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Hardware

First DVD+R9 Burners Reviewed 222

Posted by simoniker from the double-the-fun dept.
Hack Jandy writes "DVD dual-layer burners finally seem ready for the public - today, a review of the Sony DRU-700A was posted by Anandtech, and teasers of the BenQ 830A posted at CDRInfo.com. Unfortunately, the drives seem too slow to to really warrant a purchase."
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First DVD+R9 Burners Reviewed More

First DVD+R9 Burners Reviewed

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  • lets get rid of the obvious responses.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by hatrisc ( 555862 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @07:36AM (#9072232) Homepage
    1) But I just bought a other DVD-RW!!
    2) They'll come down in price eventually
    3) That's way to slow for me! I want gigabytes/sec!
    4) Dual-sides? I think we should be writing on the
    edges as well by now.
    • "4) Dual-sides? I think we should be writing on the edges as well by now."

      These aren't dual-sided. These are actual dual layer DVD+R discs that will play in a standard DVD player. With these dicsc, you can make an exact copy of your DVD9 discs (A lot of movies and some video games use these dual-layered DVDs) without spending time trimming off the bonus material, languages, etc. and/or messing with the quality.

      Yeah, the discs are probably going to be more expensive, but *shock* some people's time is

      • Err, why would you want to dupe 3 original dual-layered DVDs per day? There are increadibly few pressed dual-layered DVDs that are freely shareable (MindCandy, err.., MindCandy..actually I think it's single-layered...) and personal (copyrighted) DVDs last a very long time if properly stored. If you're backing up data, you're better off with single-layer DVDs (fewer write errors, better/cheaper media, burns faster, etc).

  • MPAA Intervention? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sinter ( 650182 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @07:36AM (#9072233)
    I'm sure the MPAA will try their best to stop these drives from going on the market. In the same sense that the RIAA tried to stop CD burners when they first emerged.

    • Re:MPAA Intervention? (Score:5, Informative)

      by theperplepigg ( 599224 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @07:46AM (#9072290)
      I'm sure the MPAA will try their best to stop these drives from going on the market. In the same sense that the RIAA tried to stop CD burners when they first emerged.

      That would be a strange move on their part considering the following, from the MPAA website:

      "The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) serves its members from its offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. On its board of directors are the Chairmen and Presidents of the seven major producers and distributors of motion picture and television programs in the United States. These members include:

      • Buena Vista Pictures Distribution;(The Walt Disney Company)
      • Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.;
      • Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.;
      • Paramount Pictures Corporation;
      • Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation;
      • Universal City Studios LLLP; and
      • Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc."
      I would think there is at least some communication between the different divisions of Sony.

      • Re:MPAA Intervention? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:01AM (#9072383) Journal
        I would think there is at least some communication between the different divisions of Sony.

        I wouldn't. Large organisations are typically pretty much separate companies. The only parts they share are the sharehlders, who aren't really too interest in exact the product portfolio.

      • Re:MPAA Intervention? (Score:2, Informative)

        by ink_13 ( 675938 )
        As I recall, Sony has a long history of the right hand (say, Sony Pictures or the Sony record label) not knowing what the left hand (say, the Home Electronics divison) is doing.

      • Er... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by yoz ( 3735 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:58AM (#9072860) Homepage
        I would think there is at least some communication between the different divisions of Sony.

        This would be the same Sony whose music division created copy-protected CD albums that couldn't be used with the electronics division's Net-MD player's ripping system, yes?
    • In a stunning example of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing, back in 2000, Sony Sued ... guess who? Sony!

      http://www.s-t.com/daily/01-00/01-30-00/b03bu057 .h tm

    • Those discs are DeCSS encrypted! It's bulletproof!

  • I don't care if they're slow. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mattkinabrewmindspri ( 538862 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @07:38AM (#9072242)
    If they hold a full, uncompressed movie, they're good enough.

    • Re:I don't care if they're slow. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:04AM (#9072398) Journal
      Gosh, is it so hard to tell that he meant "un-re-compressed"? Of course DVDs are compressed, but DVD-9 means the ability to back up a DVD verbatim. There are reasons to want to do this (some are even legal).

