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Hardware

Combined DVD Burners Coming Soon 299

Posted by michael from the so-many-standards-to-choose-from dept.
MonMotha writes "Sony recently announced plans to make a DVD burner capable of supporting both the - (DVD-R and DVD-RW) as well as the + (DVD+RW and DVD+R) standards for burnable DVD media. This move could spur the adoption of DVD burners, which have been poor sellers so far, partly due to the lack of a single standard for writable and rewritable media. The drive will not support the older DVD-RAM due to it's plastic casing."
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Combined DVD Burners Coming Soon More

Combined DVD Burners Coming Soon

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  • I think the real benifit of this is that older DVD burners will come down in price, perhaps so I can afford one

  • CD? (Score:1)

    by einstein ( 10761 )
    if this little puppy could burn cdr and cdrw disks as well, I'd be sold. too bad there is no mention of said ability in the article.
    ---
    • All the existing consumer DVD-R and DVD+R drives I'm aware of can burn CDs too, so I think there's no reason to believe this one will be any different.

  • Floppies (Score:2, Funny)

    by krnlgmp ( 587532 )
    We don't need this! Why would anyone ever need to carry more than 1.44mb around with them? ;)
    • your post was not really all that funny. In fact, I can't even find one floppy in my house in order to make a bootdisk when I need one (most of the time the machine that crashes is my circa 1996 Dell Laptop which doesn't support boot CD).

      DVD's are really nice for recording. My biggest problem though is the lack of standard and the lack of support in older DVD players (especially cheap ones).

      My DVD player will play VCDs (but not CDRs, CDRWs, or any recordable DVDs). What's the point? If I shell out $400+ for a recorder am I going to be stuck w/something that I am only going to be able to use on limited hardware? Will we have to forever deal w/this?
      • I've been holding out for lack of a standard... so I'm seriously considering buying one of these things. That is assuming that one of the two standards it supports will win out, and that a third "compromise" standard doesn't wind up ruling the roost. However, if it's good for a year or two (and at the rate this "standard" is being hashed out that looks reasonable) it might be worth the money.
      • Maybe that's because you have to go out and buy them.

      • Re:Floppies (Score:3, Informative)

        by Francis Avila ( 603590 )
        (most of the time the machine that crashes is my circa 1996 Dell Laptop which doesn't support boot CD).

        You know, I had this same problem. I was trying to install Linux on an ancient HP Omnibook laptop, and of course its floppy drive had long since bit the dust. Proprietary laptop floppy drives, if you haven't noticed, are very expensive, even on eBay, even for 5+ year old models.

        At first I just boot-strapped my way up to Linux from dos, which worked until I managed to get the computer into an unbootable state. Then I bought those laptop-ide to normal-ide adaptors (whatever they're called) and plugged the old hard drive into my desktop when necessary.

        But alas, at long last, I found Smart BootManager [gnuchina.org]: a flexible bootloader that allows you to boot from floppy, cdrom, and hd, regardless of your BIOS. This thing is perfect for old PCs. Heck, it will even adjust the year on your bios, for those stupid Award bioses that turn anything from 2000 up into 1994 (i.e., my old 486).

        I found out about this from Debian [debian.org] (yay Debian!) which includes it on their install cdrom.

        There may be better solutions out there, but this works perfectly for me. Also, the site doesn't seem to have been updated since Feb 2001, so it's probably a dead project.

        Anyway, you dd it to your MBR (or use the install program?), make sure your lilo/grub/whatever is installed to the boot block of your root partition (instead of the MBR), and you're set. Boot from a cdrom on a 486!

        Hm, it suddenly strikes me that this is probably off topic...
        • Your crappy 486 is living in the past. MY crappy P90 with an Award BIOS thinks the year is *2094*, so there! :)

          (Even my XT's clock card and my 286s know the right year. What's Award's excuse??)

    • one does have to wonder:

      with the "keychain USB flash storage thingys" multiplying size every couple monthes or so, why DO you need to shell out that much dough for DVD burners?

      i mean, i can get 512MB worth of go-anywhere storage on a key chain. OR i can get credit card sized CDR worth 30M or so for a quarter or so each. so... what's the benefit of a 5 dollar DVDR disk again?

      i'd say money is better spent on wireless connectivity, bluetooth and the like, which is more convenient, less hassle, and no ongoing maintainence cost (media).

      for archival purposes (the above has been regard to data-sharing), get a second hard disk. i am willing to say that everyone (personal use) has the CRITICAL data which would all fit onto about a CD, maybe two. kids who do video editing or whatever may need more, but then they already got DVDR and stuff already anyway... me as average joe, i am sticking with floppies.
    • 1.44MB is almost too much. After all, "640K ought to be enough for anyone" (Bill Gates).
      • "640K ought to be enough for anyone" (Bill Gates)
        Care to cite an authoritative reference for this quote? No? I thought not.

