GB, 2X for 4.7GB), as well as reading the usual CD formats, but apparently not writing any CD format whatsoever [cdrominc.com].

    Currently, to the best of my knowledge, the only Linux software that can drive DVD writes is proprietary [mail-archive.com] (sorry, there really is no good link for it). I am not sure whether complete information on how to drive these DVD writes is given in the SCSI-3 standards [t10.org] on www.t10.org [t10.org] or whether some additional information is needed. Any pointers to this information would be appreciated, as I might get ambitious one of these days and try to hack cdrecord [appwatch.com] or cdwrite [unc.edu] to control these drives if nobody beats me to it.

    • The panasonic drive acts like a standard block device under linux, and you can use mkfs on it and mount it read-write. What better software can there be but your shell.

      Even better, go to sourceforge and get the linux-udf tools. You can still mount it the standard way, and then everyone else will be able to read your disc too.

      Oh, yeah, and the Panasonic drive has been around for 2 years now.

      • I'm pretty sure you're thinking any of the older Panasonic DVD-RAM drives (LF-D102U, LF-D101N?) that did not write DVD-R, which I believe identified themselves under SCSI as a magneto-optical drives.

        The statements that I have seen about needing the prorietary driver program only named the Pioneer DVR-A03 and a couple of drives that write "authoring" DVD-R's. So, it is possible that what you say is true about the new Panasonic drive. However, I don't know if it is physically possible to randomly write sectors of a DVD-R, and you certainly can't rewrite them. So, I would not bet that you could write DVD-R's with the drive using the standard SCSI magneto-optical interface, but you could be right.

  • For those uninterested in reading a large (but very cute) blurb on Linus, this might help:

    Linus also got some other stuff via mail. For example, a pair of 40 megabyte hard disks. That was really nice, since it meant that Linus was finally able to keep some backups. Not that he did, of course. One of his well-known quotes is: "Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." He said that even after dialling his hard disk.

  • A DVD-Recorder has been in the market for some time now. It uses the DVD-RW, and not DVD+RW. Can't tell you which is better but it the point is that HP didn't release the first DVD-Recorder.

    More info on the pioneer drive can be found here: http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/Pioneer/CDA/Indu strial/IndustrialProductDetails/0,1444,796,00.html [pioneerelectronics.com] .

  • The new drive will enter the mess that is the DVD rewritable market. Three competing standards--DVD+RW, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM--are vying for market supremacy, confusing compatibility issues and keeping prices high.

    I'm glad to see the technology emerging in the consumer market, but I won't touch this sh!t until these standards issues are worked out. Somewhere, my Beta player is weeping.

  • If you're careful with your money, you'll give this one a miss. I say this for three reasons:


    1. It's slow...remember how fast CDRW drives increased in their respective speeds? Give the DVD-R drives a few months, and they will be writing at 8x or better.


    2. It's expensive...as with any new technology, this one is gonna break you if you buy it too soon. Again, wait a few months, and the price will be half of what it is now.


    3. Too many standards...this wasn't ever really a problem with CD-RW, but the problem has existed elsewhere. With all this crap about DVD-RW and DVD+RW, a pair of incompatible standards that provide no real advantage over each other, one is best advised to just wait for one technology to disappear, and then buy the prevalent one. This should also happen during the next 4-6 months, as demand increases.

    • Its like with just the readers, i remember when they first came out they were 2x, and then a year later they went to 4x, then 6x... i had a theory that the manufacturers could go straight to 32x, but preferred to release slower drives over a period, so that people would upgrade. (hey, i said it was only a theory!)
  • I noticed in an advert the other day for some DVD-RAM disks for sale... $50 CAN (~$30 US)

    Who is going to pay $50 for something that only holds 5.2gb when you could get that for $5 CAN with regular CD's? Does a regular DVD Drive even read RAM disks?

