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HP

HP DVD+R Writers Examined 102

Posted by Hemos from the pretty-cool dept.
tedgyz writes "CDR-Info has an article on the new DVD-writer lineup from HP - the dvd200i and dvd200e. Both of these models include support for DVD+R. In light of the recent review by "The Tech Report" noted in a recent slashdot article, this is a very important step in the evolution of recordable DVD." I've got a USB HP external burner which works great - I'm strongly considering buying one of these.
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HP DVD+R Writers Examined More

HP DVD+R Writers Examined

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  • Competing formats (Score:2, Interesting)

    by DickPhallus ( 472621 )
    Has the format won been won or is it still going on?

    How about a burner that can write in multiple formats, just in case DVD-R becomes the standard, not DVD+R

    P.S. I couldn't read the article, cursed /. effect...
    • Damn I'm a wanker...

      that should read "Has the format war been won"
    • Therein lies the problem. We may end up with another VHS vs BetaMax war, which will go on for a short time. The problem is, guessing which will finally take the win.
      Remember, Beta was the better format, VHS won because of better marketing.
      Personally, I'm impressed with the numbers that the DVD+R/W format has been putting up, the problem seems to be compatibility, where less-advanced and older players are unable to read the format. I'm seeing the same type of compatibility issues that CDR/W had when it first came out. A great many audio players at the time couldn't read either format, now, most modern players are playing both formats, and now even data CDs with songs in MP3 and wma format without issue.

      I guess we'll have to see how it all shakes out in the end.
      • Personally, I'm impressed with the numbers that the DVD+R/W format has been putting up, the problem seems to be compatibility, where less-advanced and older players are unable to read the format. I'm seeing the same type of compatibility issues that CDR/W had when it first came out.

        I took a look at the DVD-player compatibility chart [tech-report.com] in the Tech Report article mentioned yesterday. A couple of years ago, I snagged an Apex AD600A. The one Apex model in their list didn't fare so well (neither did most of the others), but most of the DVD-ROM drives took anything you threw at them. If I were to get a DVD burner and my DVD player were to have trouble with the type of media produced by the burner, what are the odds that the problem would be solved by swapping out the DVD-ROM mechanism in the player with a newer one? (It would be nice if they had tested the different media against an AD600A, given how many of them got snapped up back when.)

        • I took a look at the DVD-player compatibility chart [tech-report.com] in the Tech Report article mentioned yesterday

          That list isn't very thorough. It lists about 20 players and only three kinds of media (DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW). If you want a much better (IMO) list, check out vcdhelp.com's DVD compatibility list [vcdhelp.com]. It has over 800 players and their compatibility with CDR, CDRW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, VCD, SVCD, XVCD, XSVCD, MP3s, miniDVD, and the bit rates that at which the players will play XVCDs, mp3s, etc.
      • Remember, Beta was the better format, VHS won because of better marketing.

        Actually VHS won because Sony had prohibitive licencing on Beta.

        Then IBM did the same mistake with MCA and EISA won out.

        • Re:Competing formats (Score:5, Insightful)

          by mgblst ( 80109 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2002 @06:32PM (#3152695) Homepage
          Remember, Beta was the better format, VHS won because of better marketing.

          Beta
          was not discernibly better than VHS, and originally, the tapes only came in 1 hour's. This was a big problem. Also, some people attribute VHS's success to the porn industry, whereas Porn was not allowed to be distributed on Beta.
        • Minor quibble:

          Then IBM did the same mistake with MCA and EISA won out

          Actually EISA didn't "win". Significantly more machines shipped with MCA than EISA. In the end PCI won out. Neither MCA nor EISA saw wide spread use (MCA did ship lots of units, but only for IBM, for the most part). You can also say that ISA also won, just look, you can still buy mb's with ISA slots.
      • It's not "Beta vs. VHS" all over again. The difference this time is that discs produced by each standard are readable by the other standard.

        The only format issue between the two is the media they can burn to. Presuming that the new +R-capable drives are at least as compatible as -R, the differences come down to price, speed & features.

        So far, -R drives are cheaper, and +R drives (when they arrive in April) are faster & more flexible to work with. Take your pick.

        • The disk formats are not always interchangeable. The most compatible writeable hardware format is DVD-R (DVD-ROMs use this).

          DVD-RAM seems to be pretty much incompatible with anything else.

