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Hardware

CD Burners with Built in Compression 248

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-isn't-that-fancy dept.
EconolineCrush writes "Bored of new CD-R/RW drives that only seem to decrease burn times by a few seconds over their predecessors? Check out this review of Plextor's PlexWriter Premium over at The Tech Report. With an advertised CD-R burn speed of 52X, the PlexWriter is certainly fast, but its ability to encrypt the contents of burned data CDs and squeeze nearly a Gigabyte of data onto a 700MB disc is what sets it apart from other high-speed burners."
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CD Burners with Built in Compression More

CD Burners with Built in Compression

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  • Great .. (Score:5, Funny)

    by D4rkSt4lker ( 678569 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:05PM (#6377574)
    Not only can we be pirates, but now we can be terrorists, all in one easy cd-burning step.
  • 43% more pornographic goodness on every disc!

  • CD Burners with Built in Compression (Score:5, Informative)

    by florin ( 2243 ) * on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:07PM (#6377592)
    The Plextor's GigaRec feature uses shorter pit lengths to squeeze more data onto a disc. I guess in a way it is indeed a literal kind of compression. Still, the topic title seems somewhat misleading considering that the usual kind of compression people talk is about is something quite different.

    A nice feature certainly, but of limited use. Those discs can only be read in that drive (and 1 or 2 older Plextor models). With current DVD-writer pricing who is gonna settle for a CD writer no matter how premium it is?

    • Re:CD Burners with Built in Compression (Score:5, Insightful)

      by arcanumas ( 646807 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:17PM (#6377660) Homepage
      So if it does not interoperate with other devices it is not really a CD/RW breakthrough but rather an extension to the hell that has become CD-R. It may never be adopted by other firms and you are stuck with disks that become useless once your device breaks.
      And i have to agree with you that this is just putting CD-R techology to life-support. DVD is coming our way rapidly..

      What happened to those flueroscent 'something' technologies that promised tremendous capacities?

      • Re:CD Burners with Built in Compression (Score:4, Interesting)

        by sdack ( 601542 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @03:24PM (#6378762)
        > So if it does not interoperate with other devices it is not really a CD/RW breakthrough but rather an extension to the hell that has become CD-R.

        It supports all other formats as well, is faster than many other CD writers and can also read copy protected music CDs. Plextor is back to its old heights in providing a quality product and moves all OEM stuff back into in the shadow.
        They were the first who recognized that a black interior decreases the bit error rate. They also provide good support. They once sent me a new ROM for no price.

        They also have DVD writers and the only reason why they do not support this variable pit length feature there is probably because they haven't ordered bigger flash ROMs yet.
        Yes, the pit length can be set in such a way that 1.2 GB fits on a CD-R or you can change it to 900 MB and get a good chance that it can still be read by others CDROM drives.
        They also sell the CD writer with analyses software, so you can check the quality of your burnings.

        They don't leave you with much arguments to call them a bad company ...

        In other words: they never cared much about what you call hell :-)

        Sven
        • I think the real question is, what chance does any OTHER drive on the market have of reading something burned with this? Slim to none I bet.

          Hence, it's not really a CD-R or CD-RW drive, it's a "Proprietary Format"-RW drive that happens to have a CD-RW fallback mode.

          Don't get me wrong, the idea of variable pit length is a good one, and I'd love to see it adopted into a standard somewhere (probably on DVD=R (they've already used + and -)), but I'd hate to see someone burn off their backup discs using 900Me
    • With current DVD-writer pricing who is gonna settle for a CD writer no matter how premium it is?

      DVDs have no clear standards at this point. I think I remember someone saying that DVD-RW is the one standard reaching the critical mass market, but is it *there* yet? And the media, last time I looked, was still hard to find and expensive when you did find it.

      I agree that this new CD-RW extension is crap, but I don't think DVD-writers are viable until there is one standard that everyone can read.
      • DVDs have no clear standards at this point. I think I remember someone saying that DVD-RW is the one standard reaching the critical mass market, but is it *there* yet?

        Actually, I'm pretty sure DVD+R(W), not DVD-R(W), is going to end up being the standard eventually. It's already leading -R(W) in the retail market. And more importantly the format has the backing of all the companies that matter; Philips, Sony and Microsoft - and many others. DVD-RW has Pioneer and that's about it.