        Lots of people quote this, but no one can back it up. I seriously doubt that Bill ever said it.

        I'm not an admirer of Bill, but there are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize him rather than by putting words in his mouth.

        The 640K limit is almost certainly due to design decisions by the IBM PC design team, not by Microsoft. MS-DOS did not have a 640K limit; some early 8086- and 8088-based computers ran MS-DOS with as much as 896K of RAM. IBM was just a little short-sighted in the addresses they assigned for video cards. But to be fair, back in 1980 (when the PC was being designed) it wasn't obvious to anyone that this would be a serious limitation. Most personal computers in 1980 had no more than 128K of RAM.

  • confusing for consumers? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by firebat162 ( 463459 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @06:15PM (#4138240)
    It sounds awfully confusing for a normal consumer if they buy one of these super combined dvd burners...

    can you imagine? This guy wants to burn a dvd, but when he hits burn, he has 4-5 choices to pick between( DVD-R, DVD+R, etc...). While this is good for more technical people, I can't see this being a feature normal consumers would buy this for.

    I personally think there needs to be one standard.
    • Since its Sony I would have to agree, but I'm sure compatible software out there at some point will offer a default to a particular standard to make it a little easier for the average consumer to use.
    • I would have to think that the marketing guys at Sony will be able to properly market this to the consumer, especially if it hits a good price note.

      Think about it, if you are looking at buying a DVD writer, with all these confusing formats, now sony can just say "one burner that supports all dvd writing standards". If someone is looking for a dvd writer, this really is their only option to make sure that its compatible with everything.

    • It sounds awfully confusing for a normal consumer if they buy one of these super combined dvd burners...

      can you imagine? This guy wants to burn a dvd, but when he hits burn, he has 4-5 choices to pick between( DVD-R, DVD+R, etc...).

      I think it'll actually be easier. The +/- difference is in the discs themselves - or at least, there's a difference in the discs themselves - so the chances are this burner will be able to detect what kind of discs they have and burn accordingly.

      This seems like a Good Thing for non-tech users. Buy whatever disc you like, and away you go.

      One can hope.

      --Dan
  • To me this looks like a good reason to get a DVD burner (well as soon as I know that it will work under linux) but I worry about sony putting some sort of hardware based DRM (Digital Rights Managment) into the drive.

    i.e. preventing the drive from recording in raw mode

  • cost (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Squarewav ( 241189 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @06:17PM (#4138252)
    its the cost thats the problem not the standard , a genaric dvd burner runs around 264$(pricewatch)(400$ at my local comp usa) a lot more then most people are willing to spend when they rarely use more then a normal cdr. Its cheaper to buy a hard drive
    • yup cheaper to buy a HD. I can't fill up a HD, take it out, and put in another one for $7.

      I have a 10G and a 20G HD in here. They are both hurting bad. Between SHN music and AVIs I am toast on space.

      I would love to have a DVD burner and have two movies per DVD to play later. That would make my life a lot easier. I wouldn't have to be sitting there counting the MBs like I was still using my 44mb drive in 1991.

      • Re:cost (Score:3, Insightful)

        by coene ( 554338 )
        You do know that you can get hard drives at about the cost of $1 per GIGABYTE, right? Skip a few pizza's and you're golden :)
        • But you can get a pizza for $1 per GIGABITE!
        • You do know that you can get hard drives at about the cost of $1 per GIGABYTE, right?

          Yes, but you can get DVD+Rs for well under $2.50 US, and DVD-Rs are even cheaper. That's under 55 cents US per gigabyte. The fixed cost (the drive itself) becomes irrelevant when dealing with any real quantity.

          Besides - if the motor dies on the hard drive, or the head crashes, you're out all your data. Not good, especially for a backup storage medium. And that's not even getting into the whole DVD-Video aspect of the game =)
        • You do know that you can easily get hold of DVD-Rs for less than $5 each, making them cheaper per gigabyte.

