New toy ordered

[mackerel]

I've just taken the plunge and ordered a DVD writer :)

After searching high and low, the best price was at ebuyer but then SVP dropped their prices so I ordered from them as they also have a much bigger selection of cheep media. http://www.blankdiscshop.co.uk/

Initial impressions about them are good, ordering process is easy and best part is they appear to allow shipping to addresses other than the cardholders. Next working day delivery is reasonable rate so I should have the kit on Tuesday. I just have to survive waiting for the next 36 hours...

[bubbadog]

Ooooh, Mackerel, I am so jealous! I really want one! Which one did you get? I want a full report after you get it! :D

[Ian Newson]

I take it you are taling about the pioneer A04 m8.
Im getting very tempted too m8. I can get it for £185 now and have heard the possability of even as low as £155 :cool:

[Valkyrie]

Very nice! Too bad there's no standardization yet. Have you heard about Yamaha's new cd burner. It will also put imaces on the cd. But I wonder how much the blank cd's will cost.

[Valkyrie]

Does this have spell check. EEK I'm a bad typist. It should read " images"
on the last post.

[bubbadog]

Valkyrie, you can edit your posts after you make them if you find spelling errors. (For those of us who type faster than we think! :D )

See this thread (http://www.ninjamicros.com/vbulletin/showthread.php3?threadid=13107) for instructions for spell check.

[Valkyrie]

Great, Thanks.

[mackerel]

The Yamaha images are interesting but not much use for me. It writes on unused areas of a disk, which I try not to leave if at all possible. That's the reason I'm going DVD, CDs are getting too small!

I did indeed order the Pioneer 104 (OEM version of the A04). I know there's a bit of a 3 way standards war going on (+r/+rw, -r/-rw, -ram) possibly 4 way? (+ram) but at the moment -r/-rw disks are cheepest and most plentiful.

Ian, those prices sound really good although I never saw them that low. SVR were 193 I think inc vat excl postage & software.

[CyberdynSystems]

The standards war is raging only in the minds of the RIAA and the complete a-holes that want to drive us crazy. The real standard has existed since before a single DVD+R was ever realeased, and that is of course the DVD-R that Pioneer uses.

The DVD-R standard was written by the same people who made the CD "redbook audio" standard and the DVD standard. If the DVD people say that DVD-R is it, then why, oh god why, did HP and and Sony etc. have to come along with there foolish DVD+R (and the allready dead DVD-RAM)????? Why? Insanity!!!

The worst part, both Intel and MS have joined the DVD+R camp in recent months, so the actual standard my die and leave the also rans in place.

Bottom line, the "other" standards were made to make "Backing up" of copy protected material more difficult.

I have the Pioneer and use it to archive large amounts of data and create WinXP "DriveImage" restore disks. (can't fit those on CD anymore)

I love it and wish the others would just go away.

Oh yeah, and the movies play on set top DVD players no problem......

[mackerel]

I wonder if there is any significance in that Sony (with Philips) originally created the CD format. Maybe they feel big enough to lead the way still? It's not the first time Sony tries to lead the way and be swamped by the industry flow. I think they tried the same trick with a superfloppy. Too bad Zip and LS120 were around long before they decided to get in on the act.

As for dvd-ram, you have to give whoever did that (Panasonic?) credit since it was out in an affordable form long before -R was.

[mackerel]

Woohoo! It arrived today as expected. Have installed it and for no apparent reason my USB ports decided to stop working. Which is not easy to fix if your keyboard and mouse are both USB and the mobo has no legacy (PS2/serial) support! Managed it somehow by disabling USB2 in bios which let 1.x work long enough to reinstall drivers.

Anyway, the drive was indeed physically branded Benq, with no mention of Pioneer on it. Looks like they used the Pioneer standard firmware though as that's what Windows shows.

Found a hacked region free firmware for it on the net, but not been brave enough to install it yet. Especially with my lack of sleep last night...

Only had a quick test of it, by basically copying the files off a DVD video and using nero to write it on a DVD-RW. Threw it in my Toshiba SD210 and it played straight off :) Files were about 1 GB and took about 15 minutes to write.

For my next trick I might have a go at converting some video files I have lying around to DVD format...

[Terminator]

:drool: keep the reports coming m8 while I chase my credit card which has just done a runner after seeing how cheap they are now :D

[mackerel]

Guess I could do a "hands on" review of this as I muck around with it. Didn't know what software does what so have bought both the vob one and nero to try.