      DVD-shrink will still have its purposes, though. I've run a couple of my daughter's Disney DVDs through it so (1) she'd never touch my originals and (2) it plays the movie directly - no menus, no commercials, no format setup screens.

      I'm actually thinking about how many of AB's Good Eats I can cram onto one disc - they take up a lot of room in the jukebox at just 3 episodes per disc. I just need a way to get a "top level" menu to access all the original content without a buttload of re-authoring. Dual sided would be even better (since the jukebox can flip a disc internally).

      • I'm actually thinking about how many of AB's Good Eats I can cram onto one disc - they take up a lot of room in the jukebox at just 3 episodes per disc.

        Or just rip them to DivX format and use a home theater PC as the frontend. No more swapping out discs or need for a changer.

      • Disney Commercials on DVD (Score:5, Interesting)

        by stecoop ( 759508 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:21AM (#9072532) Journal
        Your post is the most underrated yet in regards to the Disney commercials and menus. Very few fully know what you mean about ripping Disney DVDs so your sibling doesn't have to touch the original and what a pain all those commercials & menus really are, Especially when you change a DVD every 45 minutes or so. I recently bought my first DVD burner and ripped out those 30 minute commercials with menus; you simply insert the DVD and walk away. My wife kisses me every time the movie automatically start to play and the children get quiet for a few minutes of the day. My burner has paid for itself many times over with the amount of time I saved by not having to forward through that garage.

    • Re:I don't care if they're slow. (Score:4, Informative)

      by cabraverde ( 648652 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:04AM (#9072404)
      If they hold a full, uncompressed movie, they're good enough.

      Frame size: 720 x 576
      Frame rate: 30 fps
      Chroma subsampling: 1.5 (assuming YUV 4:2:0)
      Duration: 90 mins

      720*576*30*1.5*90*60 / (1024^3)= 93.9 GiB

      Conclusion: these discs don't have anywhere near the capacity to hold an uncompressed film. In addition, the drive could not read data off the disc fast enough for real-time playback (max speed was quoted at 16620 KB/s)

      Lossless video codecs can get you a ratio of around 10:1 though, so that's a possibility.
      • Unfortunately your calculation is flawed.

        720 x 576 is the amount of pixels per frame not the amount of storage required.
        To calculate the size in kilobytes (KiB) of one frame of uncompressed video, use the following formula:

        Frame size K = ([Pixel Width x Pixel Height x Bit Depth] / 8) / 1024

        Where 8 represents an 8-bit byte, and 1024 equals the number of bytes per kilobytes. For example, the size in kilobytes of an uncompressed frame of full-size (720 x 576), 24-bits (per pixel) DVD video is:

        Frame size K

        • Not flawed... (Score:4, Informative)

          by cabraverde ( 648652 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @10:17AM (#9073668)
          You just calculated the figures for 24-bit RGB. As I said in my original post, I was assuming YUV 420 - as this is the most common format for uncompressed video.

          In this example the Y (luma) component is 720x576, but the U and V (chroma) components are subsambpled to 352x288 each. This results in half the amount of raw data versus 24-bit RGB at virtually no loss in perceived quality.
          • But you just compressed the video signal by subsampling the U and V components. True uncompressed video has full resolution also on U and V.

            But it really doesn't matter because the original poster meant unrecompressed MPEG2 video.
      • DV format, which uses lossy a Discrete Cosine Transform intraframe compression similar to MotionJPEG or I-frame only MPEG-2, only nets roughly 5:1 compression. The best anyone can get is maybe 2:1 compression with something like HuffYUV, but there's too much random data in video to be able to attain a LOSSLESS 10:1 compression.

