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Hardware

A Drive With The Works: DVD-[R,RW] And CD-[R,RW] 174

Posted by timothy from the that's-a-lotta-pictchas,-louey! dept.
grub writes: "The MPAA must be saying "Ho Lee Fook." Pioneer had introduced a rewritable DVD drive. The drive reads and writes in four formats: DVD-R, CD-R, DVD-RW and CD-RW, has up to 4.7GB capacity per DVD side and records on DVD-R at twice the normal speed." With 60GB drives now at reasonable prices, and drives three times that size coming out on the high end, 4.7GB no longer sounds like the mountain of bits it once did. Still, this is a wild combination: hopefully the world will soon agree on some nice DVD-RAM standards worth living with.
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A Drive With The Works: DVD-[R,RW] And CD-[R,RW] More

A Drive With The Works: DVD-[R,RW] And CD-[R,RW]

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  • Just submit it again, who know, CmdrTaco might post it tomorrow under a different caption, only to remove it an hour later.

    You might have your 15 minutes of fame then.
  • Damn, I'd hate to see a full length movie at such a low quality it only took up 8.5MB.

    Anyways, It is my understanding that the whole thing about DVD's is that they are all burned /w two layers... Wether it's retail dvds or dvd-r's.. It's also my understanding that the 8.5GigaByte disc actually refers to both sides as one.

    So, assuming this... you could actually fit a full length dvd on one dvd-r...

    Beau Bellamy

    uhm... uh huh... right..

  • Of course the MPAA should be getting frightened about DIVX and the new DVD to CD-R Video devices being launched.

    They're not. Of course they're going to try and stop it, but the whole RIAA vs. MP3 debacle has already proven that Joe Sixpack cares more about having a store-bought perfect copy than wasting his time pirating discs just to see a stinking movie.

    Don't forget that most people bought DVD players for the higher quality in the first place and aren't going to give that up for a couple of free flicks. As far as I can tell, the quality of that DIVX is worse than VHS.
  • When I was going through the specs for the announced CD-R/CD-RW/DVD-RAM/DVD-R combo drive on Pioneer's site, I noticed a pecular "DVD-R for General type (650nm)". As soon as I saw that, I remember reading a post [slashdot.org] on /. a while back about how the DVD consortium had seriously munged up the DVD-R specs.

    According to this PC Extremist article [pcextremist.com], the DVD consortium decided to have the DVD-R Book version 2.0 have 2 different laser wave lengths. The consumer DVD-R laser wavelength is 650nm, while the "professional/authoring" one is 635nm. The last DVD-R Book version 1.9 only had 635nm. The DVD consortium's excuse was that it would be cheaper to make the 650nm laser unit. While this is true that it's cheaper, it also adds to the confusion among people who need to get a DVD-R drive. What's even more messed up about this is that, a DVD-R with a 635nm laser can only use 635nm DVD-R media, while the 650nm one can only use 650nm.

    I really think that current standalone DVD players will not be able to read DVDs burned from a "consumer" DVD-R drive. Either that, or major difficulties. The only drive that currently burns proper 635nm DVD-Rs that I know of, is the Pioneer DVR-S201. So if you want to burn DVDs so you can watch it on your standalone, go for the expensive 635nm DVD-R drive (what a rip off).

  • I don't know what kinds of drives you've been using, but my CD-Rs work on all of my CD players (actually, I haven't tried the really old 80's player, but certainly they work on my first-generation disc-man), whereas I have yet to find a CD player that will play RW.

  • Hrmmmmm... Welp, lets see now... Can anyone tell me what the price on the average CD-R drive was, less than 5 years ago? Better yet, 10?

    These $750-$1250 devices were (comparatively) slow, the media was costing in the range of approximately 10-20 times what they cost currently... And public interest in said drives was fleeting, and short of the occasional ubernerd, most folks were stating that CD-R was a fad that was economically unviable... And this was as little as 5 years ago...

    Additionally, the drives were SCSI only, which boosted the price as well (Lets drag Adaptec into court for their unfair monopolistic practices while we're at it! Yeah!)... AFAIK, the current DVD-RAM's are also SCSI devices only...

    ATAPI, on the other hand, reduces the pricing significantly, due to the overall compatability of the IDE bus (which until UDMA 33, was abhorantly slow, but with UDMA/ATA 66 and ATA 100 standards, expect that to help as well...)

    Understand too, that the lower the cost of the hardware and media, the faster the public will embrace said hardware... These two things are interdependant... How many here who remember the old pricings, would have plunked down $1,000 for a 2x CD-R, and the $10 per disk the media was running for? Anyone?
  • RTFA.

    and offers up to 4.7GB of storage capacity per DVD side.