          It really depends on how much data you have to store. If you have a lot, to recover your initial outlay of the drive won't take much doing. I do feel safer when I have thinks on optical media as well as hard drives - even entire RAID arrays can be completely trashed, and I usually end up just clearing backups on the hard drive to make room for more stuff I need.. :)
    • Actually, the cost of the drive is nominal. What keeps people like myself away is the cost of the discs (14 CDs are cheapers than one DVD, IIRC), as well as the relatively small number of people with DVD players in their PCs. Obviously that number will grow, but until it does, it's hard to justify paying more for discs that are less compatible, and portable.

      Besides, is a CD not big enough to store a PDF? It takes a huge ammount of data to fill a CD. Short of backing up my 100GB hard drive (which I do to another 100GB HDD) I don't have any single file, or groups of files that need more space than a CD can provide.

      • Re:cost (Score:2)

        by Hast ( 24833 )
        I don't think anyone is arguing that you'll need DVD-R for your PDF's. (Although just wait for word 2010. ;-)

        But if you eg want to save tv series then DVD-R is a great medium. One or two DVD's and you have an entire anime series. (Well in most cases at least.) Or two for a serie in higher quality.
        • That's true, but it would still be just as possible to store them across a few more CDs.

          The ponint when a new medium gets adopted, is about when a single file (or group of related files, such as in a program) is too big for the media. That's why iomega had success with Zip, and then CDs replaced Zips.

          Hey, even if you completely disagree with that aspect, DVD media is still grossly expensive (compared to CDs), and not enough people have DVD drives yet.

  • yuck-o. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nbvb ( 32836 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @06:20PM (#4138272) Journal
    You know, this really *isn't* good for DVD recording ....

    I can't wait for the day we standardize. Don't really care which wins the "war", but it needs to be one or the other.

    Nobody is going to look at the label on a 50-pack in the store to see if it's a DVD-R or DVD+R. DVD recording won't take off till Bill the Accountant can walk into CompUSA and ask for a pack of DVD discs to put his stuff on without having to worry about brands and standards and all that jazz....

    We just need to pick one and let the other one die off ....

    Of course, I'd +prefer+ it to be DVD-R, just 'cuz my Apple SuperDrive^W^WPioneer DVR-A03 is a DVD-R. :)
    • Nobody is going to look at the label on a 50-pack in the store to see if it's a DVD-R or DVD+R.

      As I read it, that's exactly what this new drive will be good for -- if you have a drive that can read and write both formats, then you won't care what kind of discs you're picking up. The only situation where you'd care is if you depend on some feature that only one format supports (e.g. interruptible writes on a DVD+R disc) which I suspect won't be a factor in the vast majority of cases. For Bill the Accountant who just wants to burn a backup of his PC's hard disk (or a collection of his pirated movies) one format is just as good as the other, so it'll come down to price per disc.

      • Sure, but if he gives that disc to Fred the Landscaper, then he has to worry if Fred's computer can read it or not.

        DVD-R's and DVD+R's are incompatible with some drives in different ways.

        If one out of every 3 discs that Bill gives to Fred works in Fred's computer, he's going to assume that Bill's machine is broken. Bill will think that too, not knowing that the difference is the DVD-R or DVD+R disc he used.

        *sigh* we really need to pick one and stick with it.

        Standards are great. Everyone has one.
        • DVD-R and DVD+R disks are only incompatible as far as writing is concerned. Once the disks are burned, they are designed to be universally readable, including standard consumer DVD players.

          The only issue would be if Fred wants to add to Bill's rewritable DVD format. Your stated concerns would be fully addressed by this solution.

          Unless Fred the Landscaper taked on double duty as Fred the Digital Media Editor.
  • Drives are min $300 for a -R/-Ram.
    But many people have CD-Rs.
    DVD-R and CD-R media both cost $.2 per gig now.
    The startup cost is so much it seems better
    to buy a few IDE drives and wait till the price
    comes down. The only good thing is the (linear)
    rewriteable -RW which are as cheap as -R which is
    great.

    And why not include -RAM? Its media is cheaper
    than +RW (the most similar), and it is so established.

