DVD-RW Dual Layer announced

[bugster]

See Here

[RAAGAAman]

Just think of the bad compatibility that this format will have. Single layer RW already has low reflectivity and now they are going to add this format. I would be surprised if this played in any DVD player. Also, the DVD+RW DL will stink. Just say "No".

RG

[compuser]

I think that we need to get DVD-R DL first...

[waheed]

Not interested. I would only use RW for data backup or if contents of the disk constantly changes. for movie backups, dvdr's will do just fine.

As well as compatibility, think about the cost of a RW DL.

[Nilfennasion]

The only use I can think of for an RW DL is to use as a test run for DL backups before committing them to write-once DL media. I have five single-layer DVD+RWs, and I have never had to use more than one at a time to back up the stuff I consider important.

[bugster]

I can see a use for Dual Layer (both + or -) on standalone DVD recorders, to extend the recording time whilst maintaining decent quality. If it will take off with the consumer remains to be seen.

[Nilfennasion]

If you tell your average consumer that the digital broadcast of a World Series game that lasts in excess of four hours will look profoundly better if recorded to a DL disc, believe me, DL will catch on. It's the same principle that allowed recordable DVD to get to where it is. People want what they record from any given source, be it TV or personal camcorder, to look good.

The only area where VHS still has any advantage is that the format was always re-recordable, even though it looked terrible. I think the rush to bring out DL recordable formats, especially RW ones, is just an attempt to put the final nail in VHS' coffin.

[Gurm]

I concur - this is the dumbest announcement ever.

We don't have -R DL yet, which might be a MORE compatible format than the +R DL's whopping 50%. But you take +R DL which is at 50%, and +RW which is at 50% and combine them - I too would be amazed if there were ANY players out there that would actually play a +RW DL.

[compuser]

The only area where VHS still has any advantage is that the format was always re-recordable, even though it looked terrible. I think the rush to bring out DL recordable formats, especially RW ones, is just an attempt to put the final nail in VHS' coffin.

I think until DL media is like $0.30/disc, VHS might still have a fighting chance for the time being.

[lordsmurf]

VHS tapes are still about $2 for the good ones. So $2-4 range for good DL media is a good selling price.

[compuser]

VHS tapes are still about $2 for the good ones. So $2-4 range for good DL media is a good selling price.

Good point.

For $2/Tape you can reuse them... For $2-5/DL write once it kind of gets pricey after a while.

It is just a matter of opinion (I guess that is of course the whole point of these forums). I am a little worried about VHS extinction.

I think that I am just fond of old technology and how useful it can still be. (ie the 3.5 Floppy)

[EddyH]

for all UK members, Blockbuster is currently selling it's old VHS exrental stock off at 3 tapes for £3 --- or a quid per movie.

i've been stocking up.......

and hey, even if the films are rubbish, a pound for a blank tape is still a reasonable price

[Noahtuck]

VHS tapes are still about $2 for the good ones. So $2-4 range for good DL media is a good selling price.

Ya mean people actually still buy VHS tapes ?? blank or otherwise!?!?!?!?
damn!!!!!! i can't even dare to remember the last time i actually bought any kind of vhs tape :P

I threw out dvd-rw's along time ago.... have yet to even waste my time or effort, let alone pay for a DL dvdr... not to even mention a DL dvdrw
WOW!!!!!!!!

[lordsmurf]

You never want to re-use a VHS tape. Not if it's important anyway.

[waheed]

for all UK members, Blockbuster is currently selling it's old VHS exrental stock off at 3 tapes for £3 --- or a quid per movie.

i've been stocking up.......

and hey, even if the films are rubbish, a pound for a blank tape is still a reasonable price

May seem like a good deal , but rememeber thesea are ex-rentals so they must have been viewed thousands of times.

Dont forget with VHS tapes, quality deteriates with each viewing. the more VHS tapes are used, the worse the quality. The same goes for re-recording over and over again.

[Nilfennasion]

Dont forget with VHS tapes, quality deteriates with each viewing.

You've just hit the nail on the head regarding why VHS is a technology doomed to die. Since CD players have been fitted to cars, and walkmans have been replaced by MD, MP3, or IPod, how many cassette tapes have you seen in use?

[pfh]

They'll finally get the "bugs" worked out of DL DVD and along comes Blu-Ray or HD DVD!!!!
What'a think? 3 years?

[Tidy]

Honestly I think VHS will stay alive for a long time. Reason being people will not dump VHS until ALL films on VHS are available on DVD. Me personally.