If nothing else, my Plextor 12x10x32 is obsolete and I have removed it from my system! DVD media is, on a per-GB basis, about the same as CD. Write transfer rates are not dissimilar, so DVD has the upper hand by requireing me to look through fewer disks than current once I organize myself to use it.

[CyberdynSystems]

I've always had a CD-R I keep around Called "powertools" It has every app that I install on every PC I come in contact with, as well as tons of usefull utilities, drivers, updates service packs, patches you name it, etc. Well about two years ago I had to add a second disk, to make it all fit.... Now it's all on a DVD with ample room to spare! Weeeeeee!

[BigBen]

Hi chaps,
How fast can these DVD recorders actually record say compared to my 16x PlexWriter? I now need the capacity of DVD too :rolleyes:

Regards

[mackerel]

Interesting question... how "fast" is a DVD writer compared to a CD writer.

According to the nominal data transfer rates I saw in a review, looks like a DVD 1x speed is equivalent to a CD 9.2x. So in 2x mode it should be a bit faster in rate than the PlexWriter. Of course with the increased capacity it'll take longer to fill a disk...

[KWSN_Millennium2001G]

I just ordered a Sony DRU500A DVD+RW, DVD-RW, CD-RW Combo Drive for $281.64 US With FREE Shipping! from Dell.

I found the details at http://www.gotapex.com

This drive retails for $350.00, so if I waited a while I could have gotten it for much less I am sure.

It writes DVD-Rs at 4x and DVD+RW at 2.4x. It is backordered at the moment, and there haven't been any reviews that I could find, so I ordered it blind. Ship date is tentatively October 7, so I will let you know my experience after I get it.

Ni! :sunshine:

[bubbadog]

Please do let us know. DVD burner is on my Christmas list! :D

[Jake]

I have a DVD Burner that I use at work. The 9 to 1 ratio mentioned is about right for speed. Its a 4x DVD burn and about 32x cd burn. Since the disk we use are the 9 GB type, it the burn takes about the same amount, but the initial set up by the software, and the error checking at the end make the whole process longer. When we use it we are glad to have it, but frankly we use the CD-Rs vastly more often.

[mackerel]

Is my 2x write DVD-R so out of date already? :D I still haven't used it to write a DVD-R, only a few RWs for testing and CD-Rs of Linux.

So who does the 9 GB stuff? I don't remember seeing any about, if I did I probably would have held off getting the current generation drives.

[BigBen]

There are two categories, A & B of DVDs

Category A DVDs are dual layer silver DVDs which commonly capable of holding 9GB of datas. With these large capacity, thus the movies under this category have very sharp picture & clear sound (DTS, Dolby Digital 5.1 & etc.). Definitely, interactive menus like scene selections, audio setup, subtitles selection, play movies & etc. are included. Moreover, all additional features like "the making", movies trailers, cast reviews, photo galleries & etc. In short, just think of these Cat A movies are "like originals".

Cat B movies are pressed into single layer silver DVDs which capable of holding about 4.7GB of datas. Thus the picture & sound for Cat B movies are not as good as Cat A. Anyway, they are just averagely good. Interactive menus such as scene selections, audio setup, subtitles selection, play movies are included. Some movies do have some extra features like photo galleries, cast reviews.

Also checkout http://www.dvdwriters.co.uk/news/

Regards

[mackerel]

After reading Jake's post, I was wondering who makes the 9 GB R/RW drives and disks. The consumer stuff is still all stuck at 4.7 GB it seems.

[Ian Newson]

Originally posted by mackerel
After reading Jake's post, I was wondering who makes the 9 GB R/RW drives and disks. The consumer stuff is still all stuck at 4.7 GB it seems.

The 9GB disk will probably be DvD-RAM disks with come in a caddy in either single or duel sides (not layers).

[CyberdynSystems]

Wow. That Sony looks nice DVD-R and DVD+R! Didn't know any burners could, or would do both standards! Thats an improvement. To bad I just got my AO4, DVD-R only....

[mackerel]

Well... I have a 104 too. Just be grateful that -R disks are much cheeper than +r :)

[KWSN_Millennium2001G]

I just cancelled the original order. Dell sent me a message that the drive has been backordered again and moved the ship date to October 19. http://www.gotapex.com showed a different way to order the drive to save even more money. Now the drive is only $255 plus tax, with free shipping. I cancelled the first order and re-ordered it for cheaper. If I get the drive before November 1st I will be pleased. 2.4x DVD +RW, 2X -RW, 2.4X +R, 4x -R and all flavors of CD-RW for under $275. Sweet!