  • AMEN! (Score:1, Redundant)

    by wo1verin3 ( 473094 )
    Well this is what I've been waiting for, it might be +1 redundant but a DVD writer that supports both is a great solution for those that don't wish to wait until one standard takes over.
  • Some competitor is going to release yet another standard that will knock this super drive off of its pedestal. Maybe this will knock down the prices in the other non-super drives. I just can't wait for these things to cost below $100 like CD-RW drives. But, I have a feeling that won't happen in the near future until everyone gets their act together and decides on a single, standard format. All we can do is wait.
    • Got lucky in Wal-Mart and picked up 2 Philips DVD+RW burners for $78.84 apiece when they were selling for ~$480 each. Talk about rolling back the prices. They must have screwed up and thought they were selling CD-RW drives 'cause I haven't seen them since.

  • Front Line Reason (Score:5, Insightful)

    by UserChrisCanter4 ( 464072 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @06:28PM (#4138314)
    I used to work retail, and I can tell you the number one reason why these things aren't being readily adopted: piracy, or rather lack thereof.

    I'm serious. I've owned three different CD Burners going back to the days when they started to become remotely affordable (as DVD burners are now). When I first got them, truth be told, it was for the purpose of creating mix CDs (completely legal) and burning MP3s found from the various FTP sites (this was around the time when Napster was just barely registering on geek radar, much less the public's eye). My current unit hasn't ever written a single CD with music on it (at least not for the purpose of playing in a CD player... I've probably archived an mp3 at some point). I use it heavily for backing up data, particularly TV shows that I time shift and digital photos.

    But this isn't what the average Joe user uses it for. I know, I talk to them every day. They want it for music, almost exclusively for music. In fact, a lot of Joe Users aren't aware that CD burners can be used for anything else (seriously).

    From Joe User's perspective, copying a CD is easy. Converting and burning an MP3 is easy. It's all done with fun, easy wizards. Drag and drop songs until the wizard says the CD is "full". Press start.

    doing the same with DVDs isn't easy. First, I have to contend with running DeCSS and ripping the video off of the DVD. Assuming the source is a single layer, single side DVD, all I have to do is write and go. Assuming it isn't, now I have to split the source file into two different DVDs or recompress into a tighter space. See, all the /.ers just said, "yeah" and Joe User spaced out when I mentioned DeCSS. On top of that, creating a DVD of home videos is difficult for Joe unless he's running an Apple, but he heard those suck 'cause they can't run windows. (Note to Apple fans: I said for Joe User, not for real people. I own two apples, and I love 'em).

    DVD Burners do have many great uses, just as CD Burners do, even to Joe. But for him, the gateway use is copying movies, just as his gateway use on the CD burner was copying CDs. Would he discover cool uses for his DVD burner just as he did his CD Burner? Sure. But right now it's too difficult for him to use it for what he perceives to be it's primary purpose.
    • True but I think thats coming. Were people burning CDs like this 4 years ago when the recorders cost like DVD-R drives do now ? Have you seen all those advertisements on places like yahoo for "copying a DVD to CD" ? Thats for joe user. As DVD-R/... drive prices go down, the software will become simple and available.
      • Four years ago, a few people would buy CD-Rs for pirating audio cds and computer/playstation games. Since they were still quite expensive, they'd charge people they knew $5 to copy discs, thus helping to recoup some of their costs. Sort of like a community-owned CD-R drive, only one person actually controls it.

        Nobody does that with DVD-R drives currently, because it's not really possible to copy a DVD to a DVD-R and have it play in standard DVD players. So very few people want them.
    • If DeCSS is a problem, then your users must be running linux and trying to rip DVDs. Most users I know aren't trying to do either... The drive probably comes with software that handles DeCSS, as long as they're running windows. I don't see why it's significantly more complicated than a normal CD-R.
    • Sure, burning DVDs may be beyond Joe User just now, but so was burning CDs at one point. Those drag & drop interfaces wheren't always around. You had to worry about buffer underruns, drive fragmentation, media choice and all that nonsense just to get a usable disk. Now it's all easy.

      As DVD burners are aimed more and more at the non-geek, so will the software. Burning your own videos to disk with easy to set up menu structures isn't too far away...

      • Even when CD-R's weren't that easy to use, they at least weren't too difficult either, and worked. You could take an audio CD, copy it to another audio CD, and have it play in any standard CD player.

        You can't do that with DVDs. You can't take a DVD, copy it to another DVD, and have it play in the vast majority of DVD players. It'll only work if you burn your own videos to DVD, or if you have a hacked player of some sort.