[EddyH]

It'll be a while before I have a standalone DVD recorder, or a TV / Video-in card on my PC, so the VHS recorder, and the five or six still-cellophaned blank tapes (plus all the ready-opened ones) will be in use a while yet. The calendar on it might run out in a couple years time, but i dont suppose i'll care much for date accuracy by then.

Playing a simpsons video on our TV for a young cousin today (making a sacrificial offering to the gods of peace and quiet) it was striking how the quality isn't actually as bad as all that, certainly not as bad as you convince yourself into "remembering" it is, when watching a DVD and those cassettes from blockbuster aren't so bad, even though they're titles that would have been fairly popular. There's a bit of dropout in a couple points, but the thing about corruption of analogue media is that it's almost always more "acceptable" to the eye and ear than corrupt digital as your brain patches over the hiccup - more so than it does with PCM (e.g. audio CD) and definately far more so than with MPG audio/video, which does NASTY things when it's damaged.

May seem like a good deal , but rememeber thesea are ex-rentals so they must have been viewed thousands of times.

Well thats what I thought, but before i went buying i had the pleasure of watching a couple of the cassettes my brother picked up. They're not actually too bad (as i've noted above), and certainly still great value for the selling price! I only need them to last another ten plays, max, and they are "guaranteed" for a year - i.e. if i think it's crap, they'll replace it. Not sure how, if they're getting rid of all their stock, but I don't think I'll need to cash in on that anyway. If they've got a truly awful tape, it's likely the last person to rent it would have mentioned that, and it's gone in the trash.

Oh, and I still play tapes from time to time, particularly in the car, where i still havent owned one that has a CD or MP3 player, and nor do i really care to - ultimate sound quality or instant track skipping isnt so much of an issue, nor is really long playing time. I can have a box of 12 tapes that lasts a good two weeks, and there's unlikely to be a track on any of them that displeases me as they've been specially made. If at any point they run out, or im not in the mood for any of the albums / themes, there's always the radio. Whereas having a CD player means short runtimes (90 or 120 minutes on an autoreverse tape...), more easily damaged media (believe me!) and the possibility of skipping for very little real benefit. Not to mention the loss of ability to plug a tape adaptor in for a CD, MD, MP3 should I want it. The level of noise and frequency attenuation on an average journey means you really can't tell between a tape, a CD, or a 128k mp3. Plus choosing a track on an mp3 or MD player is a bit of a faff, i've found, when it is plugged in (worse on the mp3, as the md has an inherent play order of what you recorded - like a tape, but MDLP / HiMD lets you fit more on without having to change disc) ... your best bet is to make a playlist beforehand, if you remember to do so.

Sometimes simplicity - like an iPod shuffle (though i think it's 9 parts cynical marketing ploy to 1 part innovation) - is the better bet. Hence it'll be a while til tapes die - probably longer than it takes for VHS to go. After all - at least one major movie rental place is getting rid of their tapes (plus all the new internet rental places are DVD-only), and blank ones are actually coming into short supply, whilst stocks of blank audio cassette still shift quite nicely.

Still, there's nothing quite like the solid feel of one of those chunky cassettes in your hand to add a bit of momentousness to the occassion of watching a film

[Nilfennasion]

it was striking how the quality isn't actually as bad as all that, certainly not as bad as you convince yourself into "remembering" it is

Rubbish.

My eyes still hurt from all the dot-crawl and cross-colouring that is inherent to the VHS format. It was like watching someone vomit an approximation of the programme, rather than anything resembling the programme. In fact, I could have shown you some VHS tapes that had just been recorded of broadcasts that would make you ill. Side by side with the DVD+R recordings from analogue television I have seen, well, it is no wonder at all why DVD is leaving VHS for dead. There is a reason why DVD has been the fastest-growing consumer format of all time, whereas VHS took the best part of a decade to get into a majority of homes.

[EddyH]

Maybe I just have a really dire TV then, and so i dont notice the difference, but i doubt it. Or maybe a far superior VHS player (ditto..). Remind me are you talking PAL or NTSC?

[Nilfennasion]

I'm talking both. Composite artefacting is inherent to VHS because of the fundamental limitations of NTSC and PAL, although the obvious solution of recording using an RF or S-Video connection and keeping them playing that way exists. But it is a moot point, anyway. Since my pa has been transferring his old VHS recordings to digital, I've been seeing all sorts of blurs and lost details that simply would not happen on a DVD or even HD camcorder.