    And moderators, RTFP.
  • remember the APEX [slashdot.org] player posted here on /.?
    well it can play unencrypted DVDs. its an option in the "hidden menu". APEX was thinking a head. and i am lucky i scored one before MPAA found out.
    ever try to play an ecrypted DVD with CSS turn off? ... kinda funny!

    -rev

  • Overlooked (Score:4)

    by Cheschire ( 254725 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @04:24AM (#623121)
    I swear. You mention dvd burning and everyone's minds immediately jumps to copyright infringement. Most people are missing the fact that we are getting close to REPLACING TAPE DRIVES. Finally. A form of backup that has, though half the size, far more speed than your normal tape drives. Now, i am not saying we are ready to get rid of those old pieces of crap yet, but we are close. I am not sure, but i imagine that the 4.7 gb is only on the dual-sided disks, and i imagine too that you have to flip the disc to write to both sides. So it is still just a 2.xx gb automated backup solution, but thats a heluva lot better than 650 mb!! Now stepping away from the business world and into the desktop realm, think about the size of your average hard drive. Personally i use 14.2 gb out of my 40.6 gb of hard drive space. Most of that though is game fluff that needs to be reinstalled anyways everytime i reformat my windows partition. (i couldve shortened my sentence by saying i reinstall my games every weekend... cron job anyone?). Anyways, the problem with ghosting is that it takes a LOT of space to get, not only the default windoze install, but also all the extra programs and tweaking that comes along with it everytime i reinstall. But now i dont have to store that img on my hard disk, i can store it on a dvd, and still have room to throw in some of the fluff like saved games, mp3's, etc. Basically all i am saying is to stop trying to burn dvd's for a few years. If you cant afford the $20 per dvd, then how did you afford the player???
  • Still, this is a wild combination: hopefully the world will soon agree on some nice DVD-RAM standards worth living with.

    And what is wrong with ISO-9960 being that standard. Why is it that every time the lowlevel way bits are encoded into an analog media we think we have to replace all our higher level protocols?

  • what's to stop me from using that data to "author" a new movie ostensibly created by me?

    Ethics? Illegality?
  • Good thing Blockbuster rents for 5 days, eh?
  • They key here is to make sure that someone comes up with a car audio player that plays mp3 in this format.... I was starting to get concerned with ONLY having 200 songs available per disk!
  • I just got an ASUS DVD-ROM drive and watched The Matrix on it last night. It looked just as good as my friend's DVD player on his TV...none of flickering or pausing that you mentioned. It depends a lot on the drive and also the MPEG decoder. Software decoding tends give a poorer image (especially on a slow processor), and a good decoder card can give noticibly better performance over a cheap one.

    Like most things, you get what you pay for. If you want a quality image, don't skimp on a no-name decoder card.

    -

  • No, DVD Players will not play DVD-R discs. Blame all the DVD companies for not being able to decide on standards.

    Fear my low SlashID! (bidding starts at $500)
  • Sorry - meant 2010 - but yes I have 2001 but I think it was R1.

  • Goal: Replace the VCR (Score:3)

    by jedrek ( 79264 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @12:59AM (#623129) Homepage
    C'mon guys, this is the VCR replacement we've all been looking for. The only reason VCRs are still selling is because they are recordable. My mom isn't even considering a DVD right now, she wants a VCR for christmas. Why? Most of the movies she wants to see are on TV but usually at some late time. She just wants to record them and watch them at her convenience (I'd get her a TiVO but I haven't seen a PAL version yet)

    The ability to record and re-record TV channels on a disc is the function most consumers have been looking for. They want to do more than just watch movies, they want to record Sex in the City, The Sopranos and watch them when they want to.

    I can't wait till I can toss my VCR and free up an extra EuroSCART port.

    Jay


    -- polish ccs mirror [prawda.pl]
  • CD-Rs used to cost £5 a piece, so it was barely worth copying, say, singles onto them. Now I buy them for 20p each -- surely the same thing is going to happen to DVD-R eventually? Then the MPAA/whoever is going to be really upset. Especially if you can do a bit by bit copy of a film, including the encryption, onto another DVD..

    -
  • >The MPAA must be saying "Ho Lee Fook."
    Actually, in London there is a damn fine Chinese restaurant named 'Lee Ho Fook' ;)
    I highly recommend it.

  • $$$$ (Score:1)

    by snyrt ( 151824 )
    how much is this beast gonna cost? i'd love to get it. I'm not looking at it as a revolutionary concept, but i still think it's pretty beast. it's a good combination, especially for people like me who are completely out of bays.
  • DVD-RW: the "floppy diskette" of Generation Z. Har har har.
  • That $800 player writes discs in DVD-RAM format, a format which is incompatible with current DVD video players. This makes them really only useful for data backup.