          The others are a mix of "it might work, depending on your player or DVD-ROM drive".

          Check out VCDHelp [vcdhelp.com] for a nice, concise summary. (Despite several typos and grammatical errors.) In particular they make the DVDForum [dvdforum.com] vs. DVD+RW Alliance [dvdrw.com] division clear.

    • If the standards battle is over, DVD+R can't be the winner, unless the forthcoming models beat the compatability stats [tech-report.com] for the existing models. According to tech-report.com, DVD-R works in 95.5% of existing players; DVD-RW and DVD+RW achieve less than half that. Of course, DVD+R may prove as compatible as DVD-R, but I think we need to see the stats before declaring a winner.
    • On my site people are getting sick of DVD+RW and are jumping to the DVD - format. ...But they are saying they will jump back when things get better ;)

  • Linux compatibility? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eXtro ( 258933 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2002 @04:32PM (#3151746) Homepage
    I've been searching via google for a while now and trying to find information on burning dvds with linux. There's cdrecord-PRO but its only for data. I've got a bunch of stuff on DV-tape that I'd like to make DVD playable DVD-Rs with. Is there any possibility for this using linux right now?

    • I'm in a similar boat (Score:4, Interesting)

      by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2002 @05:24PM (#3152209)
      I've been searching via google for a while now and trying to find information on burning dvds with linux. There's cdrecord-PRO but its only for data.

      It is also impossible to get any information out of the author on how to actually go about paying the $100 he wants for cdrecord-PROdvd, as I and many others who wanted to buy the product discovered. The author didn't answer any of the three separate emails (on three different occasions) I sent, nor any of the questions posted in public forums (USENET in particular) by numerous people. One guy who asked he flamed into oblivion, others he told "email me", and still others, myself included, were simply ignored.

      This delayed my purchase of a Pioneer DVR-A03 DVD-RW burner by about a year. However, three days after the Free Software Foundations fork of cdrtools, entitled dvdrtoos [fsf.org], made its appearance I purchased a Pioneer drive (since that is what the software fork's author has) and have been burning data DVDs ever since.

      The author's goal is to support the burning of video DVDs, but the software isn't there yet. However, I'm still waiting for a better CODEC was well ... the color space limitatino of DV (4:1:1) coupled with the MPEG2 artifacts of DVD make the two in combination somewhat undesirable for me. I'd rather burn a half hour of good quality video onto a DVD and be required to use a computer to watch it (hell, my computer IS my television, anyway), at better resolutions and without the ugly artifacts, than accept the compromises of both DV and DVD just so I can play it in grandma's region-coded, MPAA crippled DVD player. Far better to build her a small computer with the appropriate software on it, instead.

      So here's to holding out for ogg-tarkin!

      In the meantime, at least I have a place to burn my high-bitrate MPEG4 recordings of Star Trek Enterprise to (two episodes a disk and far better quality than videotape will allow, though still with enough annoying artifacts that I don't want to use it for my own work).
      • Normally I wouldn't respond to my own post like this, but today while perusing the dvdrtools [fsf.org] user mailing list archive [fsf.org] I came across this [fsf.org] encouraging tidbit:

        > I just like to inform you about some preliminary wip howto-draft I've
        > put up at http://www.vcdimager.org/dvdv.phtml

        I've successfully written a video DVD with dvdrecord (mastered on a
        friend's windoze partition though, as we don't have vob/ifo generators
        yet), so steps 3 and 4 are working.

        ifo files will be a large problem - they're (mostly) undocumented, and
        require all sorts of weird stuff (such as start sectors of vob files,
        which probably can't be determined by anything running prior to mkisofs).

        Do you have any code to start from yet? (I do, but it doesn't do too much
        yet. Mostly analyzes existing ifo files to help figuring out their
        layout.)


        Looks like we're closer than I thought to being able to burn our home videos to DVD, all with free(dom) software!
  • That's the question I have, when will it be affordable? DVD writers currently cost around $500, there's a few standards, and the disks cost $30. I'll stick with my CDrw for the time being.
    • Affordable?!?! Hell, I just want the bleeders to be COMPATIBLE!
    • Actually, you can get blank DVD-R's for like $2.95 at www.cdrecordable.com

      Note - I have no affiliation with them.