        In fact, that's been the big advantage of DV - the lossy compression in that format is a great balance between data rate and visual loss. Lots of broadcast media use DV25 (4:1:1)

    • Re:I don't care if they're slow. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by aonaran ( 15651 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:25AM (#9072573) Homepage
      I don't know how others feel, but 45mins for a perfect DVD-9 copy vs 15mins to burn 2 DVD-5s plus an hour sorting out what goes on which disc beforehand or 8 mins burning one dvd-5 and several hours of recompression ... I think I'll take the 45min dvd-9 burn thanks.

    • Currently, your options are to either split the movie across 2 DVDs, or compress it so that it looks like ass.

      These new DVD9's don't introduce many new options as the discs will be more than twice as expensive as current DVD-R's. So you can use two $2 DVD-Rs and copy a movie (uncompressed), or you can buy one DVD9 for $6.

      So unless you have money to blow (granted, $6 is still better than paying full cost of a new one), and trust me, it does add up, there really isn't much point in the new format.
    • Copying movies is very important, especially in light of this:

      CDs and DVDs Not So Immortal After All [yahoo.com]

  • Is it just me... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 06, 2004 @07:38AM (#9072243)
    Or is speed overrated?

    I'm not saying I like taking my time with a DVD to do some sweet authoring down by the fire. But it seems to me, at least, data density, features and price are the determining factors. I'm not banging out a couple hundred copies of my greatest DOA:Volleyball matches (Unrated edition) for sale on ebay, so the time it takes to burn one isn't exactly critical.

    • Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by eddy ( 18759 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @07:47AM (#9072300) Homepage Journal

      Yes, it's overrated by most people. Most don't need to burn 50 DVDs/day, and if they do, they've got the funds to invest in more burners.

      The problem specifically, I have found, is that people burn at top speed, which makes their system mostly unusable during the burn due to IO load -- so they complain that it takes "too long" as they must 'wait' for it to complete.

      What I do instead is burn at a slower rate (2x), which doesn't starve my IO, meaning I can actually do other things while "waiting" for the burn to complete.

      PS. SCSI-trolls can stay away.

      PSS. My first CDR burner topped out at 1x and had a 64Kbyte buffer. Only stable in Win 3.11 due to the small buffer.

      • I admit I don't know how it works with DVD-Rs - because I've been waiting for the burning capacity to double before committing - but I burn CDs at top speed (32x) all the time and am able to use the computer (1 GHz) for other things with absolutely no trouble. Then again, my CD-R on a separate IDE channel from my hard drive - is yours?

        It's worth noting, too, that if you truly aren't burning a ton of discs a day it shouldn't be that big a deal to take a break while the top-speed burn is in process. Most

      • Re:Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jridley ( 9305 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:08AM (#9072429)
        I have an 8x burner, but I'm too cheap to buy the media. I can burn at 4x and do firewire video cap (to the same IDE drive the burn's happening from), have SETI running, be browsing under Mozilla web (10+ tabs open) and email, and have Agent downloading and decoding NNTP binaries at the same time, and have a half dozen terminal windows open to various headless boxes, and nothing's suffering. The write buffers are hovering around 97%, no dropped frames on the video, and all my GUI are stable. Win2K, 2.5 GHz Athlon XP.

        This is all with totally standard consumer equipment. No SCSI, just a group of Maxtor 160GB drives sitting on a Maxtor/Promise controller in the PCI slot, in an ABit mainboard. Boot/swap drive is plugged into the mainboard.

        If you're getting I/O bound on a > 1 GHz machine at 4x write, you may have config problems. Check and make sure your writer is running in UDMA mode, and your drive isn't horribly fragmented.
        • Not a problem, I've been known to do all my routine maintenance stuff at the same time. That means burning files from a drive on the fly (no ISO first) while defragmenting it. Usually I'll watch a movie or some anime too cause it's boring. Sometimes I can almost get my CPU use up to 30%. The new fancy buffer underrun protection on most drives makes it less of a challenge though, I remember the days before that it'd really impress people. I'd be playing team fortress and the map would end and I'd be like "BR
      • I don't have any problems burning on my 8x CDR burner (750 MHz Athlon CPU) and running other programs at the same time.