    The industry has yet to agree on a rewriteable DVD standard (there are four contenders), so any current "rewritable" DVD burner's discs will play in few, if any, DVD drives.

    DVD-R is currently the only media format that is compatible with most DVD players and DVD-ROM drives across the board.

  • You can buy CD-R's that will play on older CD players. These are certain brands (Sony) or those labelled as "for audio use". I have a new portable that won't play "blue" CD-R discs; it just crashes and I have to yank out the batteries. It will work with "green", "gold", and "silver" discs.

  • Hey there's always a TIVO! And now's a good time to get a TIVO -- they're launching a new essay contest today or tomorrow. 10 free 20 hour TIVOs given away each day for the next month or so.

    The first essay content -- a couple months ago -- was a remarkably easy way to get a 14 hour (and sometimes a 30 hour) TIVO for free.

  • Ethics? Illegality?

    Fair use? Archival copies?

  • Okay, I freely admit that I am woefully ignorant of the process of creating DVD's

    Me too actually ;)

    ...once I have ripped and decrypted a DVD, what's to stop me from using that data to "author" a new movie ostensibly created by me?

    Yeah, i think you are cool here. I think what the parent of all of this was saying was that you can't do a DVD->DVD copy (i.e., like hooking two VCR's up or something, or a bit by bit copy). You can go DVD->unencrypted->DVDR though, but that requires that extra step, which most consumers won't be able to figure out or bother with.

  • No, DVD Players will not play DVD-R discs. Blame all the DVD companies for not being able to decide on standards.
    No, that's wrong.

    All DVD players which have the DVD-Video logo are required by the standard to play DVD-R. Now some do it poorly, but is a part of the standard.

    Set-top DVD players won't play DVD-RAM, and perhaps won't play DVD-RW or DVD+RW. But they most definately do play DVD-R.

  • Well, like I said, I've yet to see a PAL version of the TiVO. I don't care about the TV Guide listing crap, I just want to record.

    Jay


    -- polish ccs mirror [prawda.pl]
  • Wrong. I have an AD-600A Apex, and YES there is a quite useless option to turn off CSS Decryption, but it has no effect on unencrypted DVD (I have a couple of those). Unencrypted DVDs also had the odd effect of not turning on Macrovision on my old ATI card's DVD playback. CSS encryption is simply an option for DVD encoded video. ALL DVD players will detect if the encryption is there or not and play it back properly.

  • All those goodies, and not a SCSI interface? What's Pioneer been smoking? Can ATAPI keep it rolling at 2xDVD write speed?

    Cool drive, though

  • Is there any advantage using DVD-R, or DVD-RW's over DVD-RAM disks.

    From what I understand DVD-RAM disks have the same capacity. New versions store about 9.6GB. They seem cheaper, and are already availible.

    One thing I like about DVD-RAM disks is there relatively cheap, $25 for 5.2GB of storage, and they can be mounted and used like ordinary hard disks. No special software is required to burn the disk, and it behaves like any other floppy, zip disk or hard drive. I haven't heard that the DVD-R or DVD-RW would have this ability which I think is a major disadvantage when combined with the high drive prices. Are any RVD-R or DVD-RW drives available yet?

    I have a DVD-RAM on my current machine and it makes a great and cheap back up system. I just wish home DVD players would be able to take the caddies for the 2-sided DVD-RAM disks. I think that most can read the one sided DVD-RAM disks without the caddy.

    I'd like to hear more about the pros and cons for each system.
    Thanks
  • Why do I get the feeling that this won't be available for long? After a short time, the MPAA, RIAA, and the software publishers are going to demand that it will not write data if it is copyrighted.

    If we want to make legitimate backups of our DVD's, our CD's and our software, then we need to act fast.
  • Now THAT is worth saying "Ho Lee Fook". Consumer-level my ass. At least it will make the older models go down in price . . .
  • ...the media are going for todays prices...

    That's because prior to now, there was no real demand for DVD-Rs. As demand scales up, suppliers will sell more of the discs and will start to undercut each other to gain greater market share. As more of these drives hit the market, prices will drop on the media...

  • I doin't know how much this will retail at but if it and the media are going for todays prices then it's still not worth pirating DVDs at DVD quality to DVD material as it costs twice as much as the £12.99 copy of 2001 I bought the other day.

    Of course the MPAA should be getting frightened about DIVX and the new DVD to CD-R Video devices being launched.

  • "When I bought my first CD-writer I found that my recordings of CD audio weren't compatible with an older cd player."

    CD-RW tends to work a hell of a lot better.