  • Will it be against the dmca to use an unapproved driver when accessing dvd-rw's? You might not want to rely on a proprietary storage format for your data storage, as you will be at the mercy of the proprietary technology holder, should he remotely upgrade the device which rendures it unuseable.

    I'll bet dvd-rw's will be 5X+ higher cost than cd-r's, but hey.. Jack Valenti needs to get paid.

  • At one point, Linus had implemented device files in /dev, and wanted to dial up the university computer and debug his terminal emulation code again. So he starts his terminal emulator program and tells it to use /dev/hda. That should have been /dev/ttyS1. Oops. Now his master boot record started with "ATDT" and the university modem pool phone number. I think he implemented permission checking the following day.

  • Am I the only one who doesn't like the fact that they are selling "dvd writers" that only write 4.7gb? dvd's are capable of holding 17gb. You wouldn't have bought a cd writer if it only held 150mb would you?
  • Right now the appeal for something like this may be the types who download movies of the net. I tried to get into it once I got my cable access and I'm sorry but to be honest it is cheaper to go out and but the damn movie. I look at the amount of time I wasted trying to find a link that works or someone who is actually allowing downloads on Gnutella and for that amount of time I could spend in much better ways.

    Now data backup.... Would it be faster than tape, if so great.
  • how is that the first commercially available DVD burner? I've had my DVD-R firewire drive for awhile now and it is not yet September
  • Sounds great. CD-Rs are just too small for backup, and nothing else is rugged enough. I'm using an external USB hard drive that I got dirt cheap now, but although it's fairly big (20G) it's slooooowwwwww.

    Also, I can copy all my home videos over from VHS-C to DVD before the tape disintegrates. (No doubt in 20 years I'll be copying them to new media for the 5th time, probably to molecular-torsion memory or something).
  • I have yet to really do anything with DVD stuff. Not only is it not entirely HDTV compatible (they must have forgotten that we're all supposed to be switching to that from NTSC, just like everybody else), the whole business with the DVD Forum has rubbed me the wrong way. If I'm going to import anime, I don't want to have to import a new DVD player as well. My laserdisc player handles foreign media just fine. (Too bad they're leaving that standard, though). As for renting movies, my VCR still works. Even if I end up getting a PS2 or an Xbox, I don't see myself spending money on DVD movies.

    However, DVD+RW seems to be a format in which they've done everything right. If I were to get a DVD recorder, I'd want something that can be played on most normal players, be it a movie player or a DVD-ROM drive. DVD-R and DVD-RW can't promise that, and DVD-RAM is really just a gloriefied tape drive with its proprietary sealed cases. On top of that, this bad boy will write CD-R and CD-RW as well. I get this and a normal DVD-ROM drive and I can copy damned near anything. The only problem I see here is that, once somebody figures out how to record dual-layer discs (so you can record discs the same size as the commercial plants), that will probably entail yet another standard.

    But, again, I have no use for a DVD player, and only marginal use for a DVD-ROM drive. DVD+RW would be nice in that it hold a metric fuckload of data, but do I really have that much to hold? (OK, maybe I will when I live someplace they have broadband again) Is there a reason for me to need this instead of a normal CD-RW?
  • Panasonic had the first "consumer" DVD-R at under $1000, the DVR-A03. You can find it at Best Buy for a rather high $799, or find it on Pricewatch.com for $620. Blank DVD-R disks are $7 each online.

    My strike price is about $400 which is high, but considering I have a *bazillion* mp3s it is still cost-effective (factoring in TIME). The REAL "killer app" for DVD-R will be mp3 players that read the disk. Currently DVD players that do MP3's, only do so off of an ISO-9660 CD. THAT is a crying shame. An Apex 5-DVD changer with 25GB of MP3's would just be too much fun... :-)

    This information isn't super-secret... the reason Slashdot credits HP is because most Slashdot publishing is "headline based", with research about as deep as a beer cap. Not only has the Panasonic been available for MONTHS (and shipping inside certain Apple models), but even that was not the first DVD-R -- there were various drives for the last few years at about the US$5,000 mark.

