Goodbye all... bought an HP DVD100i

[shardison]

I just made my first trial DVD with my new HP DVD100i. Used the ATI 7.5 capture program with my AIW 128 using the standard DVD template.

Grabbed the resulting mpeg in the HP bundled DVD authoring program and BANG... ready to go DVD (with cheezy menu) in an hour. Looks great on my Philips DVD 711. No more fiddling and re-encoding to cram blocky video on a SVCD.

I bet you could "rip" a DVD by just playing the movie through the S-Video (with Macrovision blocked) straight into the ATI card, and onto a DVD, and still look better than an SVCD rip from VOBs.

Of course the downside is that discs cost $10. But they'll b cheaper real soon.

I'm sure there will still be reasons to make (S)VCDs for a long time to come (like for portable players). But the end of (S)VCD is nearer than what you might think.

[shardison]

Let me add some more after another night of playing.

Although the DVD writing program worked, other parts of the bundled software are a bit cranky.

The DVD I made worked in my set top box, but it wouldn't play on the computer using the included PowerDVD or the ATI DVD player.... hard lockups. But it would play in preview mode in the DVD writer program. This was after installing the HP site program upgrades. HP, are you listening? The DLA software upgrade... doesn't upgrade. It just deletes the previous version and you are left with no DLA (DLA is for using the DVD like a floppy).

The drive also seems confused about what disc is in. Several times I got the blue screen complaining about the disc is missing from the drive, even after ejecting from the menu. I also got the blue screen repeatedly when starting the DLA software. It also told me that it couldn't find any compatable drive before starting the DLA software. Everything eventually worked, so I'm happy.

[sean madison]

i dont know about svcd ending soon.

U do know that svcd is used for digital and satellite broadcasts right?

It broadcasts with an mpeg2 stream with bitrates just under 2520 kb\sec

I dont see them increasing the bitrate or res anytime real soon to dvd streams.

[shardison]

Of course people will use whatever resolution or data rate is suitable for their application, including broadcasting SVCD compatable resolution and data rates.

But SVCD as a format to rip DVD's and save home video will die eventually... it just makes sense. When DVD writer's come down to the price of present day CD writers, what reason would you have to keep making SVCD's? (except for your old portable player?)

I'm happy to start the process now.

[sean madison]

u r correct on that point though, but think about it now?
dvd burners can NOT drop down to the price i just payed for mine-
32x12x40x liteon for $123 come on now, for 123, dvd burners are way higher than that right now BUT, so were cd burners when they first came out.

I say give it 2-5 yrs

SVCD is poor when it comes to dvd indeed, but the cost of dvd cds has got to come down as well.
For me, i would not buy any dvd cds until the price of em were less than $1 per cd. I know thats one heck of a deal but by that time, cdr(w)s themselves would have to be goin out of style.
By doin that though, all audio cd players would have to able to read dvd cds which would make the cd players prices go back up.
So even when dvd cds and their burners go down, the cd players will go up to fluctuate a marketing balance.

Thats how i see it.

[slidellsimba]

i just got me the exact DVD+RW like 6 days ago, no luck YET.....
could you hook me up with some pointers, and possibly the progz...
also, i thought my comp was messing up with the power dvd errors, and the HP software not upgrading, well SVCD might live on with me for a bit longer if i fail too much longer at copying dvd's

thanx for any help from anyone

[jeex]

you cant ask for "progz"... bastard

anyways, dvd burners sucks... i'm all about fmd.. dvd quality is kinda crappy.. but with fmd you get like a kabillion times better quality... svcd is like those old nickelodeons from the early 1900's..

losers..

[adam]

Its going to be a really long time before you see dvd players supporting FMD, heck its going to be a long time before you even see FMD period. Not to question your conviction but I bet anything you'll buy a dvd recordable drive before you buy an FMD drive. If not then your will power is much stronger than mine.

I agree that svcd will be obsolete once dvd burners and media become feasible, and by feasible I mean as cheap as cdr/w is now. But you've still got several years before that happens so until then I'm sure svcd will still have its followers.

[fish2222]

Just thought I would say this... sean madison, if you bought a liteon 32x10x40 for $123, you got screwed!!! Ever heard of pricewatch.com??? Same drive for $80 on there. Plus, why not buy a 40x12x48 for $120? But then, why would anyone buy a liteon drive... lol. Mitsumi or Plextor would have been a lot better.

[sean madison]

ever heard of pricewatch, lol thats where i buy my stuff at.

There is not anything i dont know.
I bought it before the 40x came out.

