BeAll Increases Capacity of DVD-R to 4.85GB

[Gil T Pleasure]

South Korean company BeAll has announced that it will start shipping 4x DVD-R recordable discs to which consumers can record up to 4.85 GB of data or 124 minutes of DVD video. This an increase of 0.15 GB when compared to regular 4.7 GB DVD recordables.

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/10487


Wow, a whole 0.15GB increase!

[lordsmurf]

I don't even see how this is possible.

[GizmoTheGremlin]

This seems slightly better than useless. I wonder if the price will be much more.

[Capmaster]

Especially since the original size doesn't record 4.7GB. It never did. They're just perpetuating the phony byte count and confusing people more.

Damn marketing types

[indolikaa]

Hot damn! I can get 87 extra minutes of porn on my DVDs!

YEEEE-HAAAWW!

Disclaimer: Sarcasm.

[loconess]

correction 4mins

[johns0]

Wow! Now i dont have to buy a dual layer burner.

[Capmaster]

Wow! Now i dont have to buy a dual layer burner.

Yay. What are you going to do with that extra 150MB? Maybe use DTS instead of AC3 audio? Woo Hoo!

[louv68]

A 15% increase comes out to about 650mb or so more. Sounds nice to me.

[leebo]

A 15% increase comes out to about 650mb or so more. Sounds nice to me.

Me too.

Too bad it's only 150megs. It says 0.15GB, not 15%.

[louv68]

My mistake. Not 650mb but 150mb more.

This site gives a little bit more details about these discs.
http://www.speedlabs.org/

[lordsmurf]

You're all wrong.
This is 4.85 "GIG" not 4.85GB
Just like 4.7 "GIG" is 4.38GB

You're gaining almost nothing.
Where's a math whiz that can make 4.85 "GIG" a real computer GB number? It's not me.

[corrax]

Here's the real measurement:

1 gigabyte = 1,073,741,824 bytes

They like to advertise the storage space as truncated number rather than dividing it. Hard disk manufacturers do it too.

They are converting 4,850,000,000 into 4.85GB.

In reality: 4,850,000,000 bytes = 4.51GB

This is an increase of about 140MB. Sounds pretty worthless to me.

[louv68]

http://www.onlineconversion.com/computer.htm

4.38GB = 4485.12mb

.15GB = about 153.6mb

Total disc space should be around 4638.72mb

[lordsmurf]

I'm sure like past BeAll discs (LD, etc), these will just freeze at the end anyway.

[corwin102]

louv68 when Beall Says .15 GB they mean 150,000,000 bytes =143.05 MB in digital world

[louv68]

You are definitely right corwin102

[yoda313]

Hello,

I'm sure like past BeAll discs (LD, etc), these will just freeze at the end anyway.

Maybe they're doing this so it takes a few minutes longer to freeze!!

Kevin

[jawgee]

I'm sure like past BeAll discs (LD, etc), these will just freeze at the end anyway.

The white printable BeAll 4x DVD-Rs that I use to use were the best DVD-Rs I ever burned as far as errors/compatibility goes. All played fine at the end without any skipping. These were burned with an NEC-2500a, most of them using Herrie's hacked firmware to burn them at 8x.

The only problems that I had with them is that they took forever to dry when printing on them with an Epson R300. They were also more expensive than the quicker drying ProDisc S03 printables that I ended up buying as a replacement to the BeAlls.

jawgee

[waheed]

Its pretty useless bringing out 4.85GB DVD-R discs at this time when dual layer 8.5GB disks are already out.

its only a matter of time for DL disks to fall in price.

[harrymj3]

Nero disc info shows the be all 4.85gb dvd-r discs to be 4620mb available space. Does anybody know what program will burn a video ts file close to that size to disc without canceling the burn before it starts? Any and all info appreciated. ................... harrymj3

[Nilfennasion]

Perhaps we ought to round up all the ma-and-pa-Kettle type users who were caught out by the 4.35/4.7GB thing and start a class action for false advertising against the manufacturers.

4.85 GB in real terms is 5207647846.4 bytes. Just in case anyone cares.

[Sam Ontario]

South Korean company BeAll has announced that it will start shipping 4x DVD-R recordable discs to which consumers can record up to 4.85 GB of data or 124 minutes of DVD video. This an increase of 0.15 GB when compared to regular 4.7 GB DVD recordables.

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/10487


Wow, a whole 0.15GB increase!

That's great, one more choice on capacities!

[ROF]

Perhaps we ought to round up all the ma-and-pa-Kettle type users who were caught out by the 4.35/4.7GB thing and start a class action for false advertising against the manufacturers.

4.85 GB in real terms is 5207647846.4 bytes. Just in case anyone cares.

It's no more false advertising than HDD manufacturers labeling their products as 300GB storage capacity when in fact it's 287GB.

[mats.hogberg]

...or MP3 players, or Memory sticks or Compact Flash Discs or...

/Mats

[harrymj3]

My mystery is solved. Nero Express or Nero Recode both will burn the disc to 4.600gb+ after clicking the refresh button in disc info. Nice for vhs to dvd conversions where you can use all the space available.............. harrymj3

[Donny661]

I don't even see how this is possible.

They probably accomplished it the same way the manufacturers did with CD media by stretching the standards. Luckily, I think they did that shortly after consumers started making their CDs, so the new larger discs were able o catch on quickly and hardware companies started to support the technically non-standard discs. Also, at that time I think we were moving from the practice of buying devices that last forever to getting cheap hardware that is more economical to replace. As a result, not many people had old devices that wouldn't play the new CDs, so compatibility wasn't much of a problem.

With these new DVDs, it will probably be "hit or miss" whether or not a given piece of hardware will support the greater capacity even though they claim it will work with. Thus, to ensure compatibility, I will stick with the "4.7GB" discs until more comes out about how compatible the 4.85 discs are.

[Baldrick]

Added the 4.85GB size in the dvd media list, add new media here.

[SLK001]

Just like CD-Rs, DVD+/-R discs will slowly start encroaching on the LEAD-IN/OUT regions to increase their sizes.

150MB is a good start. Is there a burning program and burner that can overburn DVD-Rs? Also, has an overburning standard yet been announced? Haven't been paying too much attention to this, so I don't know...

[Cornucopia]

To add to Donny661's explanation,

I believe that the CD spec originally had lots of leeway for error (in terms of tightness of the spiral, etc) and purposefully kept the "official" size artificially somewhat low for a number of years, until it became clear that the processes for creating both ROM, R, and RW media and the techniques for reading/writing them all went way past the original technology. Once it was seen that this could consistently be done with little, if any, error, they bumped up the spec.

Originally, AudioCD's rarely went past 63 minutes, and CDROM's rarely went past 500MB. Originally 63min CD-R's were the norm, then they moved to 74, then to 80. Over that has always been considered non-standard by the industry, although many of you know that you can still successfully work above that.

DVD, OTOH, has much stricter tolerances, and in a sense has learned all the tricks of packing things in tighter-from all the "mistakes" made in the CD spec. Therefore, there is less room to manuever--less area of the disc to make additional use of and less space between the spirals with which to pack more tightly.

I don't see this as being a very good idea technically. High quality/compatibility, low error DL discs makes much more sense from the consumer point of view.

Scott