        That's not to say DVD-RW
        • See my point? No clear standards. I've seen a lot of DVD-RW drives on the shelves, while hearing that the DVD+RW has the backing of the big players. Out of one side, I hear a lot of consumers are buying DVD-RW, while the players on the other side are backing DVD+RW.

          Again, no clear standards. I'll wait it out, thank you very much.

      • DVDs have no clear standards at this point. I think I remember someone saying that DVD-RW is the one standard reaching the critical mass market, but is it *there* yet? Well, for gods sake go to the shop and buy a DVD-RW drive to support this evolving standard. Unless people buy one or another nothing is gonna get the standard. YOU, the customer, decide.
        • I doubt that the issue will be decided by the tiny fraction of potential DVD-writer purchasers that read /. (and yes, I think it is tiny, even though a large fraction of the /. readership are likely to buy a DVD writer eventually, the issue will almost certainly be decided by OEMs, and not necessarily American ones either).

          OK, so this sounds a bit like the "it's useless voting" argument, but voting doesn't cost GBP 200 :-)

      • Crap? (Score:3, Informative)

        by TWX ( 665546 )
        "I agree that this new CD-RW extension is crap, but I don't think DVD-writers are viable until there is one standard that everyone can read."

        Was the 700MB CD-ROM crap? How about the occasional 750MB CD-ROM that you see? Are they crap too, simply because there are a few older drives that cannot seek that far on to the media? Remember, tweaks on technology extend its use, and I doubt that Plextor would have released this kind of thing with their drives if there weren't at least some other CDs that could

      • There is a standard! (Score:2, Informative)

        by Free Bird ( 160885 )
        And it's DVD+R(W). All other "standards" are irrelevant, because they are not supported by Philips and Sony.

        And besides, most drives can read both + and - discs...

      • Dual Format DVD Burners (Score:3, Informative)

        by bryanp ( 160522 )
        Are getting cheaper every day. They read & write to all formats so you don't have to worry about it. I paid $350 for a Sony DRU500AX just after they hit the street a few months back. That's $150 cheaper than my first CD burner lo these not-so-many years ago. However, the equivalent Pioneer A06 can now be had for $230, and Liteon has one out as well. At this rate they'll be under $200 by Christmas.

        The worst complaint I hear about them is that as CD burners they're relatively slow. True, the Sony bu
        • This one [yahoo.com] handles every format I've heard of, inlcuding DVD-RAM in cartridges, which I've been using for backup the last month. I haven't tried all the formats yet, but the ones I care about work.

          They claim it is OEM with no software. Mine came with a CD-ROM of Windows software, and a DVD-ROM of some sort, but it works fine on Linux 2.4.21, and I have no use for the Windows disc.
      • "DVDs have no clear standards at this point."

        DVD-R or DVD+R. Pick one.

        "but is it *there* yet?"

        Benn there for years. Bought the t-shirt. Opened *own* t-shirt shop. Selling online.

        "And the media, last time I looked, was still hard to find and expensive when you did find it"

        Well, the last time you looked must have been about 2 years ago.

        "I don't think DVD-writers are viable until there is one standard that everyone can read."

        I write dvd-rs with my pioneer drive- all my dvd-rom drives can read them.

        gras
    • Those discs can only be read in that drive (and 1 or 2 older Plextor models).

      Ah, someone didn't RTFA I see. The author got the audio discs he tested with to play in 2 different car CD players. He had mixed results with other players, and different problems for the different levels of burning (120% vs 140%), but that's quite different from ONLY reading in that drive.

  • Using this overburned discs... (Score:3, Informative)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:09PM (#6377602)
    Umm, why bother? Nothing reads these overburned discs when they are done...

    To test compatibility, I burned four discs: Two data discs and two audio discs, with one of each at the 120% setting and one of each at the 140% setting. I then tried these discs in just about any player I could find. For data discs, that meant copying all the files off the disc onto the hard drive to make sure they could all be read. For audio discs, that meant making sure every track on the disc played properly.

    The data discs were somewhat disappointing; out of seven optical drives tested, only two could successfully copy the files from the 120% disc, and none of the drives could copy from the 140% disc. Some drives couldn't even get a directory off the discs, while others failed part of the way through the file copy test. There was no rhyme or reason to the successes versus the failures, either; the two drives that "won" the test were a BTC 48X burner and a Hitachi DVD-ROM drive. The failures included a DVD/CD-RW combo drive, a Pioneer DVD-RW drive, a Sony DRU-500A DVD+/-RW recorder, and the LiteOn burner used in the benchmarks.