        Perhaps it's because I'm running GNU/Linux (Mandrake 9.1) instead of MS Windows. Perhaps my burning program (K3b) is well designed.

        Some stuff, like heavy computation (ie., compiling), is risky, but my computer is very responsive and if you pay attention to the little buffer indicator, you can get feedback and Ctrl-C the offending app before you buffer underrun.
      • I burn DVDs and CDs at full speed (4x and 52x respectively) all the time with no problems. Just minimise the Nero window and keep on going. The days of having to leave your machine alone while you made a disc are long gone...or so I thought? BTW - WinXP on a regular Athlon box, IDE discs.
      • Hello! DMA mode calling!

        I burn at the max speed of my DVD+RW all the time.

        I usually IRC or whatever else in the background.
      • The problem specifically, I have found, is that people burn at top speed, which makes their system mostly unusable during the burn due to IO load

        You've got some sort of system problems.

        SCSI isn't needed. The throughput of a modern IDE drive is much more than CD/DVD Recorders can eat.

        The only guess I even have, is that the devices you are reading from and writing two are both on the same IDE channel (master/slave) which is a big no-no.

    • Re:Is it just me... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Compact Dick ( 518888 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @07:51AM (#9072331) Homepage
      But it seems to me, at least, data density, features and price are the determining factors.
      Reliability and data longevity are the most important factors.

      • Reliability and data longevity are the most important factors.

        Then why aren't you printing everything out? Far more reliable and lasting longer than most computer media.

        No, I'd say data density is of serious importance. It's important that speed is reasonable as well, although it doesn't need to be lightning fast.

        Longevity gets too much hype... Certainly archives need longevity, but the DVD you are recording doesn't need to last for 25 years. Record two, keep one safe, and after 10 years, when the fi

    • Re:Is it just me... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
      Exactly. The computer is way more than fast enough to burn a DVD while doing many other tasks. Even a 1x burn (~2 hours on 9GB) is fine as long as the drive and software is stable.

      I don't _need_ DVD-9 capability for backups, but it is nice to know is available in a "pro-sumer" device. In that sense, two DVD-5s at 2x or better would be quicker but that also takes more user time.

      I'm willing to take a bargain on 1x media because I don't burn discs very often. If I was into DVD authoring, then it might be

  • To slow compared to what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 06, 2004 @07:39AM (#9072249)
    No offense but how can a device that does something that has never been 'do-able' before too slow...to slow as comapared to what?! What do you use to burn a 9G dvd?

    P.S. why in the heck won't this thing let me post on the article BLAH..I don't hve an account why are you discriminating against me becuase I don't wish to register?

  • Too slow?? (Score:4, Funny)

    by toconn ( 685100 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @07:41AM (#9072259)
    Bah! I just got rid of my 2x CD burner last week!

  • How amusing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by edremy ( 36408 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @07:42AM (#9072267) Journal
    I was teaching a video editing course to some faculty yesterday and discussing when these would appear.

    I haven't been keeping up- I predicted the end of the year. Then again, reading the review I'm not sure I'd want one now anyway.

    • You can consider these the first generation of this technology. Just like CDR drives, they'll drop in price eventually, and improve along the way. Never, unless you have extra money in your budget for the year, buy a first generation technology...it's like paying extra to be a beta tester.

      --trb

  • How about media ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 06, 2004 @07:47AM (#9072298)
    Dual layer burners ? Great.

    How about dual layer media ? Any mention of availability and price ?

    • Re:How about media ? (Score:4, Informative)

      by tkg ( 455770 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:30AM (#9072612)
      The 'teaser' linked to in the article predicts an initial price of $5 to $8 per disc. No word on availability, but one could assume they will hit the stores at about the same time as the drives.
      • Should be about right - when my company was testing DL firmware for one of its drives, the media costs dropped to $25 per disc (from $50), so a final cost of $5-$8 should be about right, and it's in the range where people who are willing to pay a slight premium over SL +R discs won't feel too gouged.