[Sicko]

i have the Philips DVDRW208, DVD 1.2x8 DVD+RW CD 12x10x32. i have used it once to back up a moive that was scrached, but it did not work, so not used it since, but burns CD fast, and never have had a duff cd from it...

[Ian Newson]

Originally posted by Sicko
i have the Philips DVDRW208, DVD 1.2x8 DVD+RW CD 12x10x32. i have used it once to back up a moive that was scrached, but it did not work, so not used it since, but burns CD fast, and never have had a duff cd from it...

What sort of problem did you have m8? If you had problems backing it up it can depend how you did it. DvD's will not do a 1:1 copy.

If the problems were with playing them on a dedicated dvd player its probably a compatability issue with the DvD+R(W) disks.

Ian

[KWSN_Millennium2001G]

I finally received the Sony DRU500A. I got it from Dell on October 31, which I find humorous because I said I would be happy if I got it before November 1.

I had created a wedding montage using my Sony Digital-8 videocamera previously, so I was all set to put this onto DVDs when the drive arrived. The installation was painless, I am running Windows XP Pro and previously had a DVD player drive installed, which I removed and put this burner in. XP recognized the SONY DVD CDRW drive immediately when I started the machine. I installed the Sony software disk and then used MyDVD to burn some copies of my presentation. I created a simple DVD menu in about 5 minutes and then started the burn. It took a little over an hour to re-render the video (it called it "transcoding") and then write it to a Sony DVD +RW disc. The montage is 48 minutes long and was in the Digital-8 highest quality mode, so I thought the re-render time wasn't too bad. This machine is a Dell Dimension 4300, P4 1.7 Ghz, 512 megs DDR RAM, with 2 of the 7200 Western Digital 80 Gig drives with 8 meg buffers.

I then played back the disc in my Sony 850 DVD changer and it played perfectly. I went running next door and the disc played in a NAD progressive scan player also.

Now my next testing will be to try out different types of media to see how well they play back in normal DVD players. I bought some Memorex +R and some Sony -R media, so those will be my next tests.

Overall I am very pleased to be able to put my home videos onto DVD media and play back in my entertainment center. I have 8 years worth of Hi8 / Digital8 home video to start editing down to DVD.

[mackerel]

That sounds nice :)

Since I bought the drive I've only written two DVD-Rs, and they're both data.

One interesting observation though, when I verify the write using the writer, all is fine. If I move the written disk to my old 2x speed Pioneer SCSI reader, all seems fine until near the end, where errors appear. This is either as a reported CRC error, or just failing to read the file altogether.

The only thing I can think of at the moment is that the disks may be a bit longer than the old drive can take, holding 4.5 GB of data as opposed to the nominal 4.3 GB (where G=2^30)

[Ian Newson]

Problems at the end of the disk usually indicate a cheap or incompatable (with the reading drive) media as far as I can make out m8. Try another brand.

[KWSN_Millennium2001G]

Okay, now I have successfully burned on 4 different media. I only have one "coaster", but it turns out that the included Veritas Simple Backup software can't deal with a single file that is greater than 4 gigs, so it wasn't a media related issue.

My Sony DRU500A successfully so far writes 2.4x on Sony DVD+RW media (over $6 per disc, way too much), 2x on Sony DVD-R ($3.25 per disc and the 4x media isn't available yet), 2.4x on Memorex DVD +R ($2.67 per disc) and 2.4x on FUJIFILM DVD +R ($1.59 per disc on a spindle, no cases).

I have ordered some spindles of RITECH DVD -R and +R to test next.

I don't think I will bother with -RW, because the price is too high, unless I find some player that needs me to use that type of media.

According to Sony, Verbatim and Pioneer have media issues, so I have steered clear of those brands at the moment.

So far, my Sony DVD 850 changer player can play everything that I have produced, which I am very pleased about. The +RW discs play in every DVD player I have tried, and the +R discs have only failed in Panasonic DVD players.

I am only producing original content I shot with my Sony Digital8 video camera and mixed using Adobe Premiere 6.0, I don't have the time or patience to try to copy commercial DVDs. I understand that to do that I would have to essentially remaster them, and strip some of the content to get the discs to fit on 4.7 gig media. I haven't even tried yet.

I am very pleased with the drive so far. Of course, I realize I am an early adopter on this, and by this time next year 4x will seem extremely SLOW. But it works for me right now, and I got a real deal from Dell on the drive.