    Please, Slashdot, the moderation system already sucks. At least do a 30-second Google to make sure your facts are OK. (FWIW - I'm one of the "original" users #54xx and I will not moderate because, because the criteria for being selected is NOT how well you moderate, it is HOW OFTEN YOU POST [this does WONDERS for signal-to-noise... duh!] )

    -Scott

  • Important media price point (Score:3, Informative)

    by Argy ( 95352 ) on Thursday August 23, 2001 @11:38AM (#2208334)
    "The media for the new drive, which HP also plans to sell, will cost $15.99 per disc."

    Amazon's best-selling movie DVDs seem to average around $21-$22 each. That price relative to $16 for blank media sounds like it could be a factor in the success of their DVD+RW's. The movie industry can't be happy about this, although they must realize cheap, writable DVDs are inevitable.
    • It's also important to note that the $15.99 price tag is for REWRITABLE media. The Pioneer mechanism that's found in Apple G4s is so far mostly used with write-once DVD-R media. Apple sells the DVD-R media for $49.95 per box of 5. I've seen other places selling blanks as low as $7 each.

    • I'm sure most of those movies on Amazon are dual-layered DVD's, so depending on bit-rate, extra features, etc... you may or may not be able to make an "archivial" copy of your DVD, since the article mentions the drive holds 4.x GB's - single layer.
  • According to rumor, you can't (easily) record other video than home movies on to the Apple/Panasonic DVD burner. Do we know anything about the restrictions in this one?

    The press release says this, which sounds pretty free to me.

    the HP DVD-writer dvd100i drive enables users to create DVDs from their own videos using the DVD+RW format. Users also can transfer analog or digital video directly from a camcorder or VCR to a DVD disc(Requires separately purchased video capture and compression hardware for download of video to PC), create and play digital music CDs and store large amounts of data safely and securely on both CD and DVD media.
  • You bought it from ThinkGeek? Tsk, tsk -- Taco, you paid too much [anandtech.com].

  • I wouldn't buy one yet! (Score:3, Informative)

    by pointwood ( 14018 ) <jramskov@ g m a i l . com> on Thursday August 23, 2001 @01:53PM (#2209175) Homepage

    As long as (which others have already said) there are more than one standard and nobody yet knows which standard will be the one that wins the race, I'm not buying.

    Here is a quote from a faq:

    There are six recordable versions of DVD-ROM: DVD-R for General, DVD-R for Authoring, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD+R. All recordable drives can read DVD-ROM discs, but each uses a different type of disc for recording. DVD-R and DVD+R can record data once (sequentially only), while DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW can be rewritten thousands of times. DVD-R was first available in fall 1997.
    DVD-RAM followed in summer 1998. DVD-RW came out in Japan in December 1999, but won't be available elsewhere until mid or late 2001. DVD+RW will be available in late 2001 or early 2002. DVD+R will be available in mid 2002.

    From what I have read in the faq [dvddemystified.com], CD+RW looks to be the kind of drive you should buy (this HP drive is such a drive).

  • Linux method of backing up (Score:3, Funny)

    by Webmoth ( 75878 ) on Thursday August 23, 2001 @01:53PM (#2209176) Homepage
    To quote:

    "At one point, Linus had implemented device files in /dev, and wanted to dial up the university computer and debug his terminal emulation code again. So he starts his terminal emulator program and tells it to use /dev/hda. That should have been /dev/ttyS1. Oops. Now his master boot record started with "ATDT" and the university modem pool phone number. I think he implemented permission checking the following day."

    I laugh. It's nice to know that I'm not the first one to mess up the mbr. I just wish I had read this before executing this command:

    # dd of=/dev/hda if=/dev/fd0

    Now, that was *supposed* to back up the MBR to a floppy disk in case it ever got corrupted. Needless to say, "in case" happened and the backup didn't.

