question of dvd+r/rw picture quality

[vrdvd]

Hello.

I have some questions concerning the quality of picture that can be authored to dvd recordable media. I'm considering purchasing a phillips dvd+r/rw drive to begin authoring my own dvds, tranfering vhs and also really like the idea of making backup copies of some of my more pricey dvds (like my copies of Toy Story: toybox collection and LOTR 4 disc set) and have read numerous posts about people who use the backup copies for everyday viewing.

My question is how good can dvd+r picture get? Can the picture quality of a copy be identical to that of the orginal? I relalize an exact copy cant be made yet because recordable disk capacity is still too low, but by varying setting and compression levels, can picture quality be preserved that is almost undescernable from the original? what about when shrinking down to one disc? Does the picture really look that much worse? how about sound? Can 5.1 be preserved accurately? this is assuming all things are done right regarding capturing, encoding and burning.

My last question is regarding hardware setup. I have a P3 running @ 800mhz with win98se. Hd is currently 20gb upgrading to 80gb. SDRam: 384mb. Is this adequate for dvdr authoring and ripping? How long would it take to rip and author a 1hour movie using a 2.4x dvd+r/rw burner? Wondering if anyone has a similar setup and how long it usually takes them.

Thanks for any replies.

[thereaper]

I have just done the new harry potter and i cant tell the difference

i use instant copy, first a rip the movie to the hdd in iso mode and mount the image with damon tools as instant copy does not copy protected dvds as most are

yes u can keep the dolby tracks if you wish, i do

your file system maybe be a problem as fat32 does not handle file sizes over 4gig, ideally you must run 2K or XP on ntfs

my main machine is an amd 2200 cpu, 80 gig 7200 raid hdd and half a gig of ddr ram, this takes about three hours to do a full copy, i think it is instant copy that is slow tho, you can burn a full dvd in about 20mins on a 2.4X burner

hope this helps.

Rik.