High Density CDs 370
goofrider writes "Sanyo introduced a new format called HD-Burn, supported by their new DVD+/-RW chip. It allows the drive to burn up 1.4GB of data using a regular 700MB blank CD-R blank. The resulting HD-Burned CD-R can only be read by supporting DVD/DVD-ROM drives and CD-ROM drives. Most DVD/DVD-ROM drives can support the format via a firmware upgrade. It's unclear how easy and how likely will it be for future drives to support this format. In contrast, Plextor released their new GigaRec technology in their new PlexWriter Premium (read a review here). GigaRec also records on regular blank CD-Rs, allows up to 1GB of data on a 700MB disc. however, the disc can be read on any modern good-quality CD-ROM drives with no firmware upgrades required. So now I can record 2x the data on a CD-R but I still can't have filenames longer than 64 characters. :)"
Double density floppy anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice idea, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
how about this... (Score:2, Insightful)
When I say "DVD Authoring" I mean a FULL feautured suite including menu creation and beautiful buttons, etc.
Joe Blow (and for DVD burning this includes me) wants to buy a DVD burner, take it home, and put his movies onto a DVD with a purty menu. He doesn't want to pay $330 for a nice DVD+-R/RW drive, take it home, and find out that the ULead Demo software does NOT work. He then does not want to shell out $200 - $1500 for DVD authoring software.
If DVD burning is to catch on software has to be created that is free and that works well.
DVD-RWs are cheap enough (and going to continue to drop) that we WON'T need to find new ways to store more info on 700mb CDs.
DVD Firmware upgrade? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not put that effort into DVD media, which still has really low penetration, where the ideas and extensions might catch on enough to make it actually supported in future rollouts? I've found 4.7 GB a useful storage amount and would be think an extension to 9.4 GB would be useful as well.
Old idea, why is this better? (Score:4, Insightful)
The trouble is that since it's not a ubiquitous standard, it's not really all that useful. Compare to old optical media standards - there were plenty of optical medias that you could record to (and even re-record) long before CDR came out. But CDR took off like all crazy because it was standard media you could play back anywhere.
Re:Double density floppy anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
another pitfall of using DVD media is the different standards available from different manufacturers, unlike blank CDs and 1.44mb floopies. this is one of the reasons why people still use 1.44mb floppies today.
with this new improvement in the data density of a CD, DVD media might be set to go the way of the MD. it could have been something good, but was never became something more than a novelty due to corporate greed.
Re:700 -1000 -1400 (Score:2, Insightful)
And since CD's are so much cheaper than recordable DVD's, it seems like a good way to back up a DVD collection cheaply.
So is this the same..... (Score:1, Insightful)
yay (Score:5, Insightful)
No thanks!
Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Last time I looked DVD +/-RW media is still expensive. Shopping around I can find CDRs for free after rebate. Using a drive like this would reduce by half the number of CDs I need to backup my data. Sounds like a win to me.
Once media prices drop for DRV +/- RW this won't be an issue.
Re:how about this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Get yourself a Mac my friend and your problems would be solved. Yeah yeah, Macs are expensive, yadda yadda. But this is a perfect example of the "expense" of a computer goes far beyond it's original sticker price. While Joe Blow is fretting about spending all that extra money to get the burner and software and fretting with getting everything to be happy, Joe Mac is happily burning their home movies on DVD, though Joe Blow can happily play Quake at 1Mfps while waiting.
Re:You can have filenames as long as you like (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would you want a file name of longer than 64 characters? Surely a proper filing systems including directories etc would be best more suitable.
remember flopticals? (Score:2, Insightful)
Floptical disks [brighton.ac.uk] were floppies that used an optical tracking mechanism to align the magnetic head with the floppy tracks to achieve increased track density.