    -Ciaran

  • PAL Tivo (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Pal Tivos are now availiable in the UK & most of europe ;-p im in the UK & am getting one er - in about 2 hours ;-p
  • You really need SCSI only if you want/have more than 4 drives

    Or use more than 2 effectively at once. IDE does not allow you to queue up a bunch of commands - only one command may be outstanding on each IDE bus. This is not the case with SCSI, which I think is one its biggest advantanges.

  • Re:ATAPI? What the f*ck? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ATAPI = more coasters = more media tax revenue for the MPAA.
  • Is the word in question. Standardized DVD-RW is the holy grail that'll make me ditch VHS. Until that happens though it remains a far too risky option.
  • DVDRs have certain portions of the disk already written to as part of their production companies licensing deal with the MPAA. The bits required for the disk key are already prewritten with zeroes.

    That's easy enough to deal with. You write unencrypted content. Problem solved.

    I'm more interested in seeing the price tag on this thing, though. Its predecessor [pioneerusa.com] was selling around $5,000, last I checked. The new combo drive should cause the price on the older one to drop, hopefully within the range of mere mortals, as happened with CD-R.... then you'll finally see the price of blank DVD-R media drop.
    ---

  • I have 2001 on DVD (R1). It was the 2nd DVD I bought and currently is the most disappointing one in my collection.

    The audio is decent but the video was a real let down.

    Conan the Barbarian (my first buy) had the worst video/audio but the new Collectors Edition that came out is awsome.

  • It pains me to see that people actually think combining technologies into one big 'ol device is a new idea. Remember the ENIAC, it's now a wrist watch, get over it. "Oh it's such a great thing, now we can rewrite DVD's and CD's on the same device" uh huh, yippie fuckin skippy. What great thing have they done here, you could have purchased the equipment to do this awhile ago, but I fear for those of you who were "slot challenged" this was not an option. Apparently there exist a lot of slot challenged people out there, and them I say, buy a friggin bigger box. I'm not attacking you personally, I just don't see why this article is such a big deal, or for that matter why its an article at all.
  • Ethics? Illegality?

    Fair use? Archival copies?

    How about: Nothing?

  • maybe - I'm sat here thinking - 5Gb hmm not enough really

    I've got 4Gb of mp3's I recorded myself from my old records - great for listening to but a bugger to store - and I'm only about 1/4 of the way through them.

    Plus a few Gig of pron.

    I could really do with one of these suckers though.

    .oO0Oo.
  • Actually, we were planning on using those laser satelites on you the next time we catch you tailgating on 17. Unless it's ME you are tailgating, in which case I just use those SSRMs I had installed in the back of my pickup for just such an occasion. ;-) >>>>CSG_SurferDude
  • I wouldn't expect this drive to become your only CD/DVD drive.

    The link above states that the read speed is only 4x. WTF?!
    And what's up with the IDE interface? Geez!!!
  • Exactly my point... SCSI *is* a more expensive option (with higher benefits, true bus mastering, less resource hogging, etc)... The consumer version that Panasonic unveiled was ATAPI, and hence, less expensive...

    As for CD-R drives, they started out as SCSI only devices... I have one sitting and collecting dust for want of a Centronics DB-50 to Mini-DB-50 cable, an old Pinnacle RCD 5020i POS... Dated 1994...

    Hmmmm, as I recall, most CD-ROM drives were in SCSI only form as well, only because they started use primarily in Mac/Amiga applications... And additionally, they were prohibitively expensive as well...
  • Now somebody has to go write EnCSS so I can legally burn my own legally created content and legally play it on my own legally obtained DVD player.

    Oops, but that would be illegal, huh?

  • Nailer says:

    You can't burn an exact copy of a DVD to a DVDR, and your inexact copy won't play in most peoples DVD drives.

    And you say:

    I believe you can choose to author an unencrypted regionless DVD (which is what we were doing) and players will play them fine.

    Notice I bolded author. I am sure you can author a DVD and copy and such with DVDR. What Nailer is talking about is copying a region encoded DVD. It won't work because the disk key area is pre-zeroed on the DVDR.

  • both links got borked (/. trying to prevent 'bomb' URLs?)
    http://slashdot.org/articles/00/02/14/1457219.shtm l [slashdot.org],
    http://www.pcextremist.com/news/2000-02/95.shtml [pcextremist.com]
  • You really need SCSI only if you want/have more than 4 drives.
    Exactly. I mean, how exactly is the pr0n industry to make use of this? Clearly, they are always the first to benefit from new technology. You'd think Pioneer would know this by now...(Don't believe me? Go to the CES in Las Vegas, pr0n everywhere!)

    --

  • Probably the most useful implementation of these combination drives will be for laptops. Portable users can just slap one of these in their machines instead of putting a DVD drive in the machine and carrying and external/extra CD-RW drive.

