DVD Drive advice

[Bullworth]

I want a DVD drive that is region-free or at least firmware upgradable to be region free. I know that some Pioneer drives are capable of this. Which ones would you guys recommend. I plan to use it for ripping and replace my regular CDR drive.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Bullworth on 2001-09-14 16:20:37 ]</font>

[Sefy]

I Would highly recommand you a Pioneer made DVD drive, i've had the 104S, 105S and 106S and all are amazing drives with high quality, great compatibility, and Region Free firmware upgradeable! and you can buy their latest 106S (16x/40x) drive for as less as 54$, I use this drive myself, and it took me about 13min to rip 8 VOB's (Movie Akira), but do note that ripping also depends on your IDE Cable (best use 80wire) and the speed of your CPU for faster rips.

[Bullworth]

Thanks Sefy!
I have a T-Bird 850 and already have 80-pin cable for my drives, 256 PC150RAM. What do you have?

God Bless America!


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Bullworth on 2001-09-14 18:13:39 ]</font>

[Sefy]

I have a T-Bird 1000 and two WD 5400 45gb drives with 80wire cable, and my Pioneer 106S as Master on my secondary IDE channel and a Sanyo BP1400P as Slave on that channel, also using 80wire IDE.

If there is a god, I hope he blesses all of us! and brings to justice the guilty ones!

[LighthouseJ]

Sefy: 2 5400rpm drives, how can you sleep at night? My 7200rpm drive is borderline. I'd like a 15krpm though.

[Sefy]

I can sleep very well thank you, I have seen 7200rpm drives and I wasn't impressed at all, my 5400rpm drive are doing the job I want it to do, and that is enough for me.

[LighthouseJ]

I tried to record live TV to DivX compressed files at 320x240, I had so many problems. I upgraded, it's faultless now. However, some of the success is probably from the ATA-100 UDMA controller, of which I recommend too. BTW, that was just a joke.

[Sefy]

Oh, don't get me wrong I do have UDMA100 drives, they are just not 5400rpm, the prices in Israel are so large among the two types, that it wasn't worth for me to buy a 7200rpm, i'd only be able to buy a 2 x 30gb 7200rpm udma100 at the same price I bought 2 x 45gb 5400rpm udma100, so obviously I wanted the extra 30gb size

[LighthouseJ]

Hey, I'm with you there. I bought an 80GB Maxtor UDMA-100 5400 rpm drive for my server. But my server runs linux and serves things over the network so speed isn't an issue with it. As a matter of fact, I only have 2.4GB of drive space left of piled up encodings I need to do. I have 52GB of DVD VOB's alone, that's out of 75GB usable space.

I need to fix whatever is wrong with FlasKMPEG, it never makes an AVI file that any player can read, even VirtualDub can't open it, "cannot determine the file type of 'flaskout.avi'" or however that goes.

[bugande]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-09-15 14:48:39, LighthouseJ wrote:
Hey, I'm with you there. I bought an 80GB Maxtor UDMA-100 5400 rpm drive for my server. But my server runs linux and serves things over the network so speed isn't an issue with it. As a matter of fact, I only have 2.4GB of drive space left of piled up encodings I need to do. I have 52GB of DVD VOB's alone, that's out of 75GB usable space.

I need to fix whatever is wrong with FlasKMPEG, it never makes an AVI file that any player can read, even VirtualDub can't open it, "cannot determine the file type of 'flaskout.avi'" or however that goes.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

[bugande]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-09-15 15:22:14, bugande wrote:
<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-09-15 14:48:39, LighthouseJ wrote:
Hey, I'm with you there. I bought an 80GB Maxtor UDMA-100 5400 rpm drive for my server. But my server runs linux and serves things over the network so speed isn't an issue with it. As a matter of fact, I only have 2.4GB of drive space left of piled up encodings I need to do. I have 52GB of DVD VOB's alone, that's out of 75GB usable space.