      Chris

    • I beg to differ... (Score:4, Informative)

      by bmooney28 ( 537716 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2002 @04:58PM (#3152001) Homepage
      Pioneer DVR-AO3 can be found at pricewatch for under $380; DVD-RW media can be purchased for $4 each, again found through pricewatch. These prices reflect a drive that writes CD-R/CD-RW/dvd-rw/and dvd-r... (Note that for video compatibility, dvd-r runs around 95% with current players, while dvd-rw and dvd+rw both work with around 30% of current dvd players...) At any rate, I do highly recommend the Pioneer model mentioned above... I purchased it from MicroPro.Com ($379) 2 weeks ago, and media from QTCCDR.Com ($4/each). To put the cost of media in proper perspective, at this price, you would only pay 50 cents more for a 4.7 GB of mp3's on DVD-RW vs the same on 80min CD-R's (assuming 50 cents each...)
      • On pricewatch.com you can find CD'rs for 13cents in bulk. So a Gig cost 20cts. A gig of DVD-RW is 85cents and a gig of DVD-R (at 2 bucks each) is 42cents. Im thinking of switching anyways, but dont feel like spending $300 for a writer just now.
      • The fact remains that on Pricewatch 70% of the items are incorrectly listed, another 20% are sold from 'questionable' stores, either with no security license or with no actual way of ordering online, and the rest are priced, well, 'normally'.

        Suffice it to say that Pricewatch isn't exactly the best gauging tool for actual prices.
    • NOW!

      DVD Writers are $350-$400 and media is $2.25+

      The drive costs more than my first CD-R, but DVD-Rs are half what CD-Rs were when I got into it.
  • This site was /.'d VERY quickly! They must be running it off of a 56K voice line. Wouldn't it be nice to have an automatic google cached link for articles if it is available?

    • HP launches easy-to-use DVD writers Monday, 11 March 2002
      Hewlett-Packard Compan today announced it will ship its latest super combination DVD writers, which allow customers to create and share custom CDs and DVDs using video, digital images, music and data. The HP DVD Writer dvd200i, a powerful internal drive, and the HP DVD Writer dvd200e, HP's first external DVD writer, include features making them very easy for consumers to use and enabling the creation of DVDs by notebook PC owners. Now, consumers can safely save their cherished memories -- everything from photos to custom-made home movies(1) -- with the confidence that they can't be erased or copied over. This new protection is made possible by the drives' support for the new DVD+R format. Additionally, DVD+R discs offer increased compatibility with most existing and future DVD-ROM drives and DVD video players.

      According to a recent IDC report,(2) DVD writer shipments are expected to grow from 3.9 million units this year to 35 million in 2005. While consumers use rewritable DVD for a variety of applications, a primary benefit of HP's new products will be simplifying the transfer and editing of home video. In fact, in a recent HP consumer survey, 66 percent of respondents indicated video applications were the primary appeal of DVD writers.

      ``The idea of sending video highlights of a child's soccer game to Grandma on a personalized DVD really arouses consumer passion for DVD writers,'' said Dean Sanderson, product portfolio manager, HP Customer Business Organization, North America. ``As such, we are bundling with our DVD writers software that gives customers a quick and simple way to edit movie clips and allows anyone to produce great video.''

      Also included with the drive is the latest MyDVD software by Sonic Solutions that offers powerful Edit-on-DVD technology, making it simple to change content already on a DVD+RW disc without going through the time-consuming process of rewriting an entire disc.

      To support the variety of ways consumers use DVD writers, these new drives can write to several different media formats, including DVD+RW/+R and CD-R/RW. And, with the industry's fastest write speeds, the HP DVD Writer 200 series burns those discs quickly -- allowing consumers to write three hours of video to a DVD in less than 30 minutes.(3) The drives offer speeds of 2.4x (write), 2.4x (rewrite) and 8x (read). In addition, CD recording is simple and fast with 12x CD-R (write), 10x CD-RW (rewrite) and 32x CD (read) speeds.

      Furthermore, the HP DVD Writer dvd200e drive allows customers to choose a connection type -- either IEEE 1394 or USB 2.0 -- with the flip of a switch, making it easy to install and share the drive on a desktop or notebook PC.