I got $3,000 to spend on pricewatch for a pc and i plan to do it too.
Im gettin the 2 MP1800+ which is a total of 3.1 GHz and 1 gb of ddrram

[vitualis]

Its going to be a really long time before you see dvd players supporting FMD, heck its going to be a long time before you even see FMD period.

I totally agree. The coolness of FMD in undoubted but the commercial viability of it is far from certain.

I agree that svcd will be obsolete once dvd burners and media become feasible, and by feasible I mean as cheap as cdr/w is now. But you've still got several years before that happens so until then I'm sure svcd will still have its followers.

Unfortunately, whether DVD burners/media will ever be fully "feasible" is also uncertain. Not only are there 3 competing and mutually incompatible standards (DVD-RAM, DVD-R/W, DVD+R/W), we the consumers may be shafted with yet another video standard before this area becomes clear: http://www.vcdhelp.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=80111

Regards.

[shardison]

My mistake, the DLA upgrade software does work. It just does away with the icon on the toolbar-- and no friendly menu when you put in an unformatted disk. On the CD side, DLA is backward compatable with DirectCD formatted CD's, but DirectCD can't read DLA formatted CD's; or at least that's what's been happening to me.

As for the viability of DVD writers replacing what we do now with (S)VCD, I stand firm. Best buy is already dumping the first DVD100i units for $400 (won't burn DVD+R, only +RW). It's all still a little bleeding edge, but from what I've seen this is the way to go. It doesn't matter if you buy +RW or -RW, as most newer DVD players can read either format. DVD-RAM is out of the picture already for home video use.

Here's more propaganda:
http://www.dvdplusrw.org/

As for the newest blue laser standard.... I didn't worry about DVD burners 4 years ago when I bought my CD burner. I'm not going to wait now any more than I waited then. DVD does what I want: it allows me to preserve 2 hours of very high quality video on one disc....finally!

[Anonymous65]

I read in the news today that a NEW and final DVD standard was agreeded upon, and it's non of the current standads. It's called Blue-Ray and one disk holds 27 gig of data. Is this the end of DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM?

[thxkid]

I captured a SVCD at 704x480 at 6000 bitrate looks just as good as any $500 DVD-R recorder on a $10 disc and my Daewoo 5700 played it back flawless, I relize I will only get 15min. per cd-R but thats 20 cents a cd for a total of 80 cents per hour and DVD-R is $8 and 4.7gigs is only gonna get you 90min. at the same capture rate. you would be right at 15min. its useles for movies but anyone spending $8 for a DVD-R and then needing 2 for a movie over 90min. is crazy anyway, just but the damn thing for that price. Its perfect for saving any moments from your digital video camera, Hi-8mm or SVHS.
I would love to have a home DVD recorder but not at $999 and 90min. DVD-R blanks at $8 each, If they could cut that in half I would consider in buying one.

[piotrek]

Just check www.cdr4less.com. Looks like they have quite chip DVD-Rs for $2.89. Have anybody tried them?

[shardison]

Yes, the Blue Ray standard IS the end of DVD+R/-R whatever. Of course it is. And FMD will kill them all in 10 years:

http://www.c-3d.net/tech_frameset.html

I'll be in line to buy the FMD format when it's sub $500 and my "player" of the time can read it. (2010?)

All the present formats will be around for a long time. But I would bet that in 15 years you will have an easier time finding a way to play a DVD than an SVCD. The DVD format is entrenched. I'm in this for the long haul.

Don't get me wrong, I love SVCD. I just can't see crushing my home videos to sub 2600kbs bit rates and cramming it all onto an SVCD. As good as a home brew SVCD can get, it still isn't 4700kbs single layer burn-your-own DVD quality. (Isn't 4700kbs about the bit rate to put 2 hours on a 4.7 gig DVD?). I guess I could make 6000kbs XSVCD stuff but the time limit kills me and my DVD won't play it. I love 2 beautiful video hours per disc.

I will concede that DVD burning isn't a great idea yet for ripping movies, because of the media cost. But prices are falling and will continue to do so.

There is software out there aimed at high bit rate CDVD on computer, and it rocks. But not too many DVD players will even look at a CDVD or XSVCD with super high bitrates. I want across the board compatibility, and now I believe I have it.

[dvbr]

Hi,

I agree with you shardison, but I think that DVD recorders will not reach the popularity of CD-R, it's not interesting for the entertainment industry.
I've made some good SVCDs, but the compatibility is a problem, even not playing in all players, DVD-R is more compatible than SVCD. I'm thinking to buy a DVD-R recorder, the DVD-R discs seems to be more compatible with standalone players.