        So in a way, the copy-protection thing is working. Sure, you can defeat it, but most people don't bother. They want a DVD that plays on their player, and it's hard to get a pirated one that does, so they just buy a legitimate copy.
  • The Pioneer drive that Apple puts in their PowerMac and new iMacs (dubbed "SuperDrive") is really nice, but it doesn't do +RW. Dell is putting someone elses DVD writer in their computers that does +RW but they don't even offer a -RW alternative.

    And besides, Sony is the best darn electronics company on the planet (:

    Maybe now I can upgrade my Sony 12x to a DVD writer. What are the speeds up to these days?

    ~LoudMusic

  • Well isn't that all nice and great... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Loki_1929 ( 550940 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @06:30PM (#4138323) Journal
    Now just please tell me when HP is going to own up to their promise to provide owners of the DVD 100i the capability to burn DVD-r's (one way or another). At this point, I'm leaning towards avoiding any first generation product offered from anyone, and specifically avoiding any and all HP purchases in the future. If you're going to promise something, make sure it's possible first; and don't edit the FAQ later without so much as telling anyone to make it look like you never promised what you did, in fact, promise. Remember, the people who buy the first-gen products are the ones who help shape what hits mainstream.

  • I just think it's about hilarious that the word "standards" is actually used.

    If there is more than one, how can it even be standard? Sure, I realize that they individally have their own protocol [dictionary.com] , but having more than one nullifies the word standard right? Or no?

  • Kind of makes ya wonder if they will...

  • Supporting both is just going to delay the inevitable unifying standard. I bought a HP DVD 200e, just because it is external and lets me use firewire. I can't fit a 5 ¼ bay in my notebook so I had to pass on the less expensive IDE drives. When I bought the 200e I had no idea what + or - was. I leaped before investigating. Sony is just creating another piece of hardware that will be the novelty of proprietary standards.

    I bought an HP... long live +R.

    A good site that outlines the differences is vcdhelp.com [vcdhelp.com]
  • I can't wait to see the labels for this one:

    "the new Sony DVD(\+|\-)R(|W) Foo2002! Now super-easy for you and your family!"

    Even funnier, this won't help much with limiting the playback confusion - some of these formats are data-centric, others video player-centric... and do _any_ of these encompass the Audio standard?

  • Let's not forget Sony's anti-copying technology (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 25, 2002 @06:39PM (#4138361)
    According to news out this week, Sony has been quietly building CD-RW burners with anti-copying technology built in. Sony is also leading the push on drm legislation which will take away your fair use rights to backup that CD/DVD for protection from scratches, aging, and many other purposes, which are legal under fair use law.

    It's up to you to decide whether you will support a company that is trying as hard as possible to prevent you from transfering music from your CD to your Rio or your car, or for backup purposes, etc.

    It's up to you to decide whether Sony is acting in your best interest, or their own selfish interests by setting up a tollbooth on the digital highway that is becoming harder and harder to avoid.

    How many of you knew that Sony was building anti-copying technology into their CD-RW burners that they are currently selling? I certainly didn't know, but since I refuse to purchase any Sony products due to their stance on "digital rights management", I am somewhat protected. By avoiding the companies that are pushing hard on drm, I am mitigating some of the damage they are doing to my ability to backup my property.

    btw, have you unchecked the drm box in wmp before burning that CD? If not, you burned drm anti-copying abilities into your CDs.

    See NYFairUse [nyfairuse.org] for more info.

  • Limited Demand, or Lack of Standards? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cheesewhiz ( 61745 ) <ianp@@@mac...com> on Sunday August 25, 2002 @06:52PM (#4138404) Homepage
    "This move could spur the adoption of DVD burners, which have been poor sellers so far, partly due to the lack of a single standard for writable and rewritable media. "

    I disagree that the lack of a single unified standard has had a significant depressive influence on the sale of recordable DVD drives. I think that it's rather a lack of demand.

    In other words, how many people actually have a driven requirement to burn DVDs? While most of us geeks would think that it's an immensely desirable thing, in actuality, the average PC user doesn't have a need for DVD-R technology.

    While the media has been making it sound like all the rage, home-producing video DVDs is actually not yet widespread. It's great use of quality technology, but the average Joe doesn't do it...yet.

    Storage space is extremely cheap -- $100 for 120 GB IDE drives. To the average user, that's an immense, almost dauntingly large amount of space which they'll probably never use. Why spend extra on a DVD recordable drive, and several bucks each on DVD media when you don't need that much space (4.7 GB per disc, usually) in a transportable form?