      Pricing and Availability

      The HP DVD Writer dvd200i drive is expected to be available at major retail outlets in the United States by mid-April at an estimated U.S. street price of $499.(4)

      The HP DVD Writer dvd200e drive is expected to be available at major U.S. computer retail outlets in May at an estimated U.S. street price of $599.(4)

      HP DVD+RW discs are currently available nationwide at an estimated U.S. street price of $10.99. HP DVD+R discs are expected to be available in April at an estimated street price of $5.99. At the same time, HP also will release a three-pack of DVD+RW discs at an estimated U.S. street price of $25.99 and a five-pack of DVD+R discs at an estimated U.S. street price of $27.99.

    • Re:/.'d! (Score:1)

      by T5 ( 308759 )
      /. should just mirror these articles themselves. That way, /. would end up being /.'ed by /.!
  • I can just see Hemos holding his USB burner in his hands. Kind of reminiscent of Gwen Stefani on the cover of Tragic Kingdom?

    Seriously, that "I'm seriously considering buying one of these" statement sounds like it's straight from a talking points memo from HP.
  • I notice HP is one of the sponsors that can be seen in the new ads. === I could have sworn we just had an article recently that talked about the state of DVD recording. Are we going to get a story everytime HP releases a new product?

  • funny.. (Score:1, Funny)

    by garcia ( 6573 )
    for an article about writers, this one isn't getting as many posts as an article posted about listening... ;)

  • HP. (Score:2, Informative)

    by saintlupus ( 227599 )
    I've got a USB HP external burner which works great

    Hang on to it. You got the only one.

    The poor RMA guys at HP know most of my coworkers by voice since we bought some of those.

    --saint
    • I'm assuming it's a CD-RW you guys are talking about, otherwise 4.8G of data at 1.1MBps == >> 4000s --> 3600sph == >> 1hour per DVD ;.;
    • I had a bad experience with my USB HP burner as well. The drivers that came with mine were routinely blue-screening windows 2000. Plus the ghetto version of sleazy CD creator it came with only worked on '98. It was a pretty expensive paperweight for a while.

  • My opinion: Don't buy HP DVD+RW! (Score:5, Informative)

    by no_such_user ( 196771 ) <jd-slashdot-20071008.dreamallday@com> on Tuesday March 12, 2002 @05:06PM (#3152077)
    ... or any other manufacturer (Philips, for example) that put out a 1st generation DVD+RW drive and refused to honor their promise to support DVD+R [dvdplusrw.org] on those drives.

    To make a long story short, HP, Philips, and others marketed their 1st gen drives as being DVD+RW, with DVD+R supported by a to-be-released firmware upgrade. Now, six months later, they (quietly) claim that the drives are physically unable to write to +R media, and are being elusive in making good on their promise to support that cheaper, more compatible media.

    dvdplusrw.org [dvdplusrw.org] is a great place to get more information on the media and current state of the community. It will also give you updates on what these manufacturers are doing to support their early-adopter customers.
    • Which is why you should never buy Version 1.0 (Read "We think it works, and people have been pushing for the release, but really, it's just a beta with better packaging") of anything. It's true with software, car models, and any other type of equipment.
    • It was a screwup on HP's part, and according to one poster, they are offering refunds to those people who bought the drive on the assumption that it would later support DVD+R.

      Incidentally, HP is the only company that I know of that promised DVD+R support. IIRC, Philips only said that they *might* support DVD+R in a future firmware update, but didn't promise anything. The spec sheet on the box did not list DVD+R support.
      • Take a look at this thread [dvdplusrw.org] over on dvdplusrw.org.

        It's quite clearly written on the box of the Philips DVDRW208 unit: "Archive up to 4.7GB on DVD+RW or DVD+R discs" and "Burn directly from your camcorder or VCR to your DVD+RW or DVD+R disc."

        • Huh... <...yanks box out to look at it again...>

          I think it's referring to the ability to read DVD+R discs there. Note that on the lower left box on the back, it's talking about burning from a camcorder or VCR, and that that format will be compatable. I'll admit that the "Archive up to..." line is a bit deceptive, though, since it implies that you'd be doing the archiving from the device in question.

          When I was mentioning the tech specs on the box, I was referring to the panel on the side of the box entitled "Technical specifications:" where it says: "Compatability for writing: CD-Recordable and CD-ReWritable, DVD+RW", but no mention of DVD+R. In light of this, I'm not entirely sure where I stand. In my mind, when I purchased the thing, it was entirely clear to me that I couldn't expect to use it to burn DVD+R discs, but I do see how someone could have been confused by that one back panel, but only if they didn't bother to read the technical specifications. Considering the amount of vague, misworded, or downright misleading advertising considered "acceptable" today, though, I'm not sure it warrants singling out Philips for attention.