Regards

[uteotw]

I've read in a magazine that Panasonic is going to release this summer a DVD burner that will burn DVD-RW and DVD+RW... the first of its kind.

The expected price is £400.

uteotw

[spiderman2k1]

If you find one kind of DVDr brand stick with it some brand do not play well on some DVD black DVDr are not like CDR's. I have Apex and it some time locks up on DVDr's but has not problem playing CDR's of any kind and play's any SVCD. ALso the dazzle is better for making DVD then the All IN wonder I know I have both

[fish2222]

Just another comment to sean madison... if you have $3000 to spend, you might want to read up on some stuff... You won't get 3.1ghz out of 2 mp1800+'s... They run parallel. You add the processes together, not the speed. They work together, not separately.. Not griping, just enlightening.

[sean madison]

well even though the facts help, i still cant get the dual mp1800s
I'm gettin the xp2000

Reason-
Win98 is the ONLY operating system out there still to date that can do everything!
Play games, uncluding pc, n64, psx, snes, nes, all the other 173 emus out there.
It can do video editing better.

I would not trade not one of those factors for a newer OS.

So i'm stickin with 98

[fish2222]

I will just add this... Win 2k has a deal called compatability mode... Win 95/98 progs (and yes those little 95/98 games that crash or go to a blank screen in win2k normally) will run just fine in this mode. Granted, up to SP2, win2k wasn't that great, but its the only thing I will use now... But if you are doing video capture with Matrox cards, yes, you need Win 98. Just food for thought. At least you are going with a XP rather then a P4... Gotta have some brains to do that...

[shardison]

Back onto the off topic of HP100i

WARNING: If you install and use the new HP DLA (like DirectCD, only crappier) and stick in a read-write disc formated with DirectCD, you can kiss your data goodbye. As for CD-R:

DLA reads CD-R formatted by DirectCD, but won't write to it.
DirectCD can't see DLA CD-R formatted at all.
I don't know what's up with the CD-RW, it just makes a mess.

I re-installed DirectCD, and it is co-existing with DLA, reading and writing to the two different formats using CD-R. But sometimes DLA get confused and refuses to eject the disc because it says the DirectCD is using it.

What a mess HP! I have an inquiry into HP customer service. I'll report back on what they suggest I do to get my data; assuming they answer at all.

Also, I the MYDVD burning software locked up last night "transcoding" some clips. Still working on it.

[shardison]

Further info:

Now that I've got both DirectCD and DLA coexisting, I found that you can switch back and forth between CD-R disc format types only if you always use the menu eject option. For DirectCD it's on the task bar. For DLA it's in in the right-click menu on the disc icon. If you press the eject button you risk having to re-boot to get your disc out. (This is all on a WinNT machine, BTW. But the problems on the RW discs started on a Win98 machine:)

This also works for RW discs. If you have a DirectCD RW disc, you better have DirectCD running, or DLA will decide that it owns it and mess it up royal. I haven't tried to see if a DLA formatted RW disc will act right with this software combo. HP, PLEASE make the formats compatable.

One more note. I'm going back to the 2.7 (?) version of DLA. I don't remember problems until I upgraded to the 3.X DLA software.

[shardison]

Just in case someone is still reading this thread, I'd like to update my previous (nasty) comments. Seems my CD-RW disc died, and it wasn't the DLA software installation. Well, maybe. Anyway, I've had no trouble since reading and writing CD-RW's with DLA or DirectCD on different machines since my first total loss of data incident. So far they seem cross compatable.

EDIT: Nope, it wasn't a bad CD-RW after all. It's the DVD100i itself. DLA software works fine with DirectCD as long as you are using CD burners like, the HP8100, etc. But the DVD100i writes to CD-RW's in a way that makes the disc unreadable by anything but a 100i, regardless of the software. I think that a firmware update needed.

However, although DLA can see DirectCD (open) formatted CD-R's, they can't write to them. DirectCD can't even see a DLA (open) formatted CD-R. So HP is forcing us to use CD-RW if we want to drag a disc back and fourth between home and office.

MORE to the POINT:
Although I easily authored a DVD using the HP included MYDVD, I won't ever use it again. I deleted it off my computer today. Even if you give it a perfectly compliant Mpg2 stream, it will transcode the compressed audio to bloated PCM audio. The program works but it is a toy. I replaced it with Ulead's $44 DVD MovieFactory. What a difference. Buy it when you get your own DVD burner.

I'm done with this post. Can we kill it now?