    Is Pioneer planning on making a laptop version of this drive?
    "I am a man, and men are
    animals who tell stories."

  • Not only does that imply a high quality product, it shows that a major corporation does not fear legal repurcussions (repercussions) by groups such as the MPAA.

    You have to remember, that Pioneer has mad a deal with the MPAA over fair use of DVD recordable media. It will not play in your dvd drive since the key is pre-written as all zero's. All the big corporations don't fear each other, they are all in bed together.

  • According to this PCWORLD article [pcworld.com], "It is likely to cost less than $2000, according to a Pioneer spokesperson. The drive will replace Pioneer's current DVD-R drive in the company's lineup, which costs around $5000."
  • Are you storing your movies in .bmp format?

  • How much will the drive cost?

    I'm guessing too much, and for a long time too. It is going to take a while before there will be competition on this market.

    DVD-ROM media is at $25, why should i pay it?

    CD-R used to be $40, it'll come down pretty fast.

    What can i do now with a $25, 4GB DVD-ROM that i cannot do with $3 worth of CD-ROMs (6 CD-ROMs)

    Burn 4 gigabytes of data on one disk? Seriously, I counted having 97 CDs on my desk, I would love to have only 20 DVDs instead.

    --

  • Yes, but I have a feeling we will see the "playstation effect." If you don't have a mod chip in your PS1, it will not allow you to play burned disks. Right now, I don't think I know anyone who doesn't have a mod chip in their playstation. I know that it will be more difficult with DVD players because of the plethora of different types/brands, but...

    Eric
  • Man! 4.8 GB of MP3's on one disk! :)
  • Title says it all really: how easy would it be?
  • You really need SCSI only if you want/have more than 4 drives.

    Make that two drives. ATAPI can only access one device per cable at a time, not to mention the fact that SCSI allows for 7 fully functional devices on 1 IRQ as opposed to 4 semi-functional devices on 2 IRQ's. Now as for my real question, can we have this puppy on Firewire?
  • that is if you have 5 days to do all the encoding necessary..duh....

    That's what background jobs are for...

    I'm currently copying 20G of data from one disk to another so I can update the filesystem on the source disk.

  • Panasonic's Entry (Score:3)

    by larryj ( 84367 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @02:02AM (#623175)
    Panasonic has a new 'DVD Recorder' too. It's DVD-RAM (differences? It's 4.7 gigs too). http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/dvd/ dvd_recorder.htm
  • That's an older model that came out over a year ago (replacing the DVR-S101 which was $17,000 SRP). I have not seen a price for this new DVD-R/RW yet.
  • "My Man Godfrey" is an unencrypted disk.
  • Divx quality depends on many circumstances...

    I have a DVD rip of The Wall, which is great quality, much better than VHS, but noticeably less than DVD. In general, a DivX in between 1100-1300 kbps is slightly better quality than VHS, Of course it depends on the movie, and the encoder/person who did the encoding. The main thing is that VHS and DivX have different problems, VHS being low-res and less accurate colors, and DivX (as with most compression formats) sucks at fast motion sequences, and sometimes gradients such as clouds and other things get degraded, an example of a bad movie to use divx would be a blade runner rip I have, which is the only divx I have that looks better on VHS. It depends lots on personal preferences though...
  • Allright, I'm sorry, I'll just grab my coat and leave...

    ---
  • Ahhh...History repeats itself. Some of us remember that the RIAA and the record companies eliminated audio DAT as a consumer medium because they were afraid people would copy CDs in the digital domain. At that time, DATs were in the US$15-20 range. Kinda hard to see how people would spend more for a copy than the real thing now, precisely as they didn't then.

    Of course, I'm guessing that the price of blank DVD-RWs could go much lower than that of DAT ever could, since DAT requires precision moving parts that DVD-RW doesn't.

  • Dear Santa (Score:4)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @05:38AM (#623182) Homepage Journal
    I've been a not-so-bad boy this year. Please gimme:

    This [pioneerusa.com]

    A few of these [theregister.co.uk]

    AMD 760 MP

    Two of these [philips.com]

    A fridge with a padlock

    Oh yeah, and huge pectoral muscles!

    Unless you count the way I drive in my Highway 17 commute, in which case anthracite is just fine.

    --

  • psst. It was a joke. Should have probably qualified it I guess...
  • My mistake - 8.5 GB of course

    It's my belief that the 8.5 GB are PER SIDE. They are double layer DVDs, 4.7 GB per layer (the second optional layer is slightly smaller for some reason). So 8.5 GB discs refers to only one sided disc, two layers (it's cheaper and more convenient to make them this way than single layer double side). As for buring a double layer DVD into a double sides DVD-R, I'd really hate to have to stop in the middle of the movie to open the player and switch the sides (I mean, it's almost year 2001 !)
  • Unless like me you have a motherboard with ATA33 controllers and ATA66 controllers (Abit BP6). Then you can have 4 devices in use in parallel without expansion cards.