    • Um, first let me understand you comment in context; let's review the DVD formats again:

      DVD-ROM / DVD: 9 GB Dual-Layered Single Sided / 18 GB Dual-Layered Double-Sided commercial DVD

      DVD-R: 1.0: ~3.7 GB / 2.0: ~4.5 GB Single-Sided Single Layered; Pioneer owns sole mastering hardware rights. Discs around $10-$15. 95% Compatable with DVD.

      DVD-RAM: Single-Sided ~2.6 GB, Double-Sided ~5.2 GB, media in case, EM/Optical Hybrid allows Random Access to data sectors unlike all others. Media about $10-$15 for Singles, $25-$30 for Double. 0% Compatible.

      DVD-RW: ~4.5 GB Rewritable version of the DVD-R. Designed, developed and owned by Pioneer. Expected Media Cost ~$15. 85% Compatible.

      DVD+R: 4.7 GB Write-Once media designed by Phillips, Sony and HP. Similar to DVD-R but not exactly the same. Media cost would be ~$10-$15. NO MEDIA OF THIS TYPE HAS EVER BEEN PRODUCED so one can only speculate that it would be about 85% compatible with DVD.

      DVD+RW: 4.7 GB Re-writable format designed by Phillips, Sony and HP. Similar to DVD+RW but not exactly the same. Media costs about ~$10-$15 IIRC. 65% compatible with DVD.

      So, as you can see, the loss of DVD+R is not the great tragedy you claim it to be because it was not 100% compatible and in fact was never produced. Yes, there is DVD-R, but that's a different format and owned by Pioneer alone, not Sony, Phillips or HP. So don't ever expect an HP player to write DVD-R discs and don't ever expect to see DVD+R discs as they were decided against before any were ever produced.

      Just enjoy your Second-Gen DVD+RW writer when it comes out and if it plays in your DVD player great! If not, it probably never will. After all, even with DVD-R the MOST compatible format, you don't have a sure thing. And anyway, do you really think they are going to continue making DVD players in the future that ONLY play MPEG2 Encoded Video when DivX;-) / MPEG4 is so much more effecient. Imagine entire seasons of programmes on a singe disk! That's the future, my friends! After all, it's a perfect excuse for the studios to come up with a new Copy Protection Standard.... :o

      Devo Andare,

      Jeffrey.

  • my take.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by -=Izzy=- ( 80039 ) <spam@stradlin.com> on Tuesday March 12, 2002 @05:09PM (#3152100) Homepage
    I bought a HP dvd100i dvd+rw about 2 months ago. I havent had any problems with it yet. My only gripe is the lack of decent dvd authoring tools. Granted, Ulead's dvd studio is available, but the menuing (is that a word?) leaves much to be desired. nevertheless its good to see that dvd burners are becoming more and more mainstream.

  • what about storage sizes (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SGDarkKnight ( 253157 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2002 @05:17PM (#3152167)
    ... i would have checked the article but im pretty sure that i can't get it cause it's been /.'d - but can you wrtie more than 4.8gb's yet? dont dvd's currently support 2 sides 2 layers per side making them capable of hold up to 18gb of info (roughly anyways). I'm all for the dvd writters when i know that they will do the full disc and not just one side one layer...

    oh... just got the article - but damn is it slow comming... here's what it says....


    Hewlett-Packard Compan today announced it will ship its latest super combination DVD writers, which allow customers to create and share custom CDs and DVDs using video, digital images, music and data. The HP DVD Writer dvd200i, a powerful internal drive, and the HP DVD Writer dvd200e, HP's first external DVD writer, include features making them very easy for consumers to use and enabling the creation of DVDs by notebook PC owners.
    Now, consumers can safely save their cherished memories -- everything from photos to custom-made home movies(1) -- with the confidence that they can't be erased or copied over. This new protection is made possible by the drives' support for the new DVD+R format. Additionally, DVD+R discs offer increased compatibility with most existing and future DVD-ROM drives and DVD video players.

