DVD-Rs go 8x 237
DiZASTiX writes "It seems that the next speed level for DVD Writers is here. "The race for Xs is still on and Plextor has gone into the lead with the PX-708A, what Plextor claims is the first commercialized 8X DVD recorder. At this speed, a 4.5 GB DVD+R takes under 9 minutes to record. That is about the same as a CD in just over a minute. What we wanted to know was whether the reliability and compatibility of blank supports suffer from this breakneck speed...""
Advertising (Score:4, Insightful)
This would be a major breakthrough if it works. IF. I'm skeptical.
buffer (Score:5, Insightful)
8MB wouldn't (shouldn't?) be out of the question for a top of the line product such as this.
Re:Breakneck speeds? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:DVD-Rs go 8x (Score:2, Insightful)
CD/DVD's are horribly weak [-8 defense!] against scratches [cost 18HP!, hehehe]. My laptop for instance has a hard time with most scratches where a desktop cdrom usually has no problem. It's a pain in the ass
Tom
Re:DVD-Rs go 8x (Score:3, Insightful)
I would use something like that as a more portable alternative to tape backup. You obviously can't backup whole hard drives that way, but for most home-user stuff, the few gigs that gives you is more then enough.
Re:DVD-Rs go 8x (Score:2, Insightful)
A 50-disc(50*4.5G = 225G) spindle of DVDrs retails for around $65(Cdn). Buying that same capacity from harddrives will easily set you back at least $200, nevermind having to factor in the cost of a USB 2.0 enclosure for the drive.
There's also the fact that it's much easier to justify redundancy costs with disposable media as opposed to physical drives. (Spending an extra $120 for a redundant drive is quite expensive, whereas spending $30 more to burn everything twice is a little easier on the pocket...
Re:When does this quote get old... (Score:1, Insightful)
True, but materials engineers estimate that we're well within a power of ten of the limit of how fast DVD media can spin without breaking.
DVD players (Score:2, Insightful)
You can't connect a removable hard drive to a TV nearly as cheaply as you can put a DVD Video Recordable disc in a DVD player.
Re:buffer (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed... It really surprises me they'd go with a buffer that small. At 8x (just over 11MB/s), the buffer needs to completely refill every 182ms, 5.5 times per second. Considering how often computers seem to "hiccup", just freezing for half a second every now and then, I would not want to trust more expensive 8x media to the odds that one of those random events won't occur during a burn.
Especially considering the price of these drives, does it seem like so much to ask to put in a decent sized buffer? +5 for first to market with the new burning speed, but -100 for lack of forethought about how many coasters people really need around the house.
Re:DVD-Rs go 8x (Score:5, Insightful)
- price: the cost per GB of DVD-R crossed hard disk prices recently, though they are still very close.
- durability: DVD is not as susceptible to physical shock and magnetic fields as a hard drive.
- movability: more PCs can read a DVD-R than have a slot for inserting a removable IDE drive.
- size: when what you want to store fits fine in 4.7GB, a DVD is a much nicer form factor than an IDE hard drive (so far). (e.g., daily incremental backups extending back for a full month.)
- movies: I can't create a movie on a hard drive and then stick it in my consumer DVD player (so far).
However, DVD+RW and DVD-RW would certainly be more attractive for general data use if the operating system actually supported them as random access devices. Don't know about *nix, but Windows does not support such access until the next version (XP supports drag and drop, but simply copies files to a temp area, and then waits for you to tell it to do the One Big Burn).Space not speed, and price issues (Score:4, Insightful)
Your typical HD costs 200 pounds for 250GB.
Removeable caddy for HD costs 10 pounds
One-off caddy container for PC is 15 pounds.
A DVD-/+/RW/RAM drive costs 105 pounds.
A DVD-RW holds 4.5GB and costs 17 pounds for 5 (=22.5 GB)
Total cost of 250 GB DVD media is (105+187 =) 292 pounds.
