Higher capacity DVD-R's ...

B

bjurusik

Registered
Just speculation, but seeing that Apple was a pioneer in introducing DVD burners, I bet that Apple will be the first to introduce higher capacity DVD burners ... like 9.8 GB capacity burners. What do you all think? Have prices come down enough to make them economical? Maybe we'll see these with the new PM updates.
 
I just ordered a Pioneer DVR-106 aka SuperDrive for $121, which should be here by Friday or next Monday. Now i can back up these files to DVDs, and a 9 gig DVD would be very nice, because I always have to delete things to make the 4.2 limit in toast.
 
The secret lies in getting a double-sided DVD. Pack 4.7 GB on each side and voíla!
 
They are available, i've seen them advertised somewhere on the net (don't remember the price, or where..)
 
There are newer "Blue laser" DVD drives out that store around 23GB of data. Sony started selling one of these earlier this year for around $4k. Ofcourse, there are two competeing technologies for blue lasers, which are not compatible with each other, just like we have the fun of DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW. Which will win, who knows, but it will still be a long time out until the blue laser drives start showing up in desktops.

Brian
 
Yea, i heard of the blue laser maybe a year and a half ago, from an industry insider in one of are senior lecture series in college. When the prices fall and the technology commits to a set standard, there will be huge leaps in DVDs.
 
I just put the Pioneer 106 in My G4. Backed up some DVD's that were over 6GB using DVD2oneX to compress and they work fine.
 
Hmm ... does anyone know how a commerical DVD is produced? They are usually well over 4.7 GB and the commercial DVD duplicators don't use a blue laser. I think I read somewhere that they are dual layered, as opposed to dual sided. It seems they've been around long enough and should have come down in price by now but who knows. I have heard of Sony's DVD recorder, the "Blue Ray" ... looks pretty promising.
 
Commerical DVD's are dual layered. They are created by a stamping process instead of a burning process. There will be dual layered DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW sometime next year available, but their compatilibity with existing DVD players is yet to be seen. These will only be around 8G total storage. There is an article on CNet's site about them today (http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-5130905.html?tag=nefd_lede).

As for bobw's link, half of those 9.4GB disks that are listed are DVD-RAM, which is yet another incompatible standard, or are two sided DVD-R/RW disks (you have to physically flip the disk over to write on the other side).

Brian
 
And I've never been able to get 4.7 in Toast, I don't recall the amount but it's like 4.2 gigs. Anyone else have this? This was some time ago when i used another Mac to backup my Mac when I was in school.
 
I thought stamping was putting the picture on the front. How does it work as a means of encoding the disc? And this is the same method they use for commercial CD's and CD-ROM's, I bet, right?
 
Yes arden. In the phisical structure of the surface, a CD or DVD is actually simmilar to a vinyl record, in that it has "tracks" around and around, and they have little pits and bumps. On a record, the head picks these up and plays the sound. in a CD/DVD reader, a laser shines a light on the disc, and the reflection created by the pit or bump at that spot determines what the drive "sees"

CD and DVD -/+ R/RW discs work by having a laser melt a little section of silicon to form a bump or pit. RW discs can be re-melted, R discs obviously can't.

A commercial disc is stamped, by a press or whatever, that gives the same output- a disc with pits and bumps, but it doesn't use a laser, it literally stamps the disc into the right combination of pits and bumps.

But yes, putting a label on a cd or dvd -/+ R/RW with the right machine is also known as stamping.
 
Okay, thanks. I knew how the reading mechanism worked, and the basics of the burning mechanism, but I wasn't sure what the difference between stamping and burning is.

I want a stamper! Damn non-burned-CD-reading DVD player...
 
or a better dvd player eh? :p

I want to make a home entertainment unit out of a cube. THAT would be cool. And i will. just as soon as i can jusitify a $5000+ home entertainment system.
 
You can't get 4.7GB onto a DVD-R because this is the measurement of unformatted space. Formatted space ends up being 4.36GB I think or something like that. It's like a 60GB hard disk, it's not 60GB when formatted its around 55GB.
 
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