    According to a recent IDC report,(2) DVD writer shipments are expected to grow from 3.9 million units this year to 35 million in 2005. While consumers use rewritable DVD for a variety of applications, a primary benefit of HP's new products will be simplifying the transfer and editing of home video. In fact, in a recent HP consumer survey, 66 percent of respondents indicated video applications were the primary appeal of DVD writers.

    ``The idea of sending video highlights of a child's soccer game to Grandma on a personalized DVD really arouses consumer passion for DVD writers,'' said Dean Sanderson, product portfolio manager, HP Customer Business Organization, North America. ``As such, we are bundling with our DVD writers software that gives customers a quick and simple way to edit movie clips and allows anyone to produce great video.''

    Also included with the drive is the latest MyDVD software by Sonic Solutions that offers powerful Edit-on-DVD technology, making it simple to change content already on a DVD+RW disc without going through the time-consuming process of rewriting an entire disc.

    To support the variety of ways consumers use DVD writers, these new drives can write to several different media formats, including DVD+RW/+R and CD-R/RW. And, with the industry's fastest write speeds, the HP DVD Writer 200 series burns those discs quickly -- allowing consumers to write three hours of video to a DVD in less than 30 minutes.(3) The drives offer speeds of 2.4x (write), 2.4x (rewrite) and 8x (read). In addition, CD recording is simple and fast with 12x CD-R (write), 10x CD-RW (rewrite) and 32x CD (read) speeds.

    Furthermore, the HP DVD Writer dvd200e drive allows customers to choose a connection type -- either IEEE 1394 or USB 2.0 -- with the flip of a switch, making it easy to install and share the drive on a desktop or notebook PC.

    Pricing and Availability

    The HP DVD Writer dvd200i drive is expected to be available at major retail outlets in the United States by mid-April at an estimated U.S. street price of $499.(4)

    The HP DVD Writer dvd200e drive is expected to be available at major U.S. computer retail outlets in May at an estimated U.S. street price of $599.(4)

    HP DVD+RW discs are currently available nationwide at an estimated U.S. street price of $10.99. HP DVD+R discs are expected to be available in April at an estimated street price of $5.99. At the same time, HP also will release a three-pack of DVD+RW discs at an estimated U.S. street price of $25.99 and a five-pack of DVD+R discs at an estimated U.S. street price of $27.99.

    and look, nothing that I can see about recordable sizes... anyone else got any info about this?
    • You can buy double sided discs - flip 'em for a total of 9 GB.

      Double layer discs are very unlikely. It wouldn't be easy to burn to the underneath layer.

    • Basicly they could very well exist, but you'd have to turn them manually, no place to write anything at all. Likewise with cds, have you seen any push for double-sided CDs? They just don't provide much value over 2 normal DVDs/CDs. Now double layer would be nice but the laser power needs to go *way* up to burn a second level, so don't expect it in any prosumer/consumer device anytime soon.

      Kjella
      • Dual layer is just not possible on a consumer device. If you cranked the laser up high enough to burn layer 2, you're going to cause problems with layer 1. Dual layer disks are manufactured in a two step process. In effect two cd's are made which are each half the height of a standard cd. A semi-reflective coating is placed between them, and then they are bonded together.
  • This is not news. this is just a verbatim copy of the HP press release.
    • I can see where a press release may be news. But this product announcement does not introduce any new technology, doesn't significantly lower the price of existing tech, so it's not news.

      But what is more annoying is the headline: "HP DVD+R Writers Examined" ... shee-it, this is a press release, a product announcement, not an "examination" of anything. What moved Hemos to term this an "examination?"

      Isn't Hemos the fellah who deals the most with advertisers? He seemed to field most of the advertising questions during the recent chat. What happened to the "editorial firewall" Taco talked about?

  • i hear apple is going to support this: (Score:4, Funny)

    by cosmo7 ( 325616 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2002 @05:24PM (#3152207) Homepage
    they have a drive that reads and writes DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM and DVD+R, as well as CD, CD-R and CD-RW.


    They're going to call it Super-Duper Drive.

  • I bought my first HP 2X cd reader for $999 at J&R Muci in NYC. It came with Compton's Encylopedia, which listed for $400 at the time. Sheesh. Still have that drive on a shelf.

  • As opposed to ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by WndrBr3d ( 219963 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2002 @05:31PM (#3152248) Homepage Journal
    "I've got a USB HP external burner which works great - I'm strongly considering buying one of these."