    The fact is, most people don't need DVD-recordable drives. If they did, they'd purchase one regardless of the lack of a single unified standard, as long as the product does what it needs to. That's a fairly typical consumer mindset with computer technology recently -- "who cares about the standards, because they'll all be different in another month!"

    On the Apple side, it's profitable for them to offer DVD-R technology as a standard, because their users are typically more multimedia-centric, and have suitable user-friendly tools for the most basic to the most advanced users to utilize the technology to its fullest. For most PC-users, it's merely purchasing a machine with superfluous technology.

  • The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from :-)

  • The Name? (Score:3, Funny)

    by suwain_2 ( 260792 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @07:03PM (#4138442) Journal
    Will they call it... a CD±RW drive?
  • I keep looking at these drives, but from what I've read if you put a SVCD on to a DVD-RW a normal player won't read it. They expect DVD Video on a DVD-RW disc, not SVCD.

    Anyone know some good software to convert SVCD to DVD Vid?

  • Prices,,, (Score:2, Informative)

    by OneFix ( 18661 )
    I was discussing this very subject today. It's pertty much agreed that the biggest problem is the cost of the drive itself, followed by the cost of media.

    My guess it that the price point for wide purchase of DVD Writers is $179...why $179? Well, this suggests that the $199 point would have already been reached...but most think "That's just $200"...no one want's to pay $200 for a drive....And $189 would have also been broken...but some won't buy there...and when you get to $179, you already have 3 choices under $200 and this suggest a good selection. And at the $179 price point, this suggests that there is likely to be a $169 drive in the near future...and you're no longer talking ~$200, but ~$150.

    For some, media cost is a problem, but it's likely to go down as soon as ppl start buying burners.

    The real problem is, lack of cheap drive manufacturers...you know, the Lite-Ons and the Pacific Digitals (Mostly repackaged Mitsumis).

  • The real use for DVD/R (Score:5, Interesting)

    by smallstepforman ( 121366 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @07:49PM (#4138611)
    Its suprising to see that some people fail to see the larger picture which DVD-R brings. Walk into any Blockbuster/VideoEzy/Video library, rent a movie overnight, stick it into your PC and start ripping and recompressing, and burn the movie onto your DVD-R. Total cost for movie ownership - $5 for rental and $5 for blank DVD-R. This will get cheaper, since blank media prices will fall. Most video libraries also offer a rent 5 movies for $10 deal, so you can get 5 movies for $35, or $7 each at current prices. Of course, you have to factor in burner and PC ammortisation and electricity, but you get the general idea. When blank disks cost $2 each, you're looking at $4 for pirated movie disks. Great value in any book, when you take into consideration that most movies cost $20 or so. You miss out on the menus and extra features, but you can always burn them onto another disk. The best thing is that you dont get to see the FBI style warnings before every disk (telling you how wrong it is to do what you've just done).

    The best part about this situation is that free software already exists which can rip a DVD and compress it to fit on a 4.38Gb (4.7G) disk at the push of a button. Just hit start, flip disks 2 hours later, and hit burn. If you have a second DVD-ROM, you dont even have to hit burn - insert the two disks (original and blank), and just hit Start.

    Of course, the MPAA will catch onto this soon, but its too late to introduce new counter measures. The cat is out of the bag.
    • Ummm...

      If you rent DVD movies at the video store...can you not simply stick it and a blank in the drive and do a straight DVD-DVD duplication? Why the ripping bit?
      • DVD burners only burn one layer, which gives you 4.7Gb (4.38). The movies you rent are usually on a dual layered, single sided disk (up to 9Gb). You need to reduce the movie to fit onto a single disk, by either reducing the bit rate, or by eliminating the extra stuff. Dual layered burners wont be around for a long long time.

        The other prospect is to encode the movies with DivX ;-) , or MPEG4. You no longer need to sacrifice image quality, but you end up with a disk which cant be played from the DVD player in the living room. You can only play it on your PC, or a next gen DVD player (which supports MPEG-4).
    • I am from Spain. We used to have the same prices as you do on DVDs (actually, they tend to be more expensive in Europe), but today I walked into fnac (a big electronics store in Madrid) and found that many DVDs cost 5 euros (roughly $5). I bought a couple of them.

      At this price, I will not invest on a DVD burner.

