Forget VCDs its time to get.....

[Greedychump]

Right now you can get a DVD Rom on pricewatch starting @ 190 and up. But my question is does ne1 know of software that will copy a DVD to DVDROM?

[JJamez]

Wow - these things are really dropping in price quick.

DVD-RAM kinda blows, but once the newer format drives drop to this level ~$200 I'll be picking myself up one. And blank DVD media at some point should mimic current CD-R's pricewise - probably 2-3 years from now.

I always confuse DVD-RW and DVD+RW - I believe the DVD-RW is the one that sounded better to me... Haven't looked into it much since it's still on the expensive side.

[adam]

A dvd-rom will not record onto dvd media, it can only read dvds. If you want to record dvds you will need either a dvd-r/w or dvd+rw drive, and these are still quite expensive. Both of these formats are fairly similar except that the DVD+RW media is supposed to be compatible on all dvd players, which I think has yet to be proven. I'm not sure of exactly how much cheaper they have gotten but its safe to assume you will pay more than $500 and of course the media is still almost as expensive as the original dvd would cost anyway.

If you saw prices of $200 you were probably looking at regular dvd-roms or possibly a DVD-RAM drive. DVD-RAM can record onto high capacity media but the media is not playable on any dvd player, so it really defeats the purpose for dvd backups.

As far as your question... If you do buy a dvd recordable drive it will come with software for burning. You will still need to rip the dvd to your hard drive first. There are many programs which can do this, just look in the tools section. Also, until dvd recordable media becomes larger or supports dual layers you will still need to re-author most dvds by hand, either lowering the bitrates or leaving out some parts since most dvds wont fit as is.

[JJamez]

That was a DVD-RAM price he was referencing.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: JJamez on 2001-11-06 11:35:11 ]</font>