    As opposed to the stolen one from Mexico you're currently using ??
  • For the kind of stuff that people want DVD writers for (other than backing up data) I have to wonder if VCDs would work better. For instance, I have a big collection of Betamax tapes I bought cheap when all the video stores were dumping them. I find that I can get reasonably good results converting them to VCDs, which can play on most DVD players, especially the cheaper ones. I could do the same thing with my wedding video, videos of my friend's kids, and the student films I made in college and later transferred to videotape (at great expense). It's like they used to say in the old mainframe days: garbage in, garbage out. If your source material isn't that great then doing an analog transfer to DVD won't help. VCD is good enough. On the other hand, if the source material is clean and you filter it digitally a VCD can look very nice.

    Unless you have really expensive equipment I don't see how you could make a decent DVD at home. OTOH, you can make a VCD with modest equipment and cheap or even free software.

    • I find that SuperVCD (SVCD) is pretty damn nice for working the home videos into a digital format-- you got yer MPEG2 video streams, and reasonable sound quality. At an average of 45 minutes per disc (half an hour if you're pushing the quality up really high), it works out nicely.

      VCD on the other hand doesn't work quite as well for me, mainly due to the constant bitrate (CBR) used in MPEG1 (SVCD uses variable bitrate (VBR) MPEG2). The CBR tends to make things extremely blocky/washed out with the poorly taped home videos (you know, we're not all human steadicams, jerky videos are a staple of modern living IMHO)...

      About making an (S)VCD for free, it can be done. You use VirtualDub [virtualdub.org] for video capture duties, TMPGEnc [tmpgenc.net] for MPEG1/MPEG2 encoding (as I think I said earlier, it also handles the sound duties, and has built-in templates for VCD, SVCD and DVD (in PAL and NTSC formats)) and GNU VCDImager [vcdimager.org] for creating the BIN/CUE files to burn (advanced features include making semi-reasonable chapters and I think SVCD even supports using menus and stills). Two of the three tools suggested are even open-source/GPL'd (TMPGEnc is, unfortunately, closed-source, and the author(s) imply in some of the dialogues that they intend to charge $$$ for it in the future (they've been saying this for the past year, and they still do releases about once a month)). That leaves a video editting package (in the event you want to edit your videos or add titles, etc) and the actual CD burner hardware (which, with the prices of 16x/24x CD-RW drives hovering in the $100-170 range, is not an object generally). For video editting, the only viable option I've come across is Adobe Premiere [adobe.com].. if anyone has any suggestions on free/cheap video editting tools for Win32, I'm curious what other peoples experiences are. =) For more info on (S)VCD's, including compatibility with stand alone home DVD players, as well as tools and FAQ's on creation, I suggest the following--

      VCDHelp.com [vcdhelp.com]

      Doom9.org [doom9.org]

      There's other good sites, but those should be enough to get people going that are curious.

  • DVD-R vs DVD+R (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kanasta ( 70274 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2002 @08:07PM (#3153458)
    So DVD+RW is so good for movies, and DVD-R is so darn compatible, and DVD+RW obviously has little to do with DVD+R (otherwise they would have come out at the same time).

    Why don't those stupid corps give up their turf wars and do a DVD+RW + DVD-R drive?

    What exactly IS the diff btwn DVD-R vs DVD+R if they both read on normal DVD players?

    • See my other post. While the DVD consortium standardized on DVD-R and DVD-RAM back in the early '90s, Sony/Philips saw an opportunity to break away from the consortium. One reason was that Pioneer's DVD-R, DVD-R(A) at the time, was expensive ($10K+!), and Panasonic's $500 DVD-RAM was designed for optical archiving (long story, but its not designed for consumers), and could only hold 2.6GB/side at the time. Sony/Philips had a 3GB design that could also record/rewrite CD-R/RW as well. They called this "standard" DVD-R+W

      But Sony/Philips soon "woke up" to the reality of their design took too long to build -- over 3 years! By the time their 3GB drive was ready to "hit the market" in 2000, Panasonic had delievered its sub-$500 2nd-gen 4.7GB/side DVD-RAM drive and Pioneer released sub-$1K DVD-R(G) drive. So the 3GB DVD-R+W drive never saw the light of day, and S/P went "back to work" on an "improved" DVD-R+W drive. This would become DVD+RW

      Well, even before DVD+RW finally hit in 2001, Panasonic had released a 3rd gen DVD-RAM which was a 2nd gen DVD-RAM + DVD-R(G), and Pioneer had come out with its consumer DVD-RW drive, which also did CD-R/RW as well as DVD-R(G). So basically DVD-R(G) _is_ the standard for recordable DVD, and DVD-RW is the consumer rewritable, and DVD-RAM is the optical archiving rewritable.