  • MPAA can cry all they want (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @07:49AM (#9072306) Journal
    I use my drive for data backup. At less than $1 a disc, I do full weekly backups of all my (in-house generated) business data for my engineering firm. At the current rate, I'll cross the 4.3GB threshold sometime in fall '04. These will be out in quantity just in time. I know, there are ways to get better compression out of a (mostly) static data set than backing it all up, but recovery is far faster this way. If my drive dies, I can restore the entire thing in less than 20 minutes. If I screw up a single file, I can just go to the most recent backup - not have to sift through a multi-generational backup set. And with what I saved on dedicated backup software, I can buy a new DVD+9 drive and another year's worth of discs.

    (yes, my main applications drive is bigger than 4.3G...it's about 60GB. That's why it gets imaged by Ghost on a removable drive once a week. Yes, I've tested it...swap the primary with the backup and it's transparent. I sleep much better knowing that in the event of a major HD crash, I'm less than $100 billable time from being back in business)


    • How do you back up all your porn on just 1 DVD???

    • Hell, yeah (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bonch ( 38532 )
      Seriously, I've been putting off buying a DVD burner until these new dual-layers came out.

      First thing I'm gonna do is backup my Extended Edition LOTR DVDs (all 8 of 'em...soon to be 12 when ROTK comes out). I'm sick of fumbling with those big foldout booklets, and the collector's geek in me doesn't want to be handling all that stuff all the time and instead keep it in the box.

    • I use my drive for data backup. At less than $1 a disc, I do full weekly backups of all my (in-house generated) business data for my engineering firm.

      You really should be using removable hard drives...

      Hard drives aren't significantly more expensive than DVD-Rs, you don't have to pay for a DVD-R drive, and you can reuse them practically forever.

      Get a dozen 100+GB hard drives with a firewire case, and you've got FULL backups for 3 months. Then you erase and use the drives again.

      The inital cost isn't sign

  • Thanks to the lack of session closing, we can burn 2 DVD+R5 discs in less than 15 minutes, or one DVD+R9 disc in 45 minutes.

    Not half bad!
  • Hi,

    This may be slightly OT, but what experiences does people have with using DVD+RW for packet-writing under Linux? What drives are recommended with Linux?

    What I would like to do is to use a DVD drive as a (large and fast) floppy disk - preferrable compatible with InCD and DirectCD for Windows. I have already tried to use my CD-RW burner with Peter Oesterlunds packet writing patch [telia.com], but with mixed success.

    I have read somewhere, that packet writing will not be added to the main line kernel before the
  • So, who's going to be the first person to explain to me why we can't fit the same amount of data on one of these as movie companies can fit on theirs?

    graspee

    • Re:available space (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You can now. That's what dual layer disks give you.

      Stamped DVDs can be single (4 gig and a bit) or dual layer (9 gig and a bit)

      Until these drives came out, writable media was only single layer - so 'only' 4 gig.
    • I think the parent poster is asking why these new DVD+R DL discs are only capable of storing 8.5GB (7.95 real GB?) of data, as opposed to the 9GB or so that we usually hear of "pressed" movie discs holding.

      This was confusing me, too, but I found this chart in the DVD FAQ [dvddemystified.com] which does seem to indicate that pressed dual layer DVDs are also limited to 7.95GB.

      Can any DVD experts confirm that pressed dual layer discs have the same storage capacity as DVD+R DL discs?

      • User writable sectors 0x3FB000, 2048 byte sectors.
        8,547,991,552 bytes (7.96GB) less the overhead of your file system of choice.

        Sony DL Info [sonyburners.com]

        DVD Formats [disctronics.co.uk]

        Disc Max User Capacity Note
        120 mm :DVD5 4.7GB Single layer Single sided disc
        120 mm :DVD9 8.5GB Double layer Single sided disc
        120 mm :DVD10 9.4GB Single layer Double sided disc
        120 mm :DVD18 17.1GB Double layer Double sided disc
        120 mm :DVD-R 4.7 GB Single layer Single sided disc
        120 mm :DVD-RW 4.7 GB Single layer Single sided disc
        120 mm :DVD

  • DL recording by firmware hack (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TeknoHog ( 164938 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:00AM (#9072376) Homepage Journal
    When rumours of DL burners first came about, I thought of the obvious thing that's also mentioned in the article: Since all DVD players can focus the laser onto two layers, what's stopping any of the current DVD burners from dual layer burning? (Except the lack of firmware, of course.)