    The audio discs were both more successful and more surprising. I tried these in three different computer drives, a bookshelf stereo system, a component DVD player, and two car stereos (one OEM Nissan, one my venerable Aiwa CDC-MP3). One of the computer drives recognized both discs, and did OK until near the end of them (failing to play the last two tracks on the 120% disc, and the last four tracks on the 140% disc). Another computer drive wouldn't play them at all, and a third played the entire 120% disc but couldn't play the 140% disc at all.

    The bookshelf system and the component DVD player achieved identical results: Both played the 120% disc without any issues, but wouldn't even recognize the 140% disc. Perhaps the most surprising of all was the car CD players; both of them played every track on both discs. I was surprised enough that the wunderkind CDC-MP3 pulled this off, but an OEM Nissan player? Crazy.

    He says "Crazy", I say "Duh."
    • He was saying crazy to an OEM Nissan CDplayer being able to play them, not to the incompatability issues.
    • It makes sense that cheap audio CD players's would have better success than computer CD players. When you are storing computer data you need to make damn sure that you don't get a single bit wrong, it could currupt the entire file. They are designed to detect and reject any anomolies and throw errors so you know something went wrong. The drive is made with better quality components and the drive knows exactly how long the bits are supposed to be. It is designed to work with bits of exactly that length.

      Chea

  • Bending the standards (Score:5, Insightful)

    by doormat ( 63648 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:10PM (#6377613) Homepage Journal
    The "compression" used here is actually bending the CD spec, as the pits on the disc are smaller than normal. As stated in the article, no other drives were able to read the disc that had just under 1GB stored on the disc. The setting at 120% of normal capacity seemed to work on a few more drives, but still not all. Its prolly just easier to get a DVD+/-RWfor $300 USD instead of going and buying all new CD-ROMs/CDRWs that read the compressed discs (assuming you have a few computers).
  • So it just writes the bits closer to each other. No big deal, other manufacturers have done that literally years ago. The problem is, other manufacturers and other, older cd drives don't support it.

    Why just not use DVD-R? :)

  • It's encryption and compression... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Delphix ( 571159 ) * on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:19PM (#6377674)
    Just not at the same time.

    GigaRec

    The other special feature is GigaRec, which enables the PlexWriter to squeeze up to 40% more data than normal onto a piece of media. The process works by shortening the length of the pits being written to the disc; shorter pits means more pits fit on the disc, and more pits means more data. The problem, of course, is that because these pits are shorter than the standard for data or audio CDs, compatibility with other drives may be hit or miss. Plextor does guarantee that the PlexWriter Premium will read any GigaRec disc, but they make no guarantees about other drives.

    So basically this will never catch on. The standard CD format is waaay to entrenched to be replaced. Other than for backup purposes, why would you want to burn a disc that's almost guaranteed not to work on another CD-ROM? The last thing need is another incompatible format of disc to worry about.. (DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, etc)

    SecuRec

    Now that we've evaluated the drives' performance, let's take a look at a couple of the features that make the PlexWriter Premium so special. The first of these is SecuRec, which encrypts data before it is written onto the CD. You specify a password before beginning the write process, and once the CD is written, you need that password in order to view the recorded data. If the password is ever lost, so is the data.

    There are a couple of limitations with the SecuRec feature. First, discs need to be recorded in DAO (disc-at-once) mode, so you can't burn multiple sessions of encrypted data, and as you might expect, only data CDs (not audio CDs) are supported. Second, in order to view the data, you need a copy of Plextor's SecuViewer software. This isn't that big a deal for Windows users, as the program is freely downloadable from the Plextor website. Linux and/or Mac users, however, are out of luck as far as I know, as SecuViewer isn't available for operating systems other than Windows. Just so there's no confusion, I'll point out that while you need a PlexWriter Premium drive to create a SecuRec disc, any CD-ROM drive can read one with the SecuViewer software and the proper password.

    How this is better than a secure install program has got me... There's no real innovation here except that the encryption is moved to the CD Burning software. There are already quite a few tools to build installers that encrypt the installers and prompt for password to extract/install.

    Basically it's just encrypting and then zipping except using a proprietary system....
    • PGP would be better, in my opinion, because it's more portable. PGP your data, make the disc image, burn it. Can be read on Linux, Mac, Windows....