    Works good!

  • How many CD burners do you know that operate at 18x write speed on ATAPI? As I understand it (I could be wrong, I know) a CD burner - and by extension a DVD burner - needs its data to come at a steady rate. Get too far behind with data, and you've toasted the CD/DVD.

    I don't think that 2770 KB/s is more than ATAPI can handle - I'm questioning that it can sustain that rate for long enough to fill a 4.6 GB DVD-ROM (it's roughly 28 minutes, if my calculations are correct).

    Let's not forget that the situation is different if the data stream comes from an ATAPI device too. Last time I checked, ATAPI requires that the data pass the system bus from device to device, in reality doubling the required bandwidth for operation. It has to to with the one-command-per-ATAPI-bus restriction, if memory serves me (anyone got the full story on this?). SCSI does not suffer the same constraint, and you should be able to stream data directly from the disk to the burner with no intervention from the system bus.

  • Re:Your player won't play DVDRs (Score:4)

    by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @02:23AM (#623194)
    That's easy enough to deal with. You write unencrypted content. Problem solved.
    Problem not solved.

    Your player won't play unencrypted content. It will look for the content code, which will return the zeros. It will then refuse to play the disc.

    Unless you play with the firmware or software, and unlike Region Codes, there's very little inroads which have been made into supplying replacement firmware or software capable of playing consumer written DVD content [obviously these would be underground efforts - like with console games, producing any DVD content involves licensing from those who intented the system - the MPAA].

    OSS [linuxvideo.org] will likely be one of the first players to support consumer produced, backup, and pirate DVD content if enough [that fits into the first two categories] is produced.

    Mike

  • DVD-R media != DVD-Recordable media (Score:3)

    by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @03:07AM (#623198)
    Pioneer also plans to continue sales of its popular external DVD-Recordable drive (DVR-S201) for high-end authoring and content development applications.


    First, as the subject points out, DVD-R is not the same thing as DVD-Recordable (the latter will play in any DVD player and does not have the disk key zeroed out -- it can be used to make true DVDs and, indeed, the early players could be used to make bit-for-bit copies sans decryption, a feature later removed when the MPAA discovered it would undermine their court battle against DeCSS).

    Second, Pioneer's statement appears to imply that DVD-Recordable drives will remain (artifically?) expensive, while the DVD-R/DVD-RW drive will be priced lower for consumer use.

    I'm afraid DVD-Recordable media isn't likely to come down in price anytime soon, although DVD-R and DVD-RW media should.

    As another pointed out, it is likely that future DVD players will play DVD-R and DVD-RW disks, as there are many of us who want to make our own DVDs from our own home videos and be able to send them to our grandparent's/relatives to watch. Pioneer seems to imply this when they say

    "The driving force behind both DVD-R and DVD-RW has always been compatibility with standard DVD playback systems," said Andy Parsons, senior vice president of product development and technical support, Pioneer New Media Technologies, Inc.. "Pioneer believes that interchangeability between recorders and players is the most important attribute any recordable DVD format can offer [...]"

  • Re:Overlooked (Score:3)

    by x0 ( 32926 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @06:32AM (#623216) Homepage
    I hate to be the bearer of bad news (well, not really...), but even at 4.7GB per disc, this technology isn't even close to replacing tapes.

    I got a bit of a chuckle out of your statement 'Now stepping out of the business world' though. You see, your entire post _is_ about desktops.

    Why is that? I think when you say 'tape' you mean Travan or some form of DDS. While desktop level tape drives are usually in the 4-12GB range, there are many forms of tape that have much more capability.

    I am running a relatively low end jukebox with four DLT7000 drives. It is not unusual to get data rates to tape in the 10MB/sec range. Another reason that discs aren't quite ready to replace tapes is that, at least as far as jukeboxes are concerned, you generally don't write one file (or stream of files) to one tape. The backups are threaded onto multiple tapes at the same time.

    Did I mention that DLTs are in the 80GB/tape range?

  • New portables (discman clones) are advertised as CD-RW compatible. I just bought a Phillips AZ9113 and it had a big label on the package saying CD-RW compatible.
  • Ok, let's see here if there fine for copyright violation is $150,000 per offense. Using DVD-RAM and Divx, I can fit around 7 movies per disc if they are all aroun 650 megs, providing that they aren't too long. 7 * $150,000 = 1,050,000. That has to be some kind of record for fine efficiency when pirating! Plus I don't know if the fine for pirating movies is more than $150K or not. See!
    $20 isn't really all that much to pay. Oh! My astute collegue points out that there is also some prison time included with such a sentence.