    Or maybe I'm just desperate having purchased a vanilla DVD burner a few months ago...

    • Re:DL recording by firmware hack (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Depends on the burner.
      Writing needs more laser power than reading - so some drives may only be able to focus the read laser onto the second layer.

      Another thing to consider is focus blur - when reading the laser also shines unfocussed on the outer layer, it doesn't matter much. But when writing you have to be careful not to apply too much power to the layer you don't want to write to, or you'll end up writing stuff that you don't want.

      Finally though - yes, for many drives it is just a firmware upgrade. T
    • I suspect the power of the laser would need to be carefully calibrated when writing the second layer in order to prevent it from damaging the data on the first layer. Standard burners probably don't support this calibration. They may also not be capable of focussing the writing laser, but only the reading laser.

    • Re:DL recording by firmware hack (Score:5, Informative)

      by zalas ( 682627 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:19AM (#9072523) Homepage
      I believe Pioneer said a few months ago that they tested the A06 using new firmware and got it to burn onto dual layered DVD-R media.
      Furthermore, the Anandtech article did state that they managed to convert a GO-W0808A to burn DVD+R9's:
      "In fact, several other MT1818E burners are capable of firmware upgrades to DVD+R9. In fact, using beta firmware upgrades, we actually got our Gigabyte GO-W0808A to burn DVD+R9 as well. Keep in mind that the GO-W0808A retails for less than $110, while the DRU-700A will hit shelves at $199. Although the Sony DRU-700A is a considerable step up from the DRU-530A, we would have to recommend the GO-W0808A if it costs $90 less and performs the same." - AnandTech

  • DVD Formats (Score:3, Interesting)

    by n-baxley ( 103975 ) * <nate&baxleys,org> on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:02AM (#9072391) Homepage Journal
    This may be slightly off topic, but can someone tell me which is the better burner/media to get, the +R or the -R? Also, I've seen some media that says +R and the RW but it's only write once. What is the skinny on all of these R's?

    • Re:DVD Formats (Score:3, Informative)

      by NineNine ( 235196 )
      The +R and -R are quickly becoming a moot point. Most burners these days support both formats, the media costs the same, and most players play both. I do a LOT of DVD burning, and quite honestly, I don't care which I use. Most get played in a modded PS2, and it doesn't seem to care what kind of media I use.

    • Buy dual format (Score:3, Informative)

      by swb ( 14022 )
      Don't buy a single format burner -- buy one that does +/- R/RW.

      My personal opinion is that -R media has a slight edge in compatibility with a few older DVD-ROM drives and a few more older DVD players; DVD-R is endorsed by the DVD Forum and its specification is "official." This distinction is disappearing as new players and -ROM drives almost always support both formats.

      I use -R exclusively, but primarily because I got a -R/RW drive dirt cheap, I knew worked in my DVD player, and it's the only write-once

    • Re:DVD Formats (Score:3, Informative)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )
      let's start here.....

      DVD formats [videohelp.com]

      dvd-R has the HIGHEST compatability in stand alone DVD players. hands down. this is an industry fact that all DVD replication houses stand by if they are going to do a short run on writeable media. long runds are always pressed media.

      some people try to say otherwise, but I would trust a company making money replicating DVD's and publishing short run DVD's than some guy screwing around in his basement. also media companiesthat make commercials use DVD-R only as well a
    • The + and - are just competing formats and support varies for the different formats across drives (mainly older drives). I read somewhere (PC Magazine) I think that +R is around 88% supported and -R is right around 90%.

      As long as you are running a relatively new DVD player (purchased after 2001), you should have no problem running either + or -.