    • Other than for backup purposes, why would you want to burn a disc that's almost guaranteed not to work on another CD-ROM?

      I wouldn't want it for backup purposes either. I value my backups more than pinching my pennies so I can get a little more data on a CD-R. That's not smart spending. I want to maximize the chances I can read my backups 5 years from now on typical equipment. Plextor's proprietary drive is not typical and I'm not sure it will last. Five years from now Plextor might not be in busine

    • So basically this will never catch on. The standard CD format is waaay to entrenched to be replaced. Other than for backup purposes, why would you want to burn a disc that's almost guaranteed not to work on another CD-ROM? The last thing need is another incompatible format of disc to worry about.. (DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, etc)

      Wasn't the standard format equally entrenched when the MultiRead standard was invented and CD-RW came out? For quite a while, CD-RW discs had many compatibility problems (working p

  • A Very Bad Idea (Score:5, Informative)

    by jrst ( 467762 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:25PM (#6377707)
    Proprietary compression. Proprietary "encryption"? (They don't say enough to make a determination.)

    I would typically use those features to archive sensitive information. And the when the drive breaks, or they stop supporting it, I'm hosed.

    Thanks, but no thanks. I'll stick with standard compression/encryption tools.

  • Prior Art (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sega did this with the GD-ROM format. Exact same thing. They thought of the incompatibility as a bonus, so it would be harder to copy games. (They also used some nifty tricks like dual TOCs) ... and... this... has nothing to do with patents. Slashdot is getting to me.
  • A bit OT maybe, but a while ago I heard some rumors about Philips (or maybe another company) making a burner that would copy disks "protected" with any technology. Did that ever become reality?

  • Well.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by heli0 ( 659560 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:34PM (#6377760)
    Price(street): US$107

    Considering that you can get a DVD burner for under $200 [newegg.com] now why would you want a CD/RW that burns disks that are unreadable(at 1:1.4 setting) in other drives?

  • OR... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by VirtuaKnight ( 680220 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:37PM (#6377769)
    You could just spend a little extra money on a DVD-R or DVD-RW drive, and gain the ability to burn 4.7GB of data to a disk that uses an already popular format.

  • 1 GByte data with ANY burner (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tux2000 ( 523259 ) <alexander@sl a s h dot.foken.de> on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:37PM (#6377770) Homepage Journal

    Method 1:

    mkisofs -z

    From the manpage:

    -z
    Generate special RRIP records for transparently compressed files. This is only of use and interest for hosts that support transparent decompression, such as Linux 2.4.14 or later. You must specify the -R or -r options to enable RockRidge, and generate compressed files using the mkzftree utility before running mkisofs. Note that transparent compression is a nonstandard Rock Ridge extension. The resulting disks are only transparently readable if used on Linux. On other operating systems you will need to call mkzftree by hand to decompress the files.

    (Should not be too hard to port the transparent decompression code to *BSD and Darwin...)

    Method 2:

    KNOPPIX [knopper.net] uses transparent decompression through a loop device to store more than 2 GBytes on a simple CDROM.

    Just my two cents.

    • Well, transparent decompression uses software compression via zlib to squeeze more data onto the disc.. Not very useful if you are storing MP3 files or JPEG's for archival. The plextor drive's raw capacity seems to be 1GB, so with transparent decompression, knoppix could fit maybe 700 megs MORE data in the CD distro.. but then you could only use it on one drive...

      KNOPPIX is going to be doing a DVD-based distribution soon, though. That will be slick and overloaded with stuff.

      ~GoRK
    • Nice information, but irrelevant to the article at hand. Software compression can be done by anybody (gzip). This device uses physical compression of the pits on the written disk. It packs more pits onto the same sized media by making them closer together and smaller. The result is a CD-R that can hold 40% more data.

      While software compression is nice, it doesn't work on mpeg, mp3, etc files very well. This new method of hardware compression of the pits on the media does work with this type of file, or any
    • Thanks for tip! Though I am using 15GB DLT tapes now for backup, it may still come in handy someday.

  • Also noted and cheap (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DeadBugs ( 546475 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:38PM (#6377781) Homepage
    The Tech Report also notes that the LiteOn LTR-52246S that they compared the Plextor to, costs over $50 less and is just as fast. So if you don't need the compressed CD's that don't work in most other drives. This is a good high end drive for bargain hunters. (They noted a price of $43).

