New COMPAQ: DVD-Burner *Included*

[Jerry Jones]

Recordable DVD for the consumer?
http://www.digitalproducer.com/aHTM/...01/pioneer.htm

[Jerry Jones]

The official Pioneer press release:
http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/Pi...9,1710,00.html

[Dr Mordrid]

As I have said in our earlier conversation on this.....

My wife is going to ****ing KILL me when the Pioneer DVR-103 DVD-R hits the streets

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 05 January 2001).]

[Jerry Jones]

I'm planning to get one also, Doc!

Please do give us a report after you've
got it installed and working.

Man - this is going to open up a whole new world of high image quality!

[Elie]

Sure will Jerrold, I can't wait also.
It's nice to offer our clients the choice of SVHS, VHS, VCD, SVCD, DV, and now DVD

Regards,
Elie

[Dr Mordrid]

No kidding. The options are going to be wide open with 4.7g per side to work with, especially with the disks being readable on most DVD players.

What a boon for event (wedding, Bar/Bas/Bat Mitzvah's, confirmation etc.) videographers. Being able to provide DVD's of the event will make for a lot of premium sales over a cheaper taped or CD version.

ka-CHING.....

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 05 January 2001).]

[KevinG]

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid:

My wife is going to ****ing KILL me when the Pioneer DVR-103 DVD-R hits the streets

Dr. Mordrid

Same here. I'm a dead man as I'm only doing my home videos. Can't justify this to her as easily as "But my customers will like the image quality much better so we will make more money for my services."

Oh well. She will only be mad for probably a few months. While I sleep in the basement, I can play with the new toy

Any idea (rumor) as to when this will hit the streets?
1st quarter can mean like the end of March.

Kevin



[This message has been edited by KevinG (edited 05 January 2001).]

[cjyo~]

DVD-Rs are around 30 bucks a pop (less in bulk)

[Jkun]

Media prices should drop rapidly once the consumer recorders are out. However, I am curious/worried about media life.

The dies used for CDR can't be used for DVD I am told. CDRs (phtalocyanine) had lifespans of 50 or more years.

Has anyone seen info on the longivity of DVD-Rs?

J-kun

[KevinG]

Here's another thread going on at RT2000.
http://forum.matrox.com/rt2000/Forum6/HTML/000365.html

Just found a CNET article:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...e.1002.bgif.ni


[This message has been edited by KevinG (edited 09 January 2001).]

[This message has been edited by KevinG (edited 09 January 2001).]

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup. We're both dead men walking

The OEM intro was supposed to be "Q1" and it hit as early in Q1 as possible. My bet is those stores that sell OEM unboxed h/w will be getting it early with the shelf release later. That's how it was with my Toshiba DVD drive.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 13 January 2001).]

[Prospero]

Anyone have any idea on unit and media costs?

Prospero

[KevinG]

An official Pioneer link:
http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/Pi...~1718,00.html?

This is getting me excited.

I already warned the wife. Christmas is coming twice this year for me.

I can justify this purchase as I have been having some problems with the 480x480 size for SVCDs. The home video that I'm working on is really showing me the limitations of this resolution. I was unfortunate to capture my kid's holiday concert that was performed in a gym. It has a blue scoreboard with white letters in the background. No matter how high I increase the bitrate, these white letters just keep on flickering. I believe it have something to do with the resizing from 720x480 DV. Camera movement and the resizing down to 480x480 is throwing away these important pizels thus causing the flickering. If I keep the original size of 720x480 ( I believe this is DVD size? ), the lettering is crystal clear. No flickering. Even when I decrease bitrate to SVCD rate.

Does this sound right?


This is going to be fun!

[IvanP]

And DVD-RW support? It was promised too.
Does anybody believe that it will be possible after firmware upgrade only?
...But if it's already supported by hardware and "disabled" in firmware ...??

Ivan

[wkulecz]

The "story" is the DVD-RW "standard" is not yet approved. So DVD-RW is disabled in the early version pending finalization of this standard, later conforming firmware is supposed to be made available. I believe I saw this tidbit in an Electonic Engineering Times article last week, but I could be remembering incorrectly as to where I read this.

OTOH, by analogy with CD-RW it'll be pretty much worthless. CD-RW works fine if you use it as a bulk erase CD-R. Problem is, when you try to use it as a "giant floppy" with packet write software -- you might think it works if you only have a single burner. Once you start updating stuff on multiple burners the media rather quickly becomes unreadable and you end up losing everything on the disk! I've wanted this to work since directCD 2.0 first came with my Ricoh Mediamaster. I've finally given up and uninstalled directCD everywhere except where I have to burn from slow networks -- and then I only use CD-R media.

If the DVD-R makes a lot of "coasters" and the RW media is within a factor of two or three of the one-time media costs it might make sense for a little while at least, but for computer data -- I'd not go near it until I see proof that the write interchangability problems are solved.

--wally.