      As for the burner, most of the ones coming out do both + and - and they can be found for less than$100 [newegg.com]

  • the article on one page (Score:5, Insightful)

    by elinenbe ( 25195 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:06AM (#9072415)
    stop clicking the "next page" links every paragraph and try this out! anandtech.com review [anandtech.com] [anandtech.com]

  • Hollywood's worst nightmare (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Zog The Undeniable ( 632031 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:11AM (#9072450)
    If this doesn't kick-start HD-DVD, nothing will. The last obstacle to conventional DVD piracy has been overcome. Never mind the speed - now we can copy^H^H^H^Hmake fair-use backups of full commercial DVDs, including extras and without further compression.

  • 45 minutes isn't slow... (Score:3, Informative)

    by jerkychew ( 80913 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:32AM (#9072624) Homepage
    When the article said that the drive's burn speed was too slow "to really warrant a purchase", I was expecting 2+ hour burn times or something. 45 minutes isn't bad at all, considering that this is a new type of burner, with a new (to the consumer) type of media.

    Remember waaaay back when the first Pioneer DVD+R drives came out? IIRC, it took hours to burn a 4GB DVD. I'd consider 4 hours too slow to warrant buying a drive, not 45 minutes.

    I think the tradeoff of speed vs storage space is well worth it, personally.
    • I'd agree... I held off my original plans on purchasing a DVD writer for awhile now, waiting until they released dual layer burners.

      I think once they design a drive with slightly better performance I'd definately consider a purchase (especially when Plextor releases a model, specifically a SCSI one, those are the best burners IMHO and experience working as a PC tech for 8+ years)

      Based on a quick search, I see estimates prices aroudn $200 for this DL DVD+R driver, I was expecting much higher.

      Being abl
    • I agree, I care more about movie quality and storage space than the time it takes to burn. 45 minutes is fine with me, I can wait. Also, Pioneer doesn't make +R drives since they're the big name behind the -R standard.
    • I think the tradeoff of speed vs storage space is well worth it, personally.
      I agree. I own a Plexwriter Premium and it can fit almost a Gig on a normal 700MB blank CDr, but it will only burn at 4x speed when it does that. For archiving, who cares? I burn a CD once, it's burnt. I'll be getting a dual-layer DVD burner as soon as they hit Australian shores.

  • What about compatibility (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PhracturedBlue ( 224393 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @08:54AM (#9072810)
    The article doesn't talk about it, but apparently DVDR9 has poor set-top player compatibility, at least currently. Whether this can be fixed via firmware, better media, or not is still unknown. Sorry I don't have a link, but I think both cdrinfo and dvdplusrw.org have comments about it on their boards.
    • That's true, to some extent. Hardware manufacturers are relying on the software vendors to fully fix this potential issue.

      Basically, the way the new DL media works, it can only be properly read on a set-top device if both layers are written to. So if the data being written is significantly less than the full 8.5GB (as in 1-3 GB, and yes, this is wasteful, but if you buy a spindle of DL media and you end up needing to burn a small disc...) the software can either:

      1.) figure out how to split the recording e

  • What about price and compatibility? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DroopyStonx ( 683090 ) on Thursday May 06, 2004 @09:46AM (#9073310)
    No one mentions those, but they will be an issue.

    One DVD9 will be more expensive than purchasing two separate DVD5s. What's the point in using it, then? I could see if current DVD-R prices dropped to 50 cents a disc and the DVD9's took over the $1-2 range, but it doesn't look as if it will be that way.

    And compatibility... if your DVD player is able to play DVD-R and DVD-RW, would it play DVD-R/RW DL without any issues? It might be fine for data backup, but if you can't copy movies and watch them, then that's a problem.
    • WEll, When you want to pir^H^H^H backup a dual layer movie from Netflix^H^H^H^H^H^H^H your movie library, you don't want to have to compress the video first. Now, you won't have to.

      That's why it won't matter that it's more than one layer disks.

  • to add insult to injury, media companies won't start production until summer (june/july) or later.
  • read a double density recorded DVD in a single density DVD drive and access all 8GB?

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