    Or for $50 more than the Plextor go and get a DVD-RW drive.

  • Neat, but it's Windows only again. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Vengeful weenie ( 627760 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:43PM (#6377811)
    Just another neat gadget that loses so much potential, 'cause it only works on Windoze. When will the HW guys get it, that there are other poeple who use this stuff?

    It's not just this drive. Even things with the most basic interfaces like labelers and signs, even if they wrote their little gizmo interfaces in Java. Sure here you probably need a driver or an ioctl(), but it's not rocket science.

    I'll buy the one w/ Linux/Unix/Mac support.

    • because as much as it pains me to say it, there aren't really "other people who use this stuff." Those "other people" make up such a small percentage that we're pretty much insignificant. In time, as Linux gets easier to use and Macs become more common again, perhaps we may see hardware manufacturer's start to pay attention to us. They know we're there, we're just not a profitable investment.

    • They used to do it that way. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SHEENmaster ( 581283 ) <travis&utk,edu> on Sunday July 06, 2003 @02:05PM (#6378291) Homepage Journal
      I recently bought an rs232 plotter, a historic one, just because its manual had example source code for usage. The code was BASIC, but it was more than enough to get a plotter app written in Linux.

      Before Bill Gates "0\/\/nz0r3d" a computer on every desktop in America, companies had to make stuff open. Before hard disks and resident operating systems were common, you had to release example code so that developers would make their software compatible with your hardware.

      Now, many hardware manufacturers are only beginning to support alternative platforms again.

      For the record, this thing's blatent violation of the CD-ROM standards would keep anyone with a brain from buying it. If these discs would work in all drives and the burner was worth the money, there would be Linux drivers within a few weeks.

      For the company's sake, I hope they recoup their development costs. As for me, I have compatible cdroms, compressed ISO if I need it, and a tape drive whose capacity puts and disc to shame.

      People won't sacrifice compatibility for a measly 44%. Well, I will with compressed ISO just because my backups will never be read outside a Linux system.

      Did that article check the MD5 sums of the files? I suspect there was massive data corruption on the 3rd party drives.

      • Re:They used to do it that way. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        By far, the GigaRec is not the main feature of the drive. That is similar to saying the main feature of the Yamaha F1 is the DiscT@2 feature.

        this thing's blatent violation of the CD-ROM standards

        The violation is optional. You can create incompatible CDs if you want.

        The principle features of the drive are the audio recording features. In audio recording, only the Yamaha F1 competes.

        Again, the drive (as well as the Yamaha) does NOT break any standards by default. The standards-breaking feature is an

  • It's Useful Where ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Enonu ( 129798 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:48PM (#6377831)
    You have 720MB of data, or some other amount that's just over the 700MB limit where it feels wasteful to burn another CD. I bet the 110% setting will produce burned cdrs that will work in most any drive. Anything more merits burning two discs or buying a DVD+/-R(W) burner.
    • I have overburn-ed up to 721MB on both my notebook CD-R (Panasonic 16x), and the CD-R in my desktop system (40X Sony) using the Unix cdrecord overburn option.

      I haven't yet come across a single CD-Rom that they wouldn't work in, and I've tried literally hundreds.

  • For RIAA Purposes... (Score:5, Funny)

    by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:49PM (#6377839) Homepage
    Just how many CD-ROM burners does this one count for?
    • Just how many CD-ROM burners does this one count for?

      None. It's 52 speed, and writes disks with a higher capacity than a standard CD, so from the RIAA's point of view it is 52 DVD drives.

  • How dose this compair to exsisting software? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Felinoid ( 16872 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:51PM (#6377857) Homepage Journal
    Linux and Windows both have compressed file systems that can be applied to CD rom.
    Besides making the data disk readable from only one os I see no sereous draw backs to this software solution.
    So this hardware solution is not OS dependent but it appears to have issues with reguards to other CD rom drives.
    If someone wanted to they could put the Linux compression in a Windoes driver or add windows compression to Linux.
    and Mac Os X support should be easy enough.

  • This changes the rules slightly... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:10PM (#6377948)
    "squeeze nearly a Gigabyte of data onto a 700MB disc"

    RIAA are gonna love this... "We found 5,000 burners - well actually we only found one, but it had 52x, compression and everything!"