I need to fix whatever is wrong with FlasKMPEG, it never makes an AVI file that any player can read, even VirtualDub can't open it, "cannot determine the file type of 'flaskout.avi'" or however that goes.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Try turning off the Virtual Dub proxy. Go into virtual dub folder and double click the proxy off reg file. Then try the avi file. I have been doing this with vfapi avi's. Try it, if it doesn't work just double click the proxy on reg file.

[Bullworth]

Interesting what a turn this topic has taken. Good to hear other problems addressed here. Sefy, I'm considering getting a 5400 UDMA100 drive myself because for ripping purposes I don't see the need for a faster drive. I have a 10,000rmp drive as my main drive and it rocks for apps. My second one is a 7200 and works just fine for capture so I can see how a 5400 would work fine for ripping. As mentioned by Lighthouse the addition of a ATA100 controller does wonders for speed.

[Sefy]

I Think what also gives alot for speed especialy if your system supports UDMA66 and UDMA100 is the 80wire IDE Cable, especialy for DVD drives! they can take really great advantage of it, I may only have 5400rpm HDD, but when I backup my system with ghost it's 220mb/min and when I restore it's 400mb/min, so it may not be the fastest drives on the planet, but when you restore 1.2gb in 2 to 3min, heck, I can live with it

[LighthouseJ]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-09-15 22:32:39, Bullworth wrote:
(snip) As mentioned by Lighthouse the addition of a ATA100 controller does wonders for speed.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Yeah, when I installed the hardware and turned it on, the hard drive makes zero noise, there aren't even any clicks when it writes data. But the biggest suprise came when I was formatting the drive for NTFS and then installing Windows 2000. My mouth dropped when I saw the speed. UDMA-100 drives are most definitely worth it. My server and workstation have them. (I bought 2 Promise UDMA-100 controllers at the same time, they kick all ass.)

I have this thing about drives. If they are hard drives, they should be IDE, but CDROM/DVDROM drives should always be SCSI. My DVD drive runs so fast, it runs much faster than anyone expects it to. In other words, I have a 10X DVD drive, people expect it to rip at 5x or something, I forgot the expected speed. But mine rips right around 10X, it's awesome. But that's probably because I have better components elsewhere.

[rwithey]

Here's a question for you all...

[rwithey]

Oopppsss, sorry 'bout that -

I have a CDROM, DVDROM, and CDRW in my system with one hard drive. My motherboard supports up to ATA100. My HD supports ATA100 and all the cd drives are ATAPI ATA33. If I put any of the cd drives on the primary channel with the HDD, I get all kinds of errors in the scanning of the bus at boot up. I get garbled characters for the cd drive on the cable with the HDD and he cd isn't then recongnized in WinMe. I am using 80pin cables.

To fix this, I bought a new Maxtor Ultra100 pci controller, turns out to be a Promise Ultra100 when I opened the box. I also bought a new Maxtor ATA100 7200MB HDD, turned out to be a Quantum FireBall Plus. Quess Maxtor don't make their own stuff anymore???

Anyway, the question now is am I better off to put the HDD on the pci ATA100 controller or on the motherboard ATA100 controller, or does it even matter.

My system is a Duron800 KT133A PC133MEM

Thanks.
Rob

[rwithey]

So nobody thinks I'm an idiot over a typo -

The new drive is 7200 RPM, not 7200MB. It actually is only 40Gig, it replaced a WD 10Gig 5400 RPM ATA66.

Rob

[Sefy]

rwithey, personaly I wouldn't buy Maxtor anything even if someone gave me the money for it, but that's just me, i've had hurrible experiences with Maxtor hardware, and I was shocked that a pathetic company such as Maxtor can buy a great company like Quantum, i guess life is full of surprises

Anyway, it is ALWAYS better to put HDD together on their own channel, and the CD/DVD/CDRW on their OWN channel, if you mix the two, you will get a much lower performance, cause the slower device on the channel is always the one that "rules", and since HDD are extremly faster then a CD based drive, the slowing down of the channel may cause problems on the HDD.

[Bullworth]

It really shouldn't matter unless you want to add more IDE devices than your system can handle.
Sefy's advice is right on target. CDRWs are best left on their own channel.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Bullworth on 2001-09-16 04:21:55 ]</font>