      Do you here me? RIAA? No need to create a policial state. Just price your stuff right!
    • I could do the same thing for years with VHS but I never did. Thing is pretty much when I rent a movie, I see it once and then I'm done, I don't care to have a copy. Too much effort and an unnecessary fee for the blank to make a copy. If I wanted to won it, I'd buy it and get a higher quality copy. Well DVD-Rs aren't big enough to hold most commerical movies. You'd have to srtip out all the extras and audio tracks to make most fit and teh big ones you'd have to reocde to a lower bitrate. No thnaks, I want all that stuff, I'll buy the DVD for teh few I want to own, and just rent the rest.
  • Just as soon as these burners hit the markets, I expect Sony to introduce SVDVD (Super Video Digital Video Disk), with a higher bandwidth and a richer, emotionally more intense "look" that is often compared to film.

    The SVDVD signal will, of course, be recorded on a special third layer that cannot be seen, let alone read, by any device sold as a computer peripheral.
    • Just as soon as these burners hit the markets, I expect Sony to introduce SVDVD (Super Video Digital Video Disk), with a higher bandwidth and a richer, emotionally more intense "look" that is often compared to film.
      The format was already announced last march. It's called Blu-ray, and uses a blue (or is it violet?) laser to get higher storage capacity.

      Unfortunately, the DVD Consortium, in its "wisdom", has decided to push a competing high definition format that uses the current DVD physical layer (book 1 of the DVD spec, ECMA-267 [www.ecma.ch]), but with higher compression ratios. This seems rather short-sighted.

  • When I bought my PowerMac, Apple was having trouble keeping the Combo drive (CD-RW/DVD) in stock, and since both of those were requirements of mine, I ended up going with the Superdrive.

    This summer, I was put into a position where I had to distribute about 3.2 gigs worth of material to numerous people by mail.

    Borken up into somewhat logical chunks, the material took seven CD-Rs.

    The solution, obviously, was to burn DVD-Rs. I was amazed at how easy it was and how effectively it worked. At 2x, I burned the material in a little over 20 minutes per disc.

    In the end, I am glad I ended up paying the extra for the Superdrive. The ability to assure that most everyone would be able to read the discs in their DVD drive equipped PC was very nice.

    My big comment: I see no reason for RW for most material. CD-Rs have gotten so cheap that I do not mind burning 30 megs worth of pictures to take to the local print shop for printing. I just throw the disc away after that.

    I do not see a strong reason to deal with slower burn speeds and more expensive media just to be able to reuse what I now consider to be disposible media.

    That might just be me.
  • When they finally (if ever) decide on a standard for the DVD recordable formats, will they be compatible with current (and future) DVD drives? I'd buy a DVD[+/-]R drive or whatever they call the new standard for backup purposes, as long as it was compatible with other dvd (player) drives I have and may buy in the future. If not, well, then I probably won't buy one.
  • Sony have been in the poo with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) a number of times now.
    They add 'regioning' to their Playstation 2 games, so you can't play games from different regions on the 1 playstation. They are a member of the DVD cartel who are forcing the same regioning on DVD consumers.
    They are trying to sue people for buying AND selling Playstation MOD chips.
    They are the most expensive brand, but lack the quality to justify the premium.
    Go with a more consumer-friendly company. They aren't hard to find...

  • About freakin' time... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tcc ( 140386 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @10:46PM (#4139212) Homepage Journal
    One thing I hate about new standards and most technologies, is that they tend to keep the "final" on a shelf until they can squeeze every single stepping out from pratically useless to the final product.

    CDroms, 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 6x, 8x, 12x, 16x, 20x, 24x, 32x, 40x, 48x, 56x, (and the blowing one from a previous slashdot story? :) )

    CD-R, same pattern.

    Guess what, yes when they did the 1x they probably didn't have a 48x machine working off the bat, but in all of the steppings you've seen above, probably only 3 stepping were required and the rest were physically locked with a firmware, etc..

    Where I am going with this? Well, simple. In some cases, it's acceptable and even good to hold off technology for a buisness model to work and for a company to have enough time to do R&D and accumulate enough revenues to sustain the operating costs, that's the goal of this maneuver.

    But this is where I get upset:

    DVD-RW (or +RW or anything for that matter) we were promised double layer double density double sided. The only thing we got is double-crossed. Right now we're sitting on a 4.7GB medium that was supposed to be 4x that amount (or at least 2x with the double layer and you'd have to turn the disc). DVD's been around for quite a while, yet, I'm not remotely impressed by this technology anymore. I've recently picked up a 99$ dvd player (about time they came down to that price) and why did Y buy it? because it was playing CD-R, CD-RW, VCD/SVCD, MP3 and mpeg-1 video burned on joliette CD. That was the interresting part about it.

