Plus versus Minus, Round Four
There has been a constant format battle in the optical drive world ever since DVD writers came on the market. These varying, and competing formats came quite close to bringing the whole technology to the point of unusable.
Round one was the DVD record once discs. This was the original plus versus minus. The DVD Forum with their minus discs were ready to duke it out with the DVD Alliance's DVD+R discs. As the armor was worn for a full frontal assault, the multiformat writers came on the market (by Sony no less), and the consumers won.
Round two saw the introduction of DVD+RW and DVD-RW discs. As all the current computer drives could write to both, again it was not a critical issue. In the end, the rewritable DVD's simply had less of a market anyway than the record once counterparts. This is because the rewritable discs are less stable, and more expensive.
Round three had the dual layer discs introduced. You know, the ones that debuted at such a dear price that aside from the folks testing them, no one else did! Well, they're available in both plus and minus flavors, but the price premium has kept them from mainstream adoption anyway. I never even see the DVD-R DL discs for sale in any brick & mortar stores.
And now, round four is starting. The plus and minus camps are readying the introduction of rewritable dual layer media. Is there a market for this? I'm doubting it. The discs will probably debut at a price that for a package of five, it will be the same price as a new DVD recorder.
Most experienced optical drive and media enthusiasts trust just about nothing to a rewritable disc. I've had rewritable discs, CD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD-RW fail after only a few write/rewrite cycles; far less than the 1000 they claim. I can only imagine few rewriting cycles a double layered disc can stand up to!
Dual layer media takes quite a bit of time to write to fill up the 8+ GB of storage space. Rewritable media speeds are always a few notches behind their write once counterparts. What speed are we going to have to write these rewritable dual layer discs at? A 2x write speed ends up taking 45 minutes to fill up the disc. That's just too much of a time investment for me to waste on one disc when I can do a DVD+R at 16x in about 6 minutes.
Who is behind this anyway? Is the world really clamoring for dual layer rewritable media? My guess is that the DVD recorder makers are pushing such standards. This is because with the next generation of optical media fighting between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, the drives sales are going to be rather flat. They need to come up with a stop gap media to fill the void for now to give folks a reason to buy a new drive, even if only for a new media that they don't need either. The ol' "keep up with the Jonse's" theory of driving sales. I guess this will give the salespeople at Best Buy something to talk about. "Let me tell you this computer features the latest and greatest in optical drives with 8+ GB capacity discs that can be used thousands of times...."
As for round four of optical media, it's just a stop gap format until the real battle begins with the true heavyweights of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Think of it as the Spanish Civil War, before World War II. Let's just say, I plan to sit this one out, and I suggest you do as well.
--Jonas
Round one was the DVD record once discs. This was the original plus versus minus. The DVD Forum with their minus discs were ready to duke it out with the DVD Alliance's DVD+R discs. As the armor was worn for a full frontal assault, the multiformat writers came on the market (by Sony no less), and the consumers won.
Round two saw the introduction of DVD+RW and DVD-RW discs. As all the current computer drives could write to both, again it was not a critical issue. In the end, the rewritable DVD's simply had less of a market anyway than the record once counterparts. This is because the rewritable discs are less stable, and more expensive.
Round three had the dual layer discs introduced. You know, the ones that debuted at such a dear price that aside from the folks testing them, no one else did! Well, they're available in both plus and minus flavors, but the price premium has kept them from mainstream adoption anyway. I never even see the DVD-R DL discs for sale in any brick & mortar stores.
And now, round four is starting. The plus and minus camps are readying the introduction of rewritable dual layer media. Is there a market for this? I'm doubting it. The discs will probably debut at a price that for a package of five, it will be the same price as a new DVD recorder.
Most experienced optical drive and media enthusiasts trust just about nothing to a rewritable disc. I've had rewritable discs, CD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD-RW fail after only a few write/rewrite cycles; far less than the 1000 they claim. I can only imagine few rewriting cycles a double layered disc can stand up to!
Dual layer media takes quite a bit of time to write to fill up the 8+ GB of storage space. Rewritable media speeds are always a few notches behind their write once counterparts. What speed are we going to have to write these rewritable dual layer discs at? A 2x write speed ends up taking 45 minutes to fill up the disc. That's just too much of a time investment for me to waste on one disc when I can do a DVD+R at 16x in about 6 minutes.
Who is behind this anyway? Is the world really clamoring for dual layer rewritable media? My guess is that the DVD recorder makers are pushing such standards. This is because with the next generation of optical media fighting between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, the drives sales are going to be rather flat. They need to come up with a stop gap media to fill the void for now to give folks a reason to buy a new drive, even if only for a new media that they don't need either. The ol' "keep up with the Jonse's" theory of driving sales. I guess this will give the salespeople at Best Buy something to talk about. "Let me tell you this computer features the latest and greatest in optical drives with 8+ GB capacity discs that can be used thousands of times...."
As for round four of optical media, it's just a stop gap format until the real battle begins with the true heavyweights of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Think of it as the Spanish Civil War, before World War II. Let's just say, I plan to sit this one out, and I suggest you do as well.
--Jonas
posted by digitaldoc at 11:53 AM
2 Comments:
My experience with DL's has been poor. I think my success rate is around 50% or less.
These are quite expensive coasters. I've had more like 75% burning them, but when I put almost an hour into the burn, and $5 into one disc, it's still painful when it doesn't work out.
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