  • Something is wrong here (Score:5)

    by rogerbo ( 74443 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @03:24AM (#623232)
    I used to work for a Video Post Production
    facility and we had a Pioneer DVD Burner and
    Authoring software for the PC (not sure
    exactly what, it wasn't my area).

    We could author DVD's just fine with this setup
    that would play on standalone DVD players or
    on Computers with DVD drives. It was common
    for clients to ask for copies of their commercials
    on DVD and we could provide them no problem.

    I believe you can choose to author an unencrypted
    regionless DVD (which is what we were doing) and
    players will play them fine.

  • NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward


    > To the citizens of the United States of America,
    > In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to
    > govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your
    > independence, effective today.


    > Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties
    > over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which
    > she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The rt. hon. Tony Blair, MP
    > for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a
    > world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without
    > the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be
    > disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine
    > whether any of you noticed.

    > To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following
    > rules are introduced with immediate effect:
    > 1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary.
    > Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be
    > amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you
    > should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary".
    > Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as
    > "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of
    > communication. Look up "interspersed".

    > 2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know
    > on your behalf.

    > 3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents.
    > It really isn't that hard.

    > 4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as
    > the good guys.

    > 5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The
    > Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you
    > to get confused and give up half way through.

    > 6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind
    > of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good
    > game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your
    > borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You
    > will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper
    > football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It
    > is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed
    > to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not
    > involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar
    > body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US
    > rugby sevens side by 2005.

    > 7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons
    > if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that
    > there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The
    > Russians have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "sh*t".

    > 8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new
    > national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive
    > Day".

    > 9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for
    > your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we
    > mean.

    > 10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.
    >
    > Thank you for your cooperation.

  • What you say is perfectly true, but I was referring more to VHS vs. the reduced resolution combined with compression artifacts produced by a DivX rip.
  • I like to see a product like this coming from a well respected brand such as Pioneer. Not only does that imply a high quality product, it shows that a major corporation does not fear legal repurcussions by groups such as the MPAA. If all holds true, prices on this type of system will fall eventually, and replicating DVD's can be as easy at doing the same with compact discs. Remember, it wasn't that long ago that cd burners were out of most people's budgets...
  • Would it be possible to stuff a VCR player into two 5.25 inch bays?

    I don't think so. A standard video tape is a little bit too large. The tape itself is more than 5-1/4" wide so you'd need to do a side load of the tape. Even if you were sideloading the tape you wouldn't have room for the heads. The heads on a VCR are actually pretty bulky, as is the mechanism to advance and wrap the tape about the head.

    In general it's probably to your advantage to do your analog video recording outside of the computer case anyway. Less EMI and all that.
    _____________

  • Right. It's an IDE device control protocol which is inferior. i.e. you're always likely to have more burn errors due to the drive not being fed properly if you're using IDE rather than SCSI. It's a fact of life - Even for a single drive, IDE uses far more CPU than SCSI. And once you take into account IDE's lack of bus disconnection, it gets worse. (And IDE device servicing a request ties up the bus, while a SCSI bus only uses the bus when it actually has data to communicate.)

  • How much will it cost? (Score:3)

    by Goonie ( 8651 ) <robert.merkel@be n a m b r a . o rg> on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @11:53PM (#623245) Homepage
    I don't expect it to be affordable right away, but how unaffordable it is should give an indication as to how far away from the mainstream it is.
  • The moderation system has failed us again. I moderated this post up when it was relevent.. here it is completely off topic. You can't even pretend. Too bad I'm posting this; it would get -1 Redundant, -1 Off Topic. Grr.

    I'd be afraid of getting moderated down, but if moderation continues in this fashion, then I'll probably wind up with +5 funny.

    ------------
    CitizenC
    My name is not 'nospam,' but 'citizenc'.

  • Re:Your player won't play DVDRs (Score:3)

    by Betcour ( 50623 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @02:50AM (#623250)
    I seriously doubt this :
    1) what's the point of having a DVD-R writer if you can't author your own videos and play them on a regular DVD player ? Surely, preventing all DVD-R from reading on a stand alone DVD player would kill a lot of the legit market for DVD-R. Many people want to edit their own DV videos and then burn them on a DVD-R to watch WITHOUT A COMPUTER.
    2) if current DVD player don't like the unencrypted DVD-R, the new players will (see point 1).
    3) if not point 2, then someone will offer firmware hacking (like all the dezoning and de-macrovisioning currently happening on the market)
  • Worse, you can't even legally copy copy protected media! No backups of your favorite movies, no fair use.

