The State of Recordable DVD's

An anonymous reader writes: "The Tech Report has a review of two DVD writers, one from each of the two competing standards (DVD-R and -RW and DVD+RW). In addition to testing the performance of each drive, they also test a bunch of DVD players and DVD-ROM drives to see how well they read the different types of media."

Where's my holographic storage?

[Guru1]

I remember reading a good 15-20 years ago in my Highlights magazine (good tech info) that the scientists were working on a holographic storage device. Instead of storing things in 2d, they store things in 3d, thus drastically increasing the storage available. They supposedly would be able to store terabites of information in a re-recordable media. Don't tell me my Highlights magazine was wrong!

DVD+RW? DVD-RW? Bah!

[x136]

DVD-RAM for life! Woooooo!

*cough*

Sorry.

Come on Trekkie

[slugfro]

Come one now, admit it...you were really reading Trekkie Highlights (Article: "Startrek Enterprise scientists working on the Future, Today").

Re:DVD life

[linzeal]

You aren't saying that the MPAA will help create a new standard are you? Everyone knows that the encryption technology on DVDs should easily outlast advances even in quantum computing.

A lot of numbers

[neonstz]

The funny thing about DVD-recorders is all the different speeds they support. Like, "Hey, check out my new DVD-+RWRAM! A whopping 2x/1x/8x/4x/4x/2x/2x/24x/16x/10x/4x. Ain't that fast or what?"

Menus on DVD Movies: Argh.

[Onionesque]

The article addresses the difficulty of duplicating consumer DVDs, and mentions as a deterrent the fact that you'd have to redo the menus.

The menus on all but maybe one of the 20 or so DVDs that I own are HORRIBLE, EVIL MESSES, and I sincerely wish that the people who designed and implemented them would DIE SOON. Have any of you ever tried to find a specific feature on "The Abyss" DVD, such as the documentary, or production notes? How about the industry standard use of a menu with two items, with no way of knowing which color means "this item selected"? How about having to wait for 12 seconds while you are forced to watch some kewl grafix before you can PLAY THE FREAKING MOVIE?

So, for me, it's worth the couple of hours it would take to blow away the existing menu structure on a commercial DVD, and to make one that says

1) Play the movie.
2) Play the useless "featurette".
3) Play the long documentary.
4) Show those stupid production stills.