DVD Technology Info

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 2:30 am

Here in Australia i can get *pretty good prices* from this one place. and i can get a cd-burner (lite-on 52 speed for about 52 aussie bucks, which is about 39 us dollars) and a pioneer 106 DVD burner(does DVD+R and DVD-R) which is the OEM version of the A06 for about 205 aus dollars which is about 151.us bucks) but i remember seeing an article on http://slashdot.org recently and they were talking about all these dvd burners for around 100us. and there were others u could get for 100 but after a 30 dollar rebate or similar. Not too sure what the big hardware sites in the us are but that would be the place to look. BTW here is the direct link to that slashdot article, i hope it gives away hints (speed read though peoples feedbacks) http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/06/1419252&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=137

Often with these DVD burners you will recieve lite versions of programs that will probably allow you to do most of the things you would want to do with a DVD burner, including making movies etc..., and thats probably a good starting point towards investigating for better software.

A good site on the internet when it comes to CD or DVD recorders is cdfreaks.com refer to their articles section, for help on how to do most DVD stuff. The forums are also a great source of help, but i am sure you can find all the tutorials you need from the articles http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/search/A

What i am anticipating the most as far as DVD Burners go is that we will be able to burn dual layer dvds, according to Philips(force behind the DVD+R format) by around march-april next year. However i have a friend who has a pioneer drive and makes those double layer movies fit by reducing their quality, and he tells me that the movies he rips still look spectacular, especially once you stream them to TV. I read at another forum that many 8x DVD+R drives may be able to burn double layer discs after simply having their firmware upgraded.

The reason for this is apparenlty that 8x DVD+R drives have a more powerful laser, which is all that double layer burning will require. In the mean time i think its cheap enough to just get a 4x DVD burner, and then once these dual layer burner become available get another one, that way you are sure of the compatibility(for all you know none of the DVD+R 8x models will have dual layer firmware available). Also once they come out, chances are that the dual layer media will be fairly expensive, so it may not be worth getting them as soon as they come out, and in the mean time your current DVD burner will continue to prove essential.. I am most probably going to get a DVD burner from Santa for Christmas Smile

p.s. atm you probably want a DVD-R burner, because the media is more readily available and cheaper. As far as compatibility with standalone dvd players goes, it all depends on the brand that you have and its age. Since Pioneer is the force behind DVD-R if you have a relatively new pioneer dvd player, it is likely to work well. And since Sony & Philips are the forces behind DVD+R the same applies for their brand DVD players. Although i would assume that recent models would support both pretty well. Anyways, my guess is that unless a dual layer DVD-R format is released in the future, DVD+R will become more prevelant, however DVD-R is prevelant atm.

p.p.s once you burn a DVD+R or a DVD-R disc both are the same as far as your comptuers DVD drive is concerned. And some of the OLD DVD drives tend to have trouble with DVD-RW and probably DVD+RW discs. Another friend of mine had this trouble with his old 8x creative DVD drive.

OLI Smile