Impact on console gaming (Score:5, Insightful)
Pirates are always the early adopters of these kind of technologies
Re:yay (Score:2, Insightful)
IE Favorites (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Another dead idea before it hits market (Score:4, Insightful)
Likewise, why would anyone bother to use a technology with a very limited install base to double the capacity of a CD when DVD's are getting cheaper, hold even more data, and the installed base is much more prevalent.
However, plextor's solution should be more ideal despite the smaller 'overburn' rate. Since people can use it right away on the existing install base without worrying too much about compatibility when they go to share their media.
Re:Double density floppy anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Prohibitive? $/MB cost is more or less comparable to CD, I'd think.
"with this new improvement in the data density of a CD, DVD media might be set to go the way of the MD. it could have been something good, but was never became something more than a novelty due to corporate greed."
MD is *big* in Japan (no pun intended). In fact I'm a bit surprised that it never caught on here, perhaps it's due to the few problems they had at first. MD was (and still is) perfect for portable audio, offering long play times and low power comsumption in a small and convenient form factor, long before MP3 players became commonplace. I have a portable MD player that I'm very happy with.
I think DVD's will be replaced with improved technology such a blue-laser optical storage, not with a technology that'll let you squeeze a bit of extra data on existing CDs.
Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Rebirth of the GD-ROM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently (and I know almost nothing about CD-ROM formats, so I'm sure to be corrected in the following 10 posts), Sega accomplished this by basically removing some (all?) of the error correction that a normal CD-ROM has on it. Yes, there's that much.
~~~
Here is that correction you predicted
Actually it has nothing to do with error correction (There isnt that much, and even so, a GD-rom has the same error correction used on CDs and DVDs depending which part of the disc you are referring to)
The GD-ROM disc has two sections. One is formatted like a normal CD track. The other is much more dense and 'custom' but best described as 'DVD like'
The CD track can only hold about 400mb. In the remaining, usually, 300mb, it has DVD-like formatting, which actually can hold over 600mb, which is why the disc can hold just over a gig.
I dont remember the exact specs of the discs, but if you google around you could find more details than either of us wants to know
Re:DVD drive capacity (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Double density floppy anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know where you're getting your numbers from. On pricewatch [pricewatch.com] I find prices to be the following:
- DVD-R: $76 for one hundred 4.7GB discs, or 16 cents per gigabyte
- CD-R: $17 for one hundred 700MB discs, or 23 cents per gigabyte
So, media-wise, DVD-R is actually cheaper than CD-R.for the average user the largest single file they'll burn on a CD is usually a divx movie, and that doesn't usually exceed 800 megabytes.
You've got the relationship backwards. Divx filesizes are being held back to under 800 megabytes by the constraints in CD capacity. I no longer limit myself to 800 MB divx files now that I have a DVD burner.
Just because current CD burners limit you to 800 MB doesn't mean you should be so short sighted as to assume that the 800 MB limit is actually desirable.
another pitfall of using DVD media is the different standards available from different manufacturers, unlike blank CDs
You are correct that the DVD standards war is very damaging to DVD. But then in the next paragraph you advocate using nonstandard double data density CDs!
If you're gonna troll, at least try to keep your position consistent.
Re:Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you just haven't realized that it's an excuse, not a reason.
There's no reason movie studios can't release movies simultaneously in all regions.
This can lead to a situation where a movie is available stateside on DVD before it has even been shown in Europe.
If international distribution is really the reason region codes exist, why are movies like Jaws [imdb.com] (1975), Gone With the Wind [imdb.com] (1939), or The Maltese Falcon [imdb.com] (1941) region-coded? Are you suggesting that these movies have yet to be released in Europe?
I can imagine lines of people, somewhere in $EUROPEAN_CITY, desparately waiting in line to see Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen [imdb.com], 35 years after it was released in the US.
Region Coding is simply a way for movie studios to create artifical boundaries, to practice predatory pricing.
Re:Correction (Score:3, Insightful)
If I am willing to go the extra distance to import, I should be allowed to play it. Plain and simple. Or, as others have stated, they could just release worldwide with the same or comperable features... Or would that make sense?