      Now you've got the requirement of a second gen DVD+RW drive just to get DVD+R. And I haven't seen any compatibility testing to show its as good as DVD-R. If DVD+R is only as compatible as DVD+RW, then it's only around 70%. Although that is the same as DVD-RW, and much better than DVD-RAM), it's still not as good as the 99.9% compatibility of DVD-R(G), which is now done by _all_ competiting drives. Worse yet, you can get the 3rd gen Panasonic drive for less than $300 and the rewrite capability it has been working in Linux for years (and cdrecord/DVD-R(G) is in beta testing).

      Sony/Philips has proven they are consistently "behind the times" and they flat out make promises they canNOT keep! As such, this whole DVD+R announcement does NOT shock me at all.

      • DVD+R uses a similar dye-based, write-once medium, like DVD-R, giving it an equal chance of compatibility. In fact, basd on my research, the DVD+R might even be more compatible. It shares the same characteristics of DVD+RW in terms of how the writer identifies a disc and aligns itself for writing.

        When you look at DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD+RW, they can be categorized along two axes:

        1) R vs RW
        The key difference here is in the physical recording medium. Write-once media uses dyes, which have relatively high reflectivity and thus play well with DVD-ROM/DVD-Players. Rewriteable media uses organic phase-change compounds that have low reflectivity, and hence confuse many DVD-ROM/DVD-Players.

        2) + vs -
        The DVD+R(W) vs DVD-R(W) discs differ in how they "communicate" to the writer. Essentially, writable discs have extra info not seen on stamped discs and ignored by readers. This info tells the writer what type of disc it is, and how to align itself for writing. DVD-R(W) uses groove recording with address info in the land areas. DVD+R(W) uses high-frequency wobbled grooves, which the writer uses to align to the disc.

        Of course, Jim Taylor explains it better than I can in his DVD FAQ [dvddemystified.com]. I highly recommend his book "DVD Demystified Second Edition". Although it doesn't cover DVD+R, the updated FAQ does. This book really should be called "Home Audio and Video Demystified". The explanation of aspect ratios for 4:3 and 16:9 TVs is worth the cost of the book!
  • Looks like my Apex doesn't like the DVD-R or DVD-RW. So much for the DVD standards. Whereas the DVD+RW of my HP pavilion 780n does work in it. :)

  • Don't buy an HP *anything* (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My personal experience with almost every leading-edge HP product has been *completely* without joy. With the constantly shifting version numbers of many MS products with which I am forced to deal, HP compounds almost everything they touch with late-to-market drivers, poor functionality and outright inexplicably user-hostile attitudes towards distributing things when they DO come out.
    Let 'em get their money from someone else.

  • Guys, this is nothing new. As someone who has had a DVD-RAM drive, working in Linux since 1998, I've followed Sony/Philip's "non-standards" since 1995.

    They "broke off" from the DVD consortium and introduced a 3.0GB DVD-R/W "standard" that never shipped back in 1999. They have broken promise after promise after promise, again and again and again. I figured DVD+R would be more of the same -- and we've yet to see the "compatibility" tests to see if it is "as good" as DVD-R(G).

    Meanwhile, both Panasonic DVD-RAM (3rd gen, 2001) and Pioneer DVD-RW (2000) drives write DVD-R(G), a near-100% compatible standard. Not only are 3rd gen DVD-RAM drives sub-$300, but the DVD-R(G) disks are sub-$3/each! And the cdrecord 1.11 test releases support DVD-R(G) recording.

    If you just need backup, DVD-RAM works great in Linux now as a "packet writer" (i.e. like a generic, random access disk -- has for 4 years!) and has a longer shelf-life (especially in the 2-sided, cartridged version) with 100x the rewritability of either DVD-RW or DVD+RW (100,000x v. 1,000x). Unfortunately, it's not player compatible (because they don't have the added logic and laser wavelength required) because it was designed as the new, universal, optical archiving format (and not a consuemr one). Hence why it's for archiving, not consumer use.

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