  • Would you trust your data on these discs? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by yummysoup ( 455975 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:27PM (#6378041)
    CD-Rs degrade over time just like any other media. If you "compress" the data on it (i.e., use less of the media surface for each individual bit), it's more likely that a bit will become unreadable over time.

    Suppose you're squeezing an extra 30% of data on the disc. I'd expect it's at least that much more likely that a scratch, excessive heat, time, or whatever would turn your backup into a coaster.

    This is a bit different than the increase in HD platter density. With HDs, where the product includes both the rw mechanism and the media, the manufacturers had to implement stricter quality controls and test their media to tighter specs as they squeezed more data on the same amount of surface area. (And even still, reliability of IDE drives is poorer). In the case of these "compressed cds", the media is the same, and the manufacturers haven't tested its reliability when used with higher-density pits.

    Maybe over time we'll see CD-R media that's been tested/certified for this standard (just like we now have media that's certified for various burn speeds). But until then I certainly wouldn't trust a compressed CD-R with any important data. (Or, I'd at least trust it far less than I do an uncompressed one)

  • Yes, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xYoni69x ( 652510 ) <yoni.vl@gmail.com> on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:33PM (#6378077) Journal
    Can it draw an image on the data surface of the disc? [yamahamultimedia.com]
    • You know, those have been around for a while now, and I have still yet to see porn images engraved on CD-Rs, or even a photo of it being done...

      No wonder it never caught on... If it isn't good for porn, it's doomed...

  • Non-standard, but is that a problem? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by An Onerous Coward ( 222037 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:45PM (#6378160) Homepage
    Most of the posts I've seen claim that this new feature is useless, because the non-standard disks won't read on other drives.

    But what if manufacturers decided to jump on the bandwagon, and start supporting these "overcooked" CDs. If other drives started coming out, claiming the ability to read anything below 300% or 500%[*], you've got a new contender to DVD-RW as a backup medium.

    We've dealt with backwards compatability issues before--remember when CD-RW came out? People will accept that, to read a 140% disk, they need a 140% or better reader, and life will go on. The problem is, if the specs are kept proprietary, I doubt any demand will be there for this technology.

    It may come to nothing, like back when somebody found a way to cram 30 megs of data on an ordinary floppy. But I think the market fragmentation would be worth it if something like this took off.

    * Assuming, of course, such a feat is even possible.

    • But what if manufacturers decided to jump on the bandwagon, and start supporting these "overcooked" CDs. If other drives started coming out, claiming the ability to read anything below 300% or 500%[*], you've got a new contender to DVD-RW as a backup medium.

      I use CDs because they can be read by anyone... A new format ruins that one stronghold that CDs still have.

      This format will never have a chance of replacing DVDs, because DVDs hold more than 4Xs more data, with the DVD discs only costing about 2Xs as

  • HD-Burn? (Score:5, Informative)

    by forkboy ( 8644 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @02:33PM (#6378433) Homepage
    This is news? HD-Burn [digital-sanyo.com] has been around for a little while now. It basically doubles CD-R capacity to 1.4 GB by shortening the pit length and using more efficient error correction. Oh, and it works in most CD-ROM drives that are out already.

    • Oh, and it works in most CD-ROM drives that are out already.

      Although I had not read the HD-Burn pitch before, the article you linked to implies ordinary CD-ROM drives cannot read the HD-Burn discs but DVD-ROM drives could if they had modified firmware (meaning essentially none of them can now).
    • Does anyone know if the technique in the Plexor drive is Sanyo's HD-Burn? As others have pointed out, we don't need yet another "standard".

    • Re:HD-Burn? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by evilviper ( 135110 )

      Oh, and it works in most CD-ROM drives that are out already.

      Not according to the article it doesn't:
      A written disc by "HD-BURN" technology is compatible with a DVD player, and allows the player to read the disc with some modification of firmware.

      So, it's only readable by DVD-ROMs, and then, only if they have their firmware updated specifically for it. So, you have something less compatible than CD/DVD, that holds less than DVDs, that is more expensive, etc. I really don't see the point at all.

      DVD-RW

  • We need MORE standardization, not less... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @02:39PM (#6378486) Homepage
    For years now a certain company has been delivering data to the company I work for on CD-R's. And every time, it's a crapshoot finding a drive that can read the thing. Sometimes I can, but my colleague in the next cube can't. Sometimes it's the other way around. Sometimes I can read it in my Mac but not in my PC. Sometimes in my PC but not in my Mac.