  • Finally... (Score:4)

    by Alakaboo ( 171129 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @11:56PM (#623259) Homepage
    I can have my complete works of Beethoven on a single disc. =) Or the complete works of any musical talent, for that matter... The Beatles, Metallica, Luciano Pavarotti. Some quick math tells us that while a CD (approx 650MB) can hold an optimistic 11 hours of digital sound at 128kbps, a DVD can hold almost 90. PER SIDE.

    I think we're going to need a better menuing system.

    Alakaboo

  • Give It Time (Score:5)

    by Cheshire Cat ( 105171 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @12:00AM (#623262) Homepage
    Sure, today a blank DVD is more expensive than one with content. But for how long? The reason blank DVDs are so expensive is that there isn't much of a market for them yet. Nor will there be for several years.

    However, as devices like this one come out and get more popular, it will cause the demand for blank DVDs to increase. This will naturally lead to a drop in price.

    Consider this: A a few years ago, blank CDs were going for about $5/pop. Now you can get them in bulk for about fifty cents each. Given enough time the same thing will happen with blank DVDs.

    This is why the MPAA was so incensed over the DeCSS. They were looking ahead to when blank DVDs would be much less expensive than those with content put out by the studios. Whether or not this is good/bad/or otherwise, I'll leave to the reader.

  • Can ATAPI keep it rolling at 2xDVD write speed?

    Why not? 2xDVD equals to 2770KB/s which is roughly equal to 18xCD-ROM. Do you really think that's more than ATAPI can transfer? For example IBM provides sustained data rate of 37MB/s with its Deskstar 75GXP series [ibm.com]. Another example could be DVD-A05SZ [pioneer-eur.com]. You really need SCSI only if you want/have more than 4 drives.
    _________________________

  • ...which doesn't mean it's better - but it sells more.

    2000-11-13 20:52:01 The Ultimate Recordable (articles,hardware) (rejected) - but I'm not bitter.
  • This is a huge win for people who create content. We're close to getting rid of editing bays, pro video tape machines, and piping analog signals around.

    Today, typically you have to create huge uncompressed video files, take them to an editing suite, read them in (slowly) on an Avid, and write them out to tape. (You can't compress them up front because they're going to be compressed in motion JPEG in the Avid, and if they're decompressed and recompressed with a different algorithm, artifacts appear.) This costs a few hundred dollars a run if you send it out. Then you get to send the master out to a VHS reproduction shop, where the quality usually drops.

  • Good freaking point. MAYBE my harddrive can keep 2Mbaud coming over the IDE/ATA bus for long enough, but not if I'm doing anything else at the time. I guess I'll just write my dvds overnight and hope no processes tried to swap in or out before morning...

  • Re:Your player won't play DVDRs (Score:3)

    by Eil ( 82413 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @08:45AM (#623278) Homepage Journal

    Surely, preventing all DVD-R from reading on a stand alone DVD player would kill a lot of the legit market for DVD-R.

    No offense, but you haven't been watching much news in the last year, have you? Those that have would note that the whole DVD industry is far from legit, even from the very beginning. They don't consumers making DVD-R's at all, let alone for a low price.

    I surely do hope all of your predictions are correct. I'd much like to see DVD eventually become more of a recognized standard than the vast market strongarm tactic it currently is.

  • DVD-R (Score:3)

    by onion2k ( 203094 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @12:21AM (#623283) Homepage
    A while back, when CD-R was shiny and new, I found I had a problem with my hi-fi. It wouldn't play CD-Rs. Being a bit of a technophile I'd bought the player when they weren't exactly mainstream, and it was getting on a bit. When I bought my first CD-writer I found that my recordings of CD audio weren't compatible with an older cd player. They were fine on computer drives, but audio players didn't like it at all.

    Do DVD players of the set-top box variety play DVD-R discs? This is not an obvious attempt at piracy. The company I work for produces video adverts for things, and DVD would be a great medium for sending to people. Unfortunately even the shortest production run of DVDs costs more than my annual salary (well, not quite, but exaggeration is allowable). Would a DVD writer be a viable option instead?

  • Your player won't play DVDRs (Score:5)

    by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @12:27AM (#623285)
    DVDRs have certain portions of the disk already written to as part of their production companies licensing deal with the MPAA. The bits required for the disk key are already prewritten with zeroes.

    You can't burn an exact copy of a DVD to a DVDR, and your inexact copy won't play in most peoples DVD drives.

  • Re:Give It Time (Score:5)

    by cyber-vandal ( 148830 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @12:30AM (#623286) Homepage
    The MPAA forward-looking? What's next, Microsoft sticking to standards?

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