    I would have been an INSTANT adopter at an overpriced range if they would have brought the technology they had promised. When the VHS VCD came out, and tapes were costing a bundle, I bought them, I loved the technology, I loved what it could bring me, and I didn't get lied to or hyped with what it would be and got 1/2 of it.

    DVD, when it got out, should have been 9.4GB-ready from the start, more expensive units should have had 2-sided reader/writer and cheaper units needing to turn the disk or buy a 1sided disc. They could have segmented the market like this for the home and pro. They could have kept the readers-only for cheap for mass-adoption and everything would have worked out just fine and probably taken off more seriously. They've had to retain, and now you get technology like TIVO that records a lot more, manages better than handling 30 dvds, and just plain rocks.

    Of course when they'll hit 99$ they will become interresting, but probably Hollywood will unleash that incompatible 2layer-blue-2sided-blabla laserdisc format...

    Anyways my rant isn't about this stuff comming out, it's about WHEN it comes out (blattantly retarded) and how it comes out, the cutdown features, and the fact that it's almost obsolete with other technologies on the edge. Too bad they aren't getting as much competition as the microprocessor sector is getting, because today you'd have HDVD that would support full HDTV signal with full quality and not only READ about it or have one prototype if you got 5 digits to spare. oh well...

    • DVD-RW (or +RW or anything for that matter) we were promised double layer double density double sided.
      Can you cite any references? I've been paying attention to DVD since before Toshiba and Sony settled their differences, and I don't remember ever seeing any claim that double-layer writable was going to be possible, from even a semi-credible source.

      I'm not saying it's impossible, but the technology used for CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, and DVD+R/RW does not lend itself well to writable double-layer media. The writing techniques would tend to affect both layers simultaneously.

      Double-sided media does exist, at least for DVD-R. It's more expensive and harder to find.

      What we really need is a high-density rewritable removable media that isn't pushed by the consumer electronics and motion picture industries. If we're lucky, such a thing could slip under the radar without as much pressure from Hollywood to include nasty DRM crap.

    • Um... many of the manufacturers of DVD burners are actually competitors. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that they want to take your consumer dollars. This would lead them to attempt to produce a better product/price and/or better marketting. Have you seen much marketting for DVD burners? Again, I go out on a limb and suggest that they are giving you the best product for the price of their R&D. If they haven't given you something, I suspect it's 'cause it's hard to give you.

      Otherwise one of them would have done it.
  • Alright, so it's not as cool as sharks with frickin' lasers, but it's still pretty cool.

    So far, though, I've been pretty satisfied with my Pioneer DVR-A03. It supports DVD-R/RW and CD-R/RW. I can't really say that I've missed DVD+R/RW capability.

    However, having more vendors shipping DVD-R/RW drives will obviously help drive down the price.

    What I really want (aside from the aformentioned sharks) is a laptop DVD-R/RW, CD-R/RW drive that will fit in my Fujtisu Lifebook P-2040 subnotebook. It came with a Toshiba SD-R2102 combo drive that can read DVD and DVD-R media (I haven't tried other DVD formats), and write CD-R/RW. But being able to burn DVD-R on the go would be a nice improvement.

    Even though laptop DVD-R/RW drives have been announced, I'll probably have to wait until Fujitsu offers one for a Lifebook, because they use a custom bezel. Unless maybe I can use the bezel from the SD-R2102. Time will tell.

  • DVD burners are slow on uptake because there are different standards, you say?

    Gee. Here was I, thinking the reason I didn't buy a DVD burner was primarily the cost of the media, compared to CD-R. As long as I don't need to master a DVD, but just need data backup, CD-Rs come at 35 cents a gig, whereas DVD-Rs are around a dollar a gig still.

    So my question to myself is "Would I pay three times the money for a disc burner, and three times the price for the media, to get them on DVD format instead of CD?". My answer to that question is "no".

    I don't care too much about the competing standards - both DVD-R and DVD+R can be read in a regular DVD reader, and as long as that's the case, the media format would be a non-issue when selecting a DVD burner, as far as compatibility goes.

    I cannot imagine I am the only human on Earth to reason this way.

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