    This seems to be par for the course. And it's even worse with CD-RW's. And worse yet with DVD media.

    Yes, I've heard all the usual folklore. "If you have a reasonably MODERN drive, it SHOULD read MOST CD media--if it's of high quality."

    And how can you tell if the blanks are good enough? With gasoline, I glance at the octane number printed on the pump; with motor oil, the API rating.

    With CD-R media? Well, some folks say "just use Verbatim," some say "use anything BUT Verbatim," some say "the green dye is best," some say "I just buy the cheapest I can find and never have any problems..." Some say "Just keep testing different brands and stick with the one you find that works best." Right. I have better things to do with my time than QA media.

    And if you have problems and complain, the media companies say "sounds like your drive is the problem" and the drive companies say "sounds like you have bad media."

    Meanwhile, this company keeps sending us CD's and when one comes in, it's time to spend an hour finding who has a PC that will read THIS one.

    We've asked the company to please use high quality media and they assure us that they do.

    The LAST, absolutely the LAST thing we need is some harebrained nonstandard compression scheme, and idiots sending us compressed CD's and telling us, "Well, they work fine in MY drive."

    • Thing is, i'm not sure Plextor's intended audience for this drive is the typical "pass a disc around" sort of use. It seems to me that it's more viable, in general, as a more effctive form of backing things up for home users and the like who can't/won't shell out for a tape drive or external drive.

      For someone like myself, this is fantastic. For everyone else? Well, use what works. That's all we can really do.

      I'd also add that while I agree that standards are important, complaining obviously isn't doin
  • The Linux Knoppix CD hosts 2Gb of data, that is a whole distribution of linux with all the applications a desktop user needs (and more) on a normal 700Mb disk that all CDrom drivers can read. This is actually twice better than what plextor offers, plus it you don't need a special drive to read the CDrom (like plextor) and there's no company controlling it, the cloop linux kernel driver is open-sourced and can be ported to anything by a skilled programmer... Just another attempt of a huge company to squeeze

  • Overburning anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by AnyoneEB ( 574727 )
    Why bother making the CD incompatible when you can just overburn to at least 900MB, and have it readable in almost all CD drives and get almost as much extra space?

  • Plenty of use... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DisKurzion ( 662299 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @04:58PM (#6379235)
    I don't see why some of you are so adamant about this technology being "useless". The most popular argument seems to be that one should just buy a dvd burner instead of cramming more data on a CD-R.

    The last time I checked, it's still over $0.50 per DVD disc (including rebates), while I obtain almost all my CD-R's for free. Right now, I have 300+ blank CD-R's sitting around that I won't use anytime soon, all compliments of Staples/Office Max/Circuit City. I'd rather use that extra couple hundred meg per CD than spend more money on new blank disks. (Plus, for a GOOD DVD burner, it's still in the $200 range)

    Don't know about you, but most of the data I back up is for MY computer, so I don't give a damn if nobody else can read it. Worst case, I'll copy the data to my HD, then send it over the network to the other comp.

    And for the record I'm delighted at the fact that a company is focusing on other potential improvements to their CD-RW drives than being able to burn a disc a couple of seconds faster than their previous models. Right now, I only have a 16X burner, and most of the time, it's plenty fast for me.
  • Hasn't anyone heard of Sony's CRX200E DDR recorder? It burns up to 1.3 GB per disc... Hell I have one!
  • Doesn't anybody else backup onto CD-R's?

    If the only drive that's going to have to read it is, well, the same one that wrote it, compatibility's not an issue. Provided the disc can be read *reliably* in the drive that burnt it, I would use this quite a lot.

    Of course, my next computer (next few months, I think), will have a DVD burner in it, so the point is a little moot...

  • I can see it now... (Score:3, Funny)

    by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @12:03AM (#6381072)
    I can barely fit all the file data/info I want onto a 700mb CD label. How am I expected to cram 50% more.... :)

    The font is so small now I need to ask for help....
  • Changing the laser power changes the characteristics of the audio or data being written. For audio, you can hear these changes during playback, although what you hear will depend on speaker quality, audio settings and environment.

    Now why would that be? This is a digital signal is it not? So it's not like the reflectivity of the media is going to result in a different read. Each data point is either on or off, there is no in between that would vary due to reflectivity... right?

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