Authoring DVDRs VS. general DVDRs

[mijman]

I've noticed that there are these two types, and that the Authoring ones cost twice as much. What are these things, and what are they for? I was under the impression that the proggies did the authoring. I'm confuzzled.

[Kdiddy]

"When authoring isn’t authoring:

There’s an important point here that isn’t immediately apparent. There’s a fundamental distinction between a “DVD for General” device and a “DVD for Authoring” device – terms that are admittedly a bit misleading, because you might reasonably assume that “authoring” and “burning” a DVD are the same thing. But they’re not. According to a white paper on DVD-R from Pioneer (the company behind the SuperDrive), the two types of DVD-R media use different recording laser wavelengths: “DVD-R for Authoring” requires 635nm wavelength recording sensitivity, while “DVD-R for General” uses 650nm wavelength recording sensitivity. That’s why they need different devices to write to them. (This is, however, not an issue for playback, only for recording. Any playback device that supports DVD-R should play either type of media – but more on this in a moment.)
“Why are there two formats?” the white paper asks. “The key reason for the introduction of DVD-R for General media is that it contains content protection measures that make it physically impossible to make bit-for-bit copies of CSS encrypted entertainment titles.”In other words, you cannot make a pirate copy of a movie, for instance, straight from a commercial DVD encrypted with CSS (Content Scrambling System), one of the two encryption systems in general use. (You can of course play movie DVDs encrypted with either CSS or the other widely used system, Macrovision.)

Master of your own fate:
That’s fair enough, you might think: after all, the point isn’t to make life easy for pirates. However, you can’t add such copy-protection to DVDs that you create yourself either.
This is a limitation of DVD-R as a whole, not just the DVD-R for General format: according to the Pioneer white paper, neither DVD-R(g) nor DVD-R(a) media can store CSS encrypted video content. In fact such encryption is added at the DVD mastering stage by commercial replicators

[mijman]

Ok, that's all fine and good, but after a DVD rip by a proggie like smartripper or dvddecriptor, don't they get rid of the dss anyway? reencoding right to another DVD format with TMPGenc would get rid of anything that might be left, so why are Authoring drives/discs necessary? I'm missing the point of this. So, you make a DVD by much the same method that you would make a VCD. It might eliminate the ability to do straight copies, but it just takes longer to do it. Oh, Well. A program like Spruceup, for example, can reauthor it the way you want it, right? Who amongst us really wants to replicate the dss anyway?

So, am I right in thinking that the Authoring discs/drives ARE capable of copying dss encoded dvds then? What is the price difference between the different drives? Negligible, or Insane?

[mijman]

right?