Should I bother getting a dvd writer?

[bbrevolt]

What with the coming of blu-ray and hd-dvd writers at the end of the year(or some type of hybrid) is it even worthwhile to get a dvd burner. I mean, as it is most of the time you have to shrink the dvd which degrades quality and takes time so should I just wait?

[bugster]

Not news, moving you

/moderator bugster

[darkskies]

What with the coming of blu-ray and hd-dvd writers at the end of the year(or some type of hybrid) is it even worthwhile to get a dvd burner. I mean, as it is most of the time you have to shrink the dvd which degrades quality and takes time so should I just wait?

If you know how to play around with bitrate you usually dont have to shrink nothin. also with dvd burners around 40 and 60 dollars these days it is a great buy and you wont be spending alot.

[redwudz]

I wouldn't wait around for blu-ray or newer HD formats. Even the fairly new Dual Layer media is presently too expensive for most day to day use.

I imagine the media for these newer blu-ray and HD formats will be even more expensive when they finally hit the market. The burners will also be high priced for some time.

On the other hand, as mentioned, DVD burners are cheap now and the non-DL media is also inexpensive. You can have these right now, no waiting.

[richdvd]

Get a dual layer burner, they are cheap.
Blu-ray and HD-DVD are far from mainstream.

[Epicurus8a]

There will ALWAYS be something new and better right around the corner, and it will be more technically involved, too. My suggestion is to get into the fast lane ASAP or get stuck in the slow lane. Is NOW the right time for you, however? Only you can answer that...

Good Luck!

[handyguy]

Yeah, $50 isn't much to have so much fun until the next technology. But it been a long time before you go to the video store & pick up your films on Blu Ray.

[spectroelectro]

Buy the DVD burner. Here's why: (1) if you have a good antenna and an HDTV card and you can pick up HDTV off the air from a local broadcast, you can store it on your hard drive and encode it into MPEG-4 and store it on a DVD and play back HDTV on your computer. (2) If you live in a rural area where there aren't any HDTV signals or if you don't feel like pissing away 200 simoleons on an HDTV card without the broadcast flag dingus, don't worry, HDTV isn't likely to take over the universe anytime soon. I don't know anyone who owns an HDTV and I know a lotta folks who do digital video. MPEG-2 will be good to go for years 'n years to come.

In fact, my guess is that 10 or 15 years from now we will all STILL probably be watching MPEG-2 DVDs with a standard 720 x 480 full D1 resolution, we'll just be doing it through cheapo Faroudja line doublers on cheapo HDTVs.

Lastly, industry has locked down the HDTV standard so that unless you want to put up an antenna and buy an HDTV tuner card w/o the broadcast flag (which will be become illegal to sell come this July) you ain't gonna be able to capture raw HDTV coming into our TV set because it's encrypted. This alone will probably kill the adoption of HDTV as any kind of consumer standard because one thing the consumer will NOT stand for is a format they can't copy and back up. The audio DAT standard was similarly crippled with built-in copy protection and it died, likewise Sony's misbegotten ATRAC. MP3 took off because it had NO built-in copy protection. I don't think consumers will tolerate a new format like HDTV in which the ability to copy has been systematically locked out. Instead, consumers will prefer to record to divx on standard or possibly double-layered DVDs, or they'll just make due with current full D1 DVDs and slap line doublers on the output so it looks presentable on an HDTV.