One possibility as to why you do not notice on your TV is comb filtering, but comb filtering has problems of its own.

[AlecWest]

VHS tapes are still about $2 for the good ones. So $2-4 range for good DL media is a good selling price.

Ya mean people actually still buy VHS tapes ?? blank or otherwise!?!?!?!?
damn!!!!!! i can't even dare to remember the last time i actually bought any kind of vhs tape :P

Believe it or not, there are still people (like me) who own the old-style VHS camcorders that use full-size VHS tapes. My RCA still cranks 'em out very well. And, if someone is paying $2 for a VHS tape, they're going to the wrong store. I get TDK T120s by the 10-pack locally for only $7.99. And if I was willing to drive another 20 miles, I could get them for a buck less than that.

[satviewer2000]

SVHS-ET (at SP) actually doesn't look too bad if you can still find a VCR that does it. It's more than watchable and for those episodes that you only view once, it's still very usable. Why waste it?

[EddyH]

Well like I said..... i'm on PAL..... perhaps it doesnt happen quite so badly.

Watched another couple of my £1-a-tape VHS clearance purchases this weekend. First one was Dr No, it had suffered a bit from tape wear in a few spots quite obviously (some interference and banding, nothing that spoilt the film) and the quality was maybe not so hot all the way, but it's a pretty old movie and the grain was evident in places anyway. Second was Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and from my usual viewing position at least (maybe 6-7 feet from a 25", 4:3 set) I had no complaints about quality, noise or sharpness. It probably would have looked slightly out of focus from closer up, but one thing I did notice is the complete lack of digital corruption on some very busy crowd scenes, which i bet would have been noticable to my "trained" (wish i could untrain it, grr!) eye even from that same sitting position, on a DVD.

Anyway, hell, this site got it's first lifetime out of VCDs, and even VHS is preferable to that in a lot of cases. Tried playing back a lot of my VCD quality stuff (mainly music videos) fullscreen on this LCD monitor....... ouch, that bites. Blurry, and MPG distortion city (including the VBRs!). Time to search for DVD quality replacements....!

[SatStorm]

VHS/SVHS has a decade ahead as a mainstream format IMO.
DVD-Video has at least 2 decades ahead as a mainstream format also.

Bluray/etc gonna co-exist with DVD-Video, same way SVHS co-existed with VHS.
IMO those solutions need a decade to became mainstream and at the time the needs of the consumers won't be simply "more GB per disc".

I believe that HDTV mpeg 4 on DVD+/-R DL is the next step. It is adopted in E.U. and all current / future DVB channels gonna switch to that format if they wish to do HDTV. First test show 3 hours of HDTV mpeg 4 on a DL DVDR, not bad if you think of it!

BTW, PAL SVHS with TBC shows "well" on a good LCD screen (42"). It doesn't look good on Plasma, but what looks good on plasma?
VCD on the other hand looks like crap. Thank God, I replaced all my VCD material with CVD / 1/2D1

[DVD Polizei]

DL DVD-RW is just a precursor to DL DVD-R. I think it is well known in the industry that DL media is wanted, and not just for data backups. We're simply going to have to wait for the good stuff.

[lumis]

how do we know that dvd-rw DL will be so horrible in compatibility?

[Gurm]

We don't know, but we certainly suspect.

DVD+R/DL is terrible in compatibility. Some people will, of course, argue with me, but its compatibility level when you take into account burner software, set top boxes, and drives... is hovering around 50%. What confuses people is that some folks have 100% success. Their software, drive, and box all like their media and it works great. Others have 0% success. That's pretty terrible.

Now you want to go to rewriteable? Rewriteability in general drops the "boxes that like this disc" success rate by 25-50%. When you're ALREADY dealing with an extremely tenuous probability of success... that makes it pretty terrible.

So yeah, we're pretty confident that DVD-RW will be pretty much unusable.

[lumis]

i guess i'm one of those people who have had great success
(benq 1620, recordnow 7.3, verbatim media, pioneer dvd player)

but you'd think at some point they would develop something that could mimic a real dual layer dvd..

cd-r's have great compatibility, and had it when i began burning them (back in 97), i've only run in to 2 cd players over the last 10 years that wouldnt play a cd-r. it was a sony dvd player.. but its a weird piece of crap anyways.. it will play pressed vcd's, but not burned ones.. it'll play dvd-r & dvd+r, but not dvd+r with the booktype set to dvd-rom..