    --Jon

    • You should just memorise your partition table rather than relying on backups.


      If you can memorise it, recovery is a simple matter of re-entering the correct values with fdisk and re-running lilo.

    • Actually, I used to store floppy images on my system as an additional "precaution" particularly for boot disks (not, unfortunately mbr backups).


      hda1 was my boot partition. I did the something like

      # dd if=disk.image of=/dev/hda

      Needless to say, it overwrote the MBR and the first two sectors of my boot partition. This was bad, but I managed to recover the partition table using fdisk (I guess a copy of the table was kept in memory) but the filesystem of the boot partition was hopelessly corrupted, prompting me to reinstall, though I am happy to say I didn't lose any work ;)


      Those Linus anecdotes were pretty funny, but they remind me of anecdotes relating to Richard Feynman, Leibnitz, etc. I think it is pretty cool to have these to read.

  • Here's something I'd like to hear some thoughts about.

    I've been following the DVD writing market for a while now, and I'm interested in seeing how this competition between the DVD-R/DVD-RW standard and the DVD+RW standard. I've read here several times already the opinion that the competing formats will slow the adoption of DVD writing.

    My question is: Why?

    There seems to be some kind of industry FUD being thrown around that these drives are "incompatible." How so? Both write to media that can be read in either an industry-standard home DVD player or an industry-standard DVD-ROM drive. There is some worry going around that DVD-R media can not be read by 100% of the home DVD players out there, but I think this is being largely overblown by the industry (particularly the DVD+RW) people. Hell, my old CD player gags on CD-R media ... does that mean I should sign up with a new standard created by a consortium of big corporations, like DVD+RW?

    But leave the home players aside for a moment. Let's say that I buy a DVD-R burner (and I have), and you buy a DVD+RW burner. Both of our burners also function as DVD-ROM drives, right? So if I burn a DVD-R and give it to you, you will be able to read it on your DVD+RW burner. If you burn a DVD+RW and give it to me, I will be able to read it in my DVD-R burner. Or, if for some reason it doesn't work -- say the drives are "touchier" than most -- then we can still slap the things into some other DVD-ROM drive, and read them there.

    The drives are not "incompatible." This is just a gross overstatement, coupled with with marketing spin from the DVD+RW people who want to edge out DVD-R. Sure, their blank media formats are incompatible. You and I won't be able to trade blanks. But, ultimately ... so what?

    Seems to me we should be investigating things like the licensing terms for each format, roadmap for future development (if they come up with a dual-layer blank, who will get it first?), industry tactics, who's making deals with the RIAA and MPAA, who's going to be able to offer lower cost sooner, etc. When we get informed about that, then we can put our money where our opinions are, and encourage the industry to support the format that's best for US.

  • I've been writing DVD-R's for months (write-once data or video), and DVD-RW's for about a month, using the SuperDrive in my PowerMac (it's a Pioneer drive that also does CD-RW). The DVD-R discs are $10 each (from Apple, in boxes of 5), hold 4.7GB of data, and take about 20 minutes to write. I got rid of my slow tape drive and its expensive and fragile tapes, and now I have backups that are easy to access and will last longer (cheaper, too ... paid for itself). I also have my portfolio on DVD video discs. Very easy to get pro results with Apple's software (the interface is the hardest part).

    So, the HP drive has a "+" in between DVD and RW instead of a "-". For video DVD's, you need authoring software, and Apple has been selling that in spades for months now, also Compaq, using Pioneer's drive. The HP DVD+RW makes me think of USB 2.0, which is only amazing if you don't already use or know about the overwhelming popularity of FireWire. What does the DVD+RW media cost? Where can you get it? Does the drive come with authoring software? If not, then making DVD video discs is only a theoretical possibility. Yes, the drive can write the data (any DVD drive can), but there is so much more to it than that.

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