So, the DVD just about scrapes home as cheaper during the third 250 GB. You may be able to get something off if you buy your DVD's in larger bulk - those prices were all I could see offered, and they're the cheap end as well. The "branded" names make the argument even stronger since "Sony" DVD-RW's are 22 pounds, not 17...
On the other hand, you now have 165 DVD's with your data on somewhere. At that rate, it's surely better to have 3 HD's and a caddy slot on your PC ? In an emergency, you can even get by for a day or so using the data live off the disk.
If, however, you want to pirate DVD's and play them in your home cinema, then sure, that extra 7 minutes you'd have to wait over a 4x drive would seem an eternity...
Simon.
Re:DVD-Rs go 8x (Score:5, Insightful)
So when I want to send my mother a video of her grandson's birthday party, I'll just drop my iPod in the mail for her? Don't think so...
Is maximum speed just a matter of marketing? (Score:3, Insightful)
When CD Writers started going up from 8x, 12x, 16x, 24x, 32x, 40x, 52x.... it seemed ridicolous! I simply thought the 52x technology was already available when the 8x was out in the stores.
I know that increasing the writing speed is probably not just making the CD spin faster.. but then, what else is it?
It looks like as if with the DVD, everything is repeating. Can someone give me a reason why DVD writers are not faster already apart from marketing reasons and companies just wanting us to buy all different speeds? Is it actually impossible to have faster DVD writers at market price right now? or is it a technical impossibility?
Re:I dunno but... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's one of the reasons I've been leery of even buying a DVD-R burner at all. CDs have proved decently reliable, but the technology is over 20 years old. DVDs seem too new to trust my data to. When faced with backing up my PVR's video collection I am torn between trying to back up 4-5 hours per DVD in DivX format or going the more expensive route and buying a decent LTO tape drive. Somebody in the backup business needs to get their heads out of their asses and get a backup medium that can backup our largest hard drives on a single tape or disc while having the media cost less than 10% of the cost of the disk itself. 100GB tapes are easily $80 a piece. I could just buy a spare hard drive for that much!
Re:DVD-Rs go 8x (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is, how reliable ARE these DVD-R discs? Initial reports seem to say they're getting less than 3-5 years of storage life when stored in a cool place. To me that's not archival, but short term backup. Hard drives last longer than that! I want guarenteed DVD-R archival life of at least 15 years and then I'd consider trusting my data to it. Until then I'll stick with CDs and/or keeping my data on multiple systems for redundancy on spinning magnetic disks.
Re:Always the way (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I dunno but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus, unlike CD-Rs, the reflective layer is sandwiched in the middle of two polycarbonate discs, so the discs are much better protected from air and abrasion than CD-Rs are, which should improve long-term reliability
By the way, the original poster didn't even say whether he was burning +R, +RW, -R, or -RW, much less which model of drives were in his duplicator. How do you even know which version to be leery of buying?
I've got an idea.... (Score:3, Insightful)
For CDRW's, I can get any media and it will work...
But DVD-RW/+RW drives (especially the newer ones) seem to only have a limited number of types of media that work on them...
How 'bout we fix THAT before we go for Speed?
Re:When does this quote get old... (Score:3, Insightful)
So we say today ;-)
Engineers are always coming up with tricks to 'bend' the Laws of Physics. Why not just add more lasers to the drive so you're burning twice as much data at once without increasing the spin rate? Why not spin those lasers in the opposite direction? (It would be evil to calibrate though.) What prevents companies from inventing discs with stronger polycarbonates in then?
I mean in the past people thought that if the human body travelled at more than 35 mph it would explode. And they thought that you couldn't break the sound barrier either.
Yes, someone will have a good laugh at this thread in the future.
Question for those of you who have these things (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the point of a 2MB buffer on this thing? It would run out in 1/5 of a second....
That's great and everything... (Score:3, Insightful)
They're wasting time making the 8X DVDs when what we really need are DVD9's.
So I can write a DVD in 9 minutes, great. Nothing is more annoying than trying to copy a movie/game that can't fit on a 4.7GB DVD and being presented with the choice of: "Compress it to fit on one DVD and have it look like ass, or span it across two DVDs"