Re:DVD Firmware upgrade? (Score:3, Insightful)
What about DDCD ? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is another almost-good idea that's just five years too late. And I don't plan on waiting for Pioneer to release a firmware upgrade for my drive, it's already hard enough getting support as it is.
What I really want is high-speed DVD-9 burning. Yes, 9.4gb with at least 4x speed, preferably 8x. Now get rid of these inbred 1x DVD-R media manufacturers who haven't realized nobody has 1x burners anymore, and let's get cracking!
Re:yay (Score:2, Insightful)
I use both formats, If I need to burn a quick disc for a friend that takes less than 700 MB, then I'll use a CD, but for archiving my harddrive or backup all my digital photos I go DVD all the way -- I like a 3 DVD backup instead of a 21 CD backup anyday.
Re:how about this... (Score:3, Insightful)
True. Are you're saying that Macs are price-competitive with home-built PC's? That would be wonderful news, if true ... I can build a PC significantly cheaper than I can buy a ready-made one of comparable quality.
I can build a PC with a fast FSB, CAS2 RAM, a decent graphics card (I like Matrox, for my purposes) and so on, for more than a Dell/Hpaq/eMachines POS, and less than a comparable x86 workstation. I can build a POS with scavenged parts for a bit less than the Dell/HPaq POS, but here I won't save enough to make wages.
If Mac is now competitive with the homebuilt instead of with the workstation, I'll quit building PCs and start buying Macs.
I've seen Mac fanciers say that when you compare like with like, Macs aren't more expensive. When I've investigated, I've always found that's roughly true, BUT: when I compare the price of ``exactly what I want'' with the price of the Mac, Apple is slightly more expensive than a prebuilt PC, and much more expensive than homemade.
The lesson here is that Apple doesn't try to compete with homemade, and Apple doesn't target machines at engineers and number-crunchers.
Linux is cheaper, but not if you want it for desktop use, in which case it just wont work well at all
Well, it's been working on MY desktop for about five years now, because it's always been better for MY use than the alternatives, such as Windows and Mac. I understand that's not the case for you. Your statement is a bit too broad to be true.
Re:700 -1000 -1400 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Double density floppy anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
18.2 cents per gig DVD-Rs...
24.8 cents per gig for CDR's
and for fun... 12.1 cents for 1.4 gig cdr's.
this is of course assuming you don't buy them on rebate - which I do all the time - you can easily pick up a set of cd'rs on rebate for FREE. Don't see any for DVD's.
Even at 6.6 cents per gig, you will need to buy at least 500 gigs worth of data before you save a whopping $30.
Now, of course, the advantadge to a drive that can write 1.4 gig at will is that you have something you don't with dvd's - a choice. A good migration path. If you know the data you need to write will need to be ported to an older machine - you can write it to the old 700 meg format. Otherwise - make the choice.
Re:I still can't have more than 64 - you already d (Score:2, Insightful)
Claiming that a filesystem should use 8-bit values for all their files is like going back to the times when there was no internet for the common computer user, when each computer used only one character set all of the time. Today, I come across both US-ASCII, ISO-8859-1, 8, 16 and 32-bit Unicode and the good old codepage 850 daily. What would happen if an OS had support only for one of these character sets? Believe it or not, most computer users are not natively English speaking, and most users get in touch with many different funny looking characters or languages each day. At least so I presume.
Regarding the choice of encoding, I suppose 16-bit Unicode maybe isn't the best choice for storage. UTF-8 would seem appropriate to me, but then, there might be some issues with Thai filenames, reducing the numbers of allowed chars to 32 or so, for Thai filenames, while 128 for the American. That might be considered unfair.
All in all, we need a common character set. Unicode is the solution (although some characters codes don't have the most optimal order) and it's here to stay. At least I think it's funny to have Thai filenames on the Thai MP3's I've got, and the Icelandic names for the Icelandic.