What are you folks burning?

[Maldez]

Reading this forum, and others, I get the impression that we consumers are buying blank DVD media by the truck-loads! People talk about sales on 100-pack spindles. They talk about trying multiple media brands over the years like they'd talk about different beers....just something you stock-up on and consume on a regular basis. You talk about having empty cake boxes just rolling around on your floors.

So my "burning" question to you all is what in the heck are you people laying down on DVD in such a prolific way? What in gawds name are you all burning?

Not a criticism, just a curiosity.

[Wolfmancatsup]

Personally, in the main I'm burning old VHS & laserdiscs to dvd, and in a few cases backing up some of my favourite dvd's (movie only, generally) as I play some of 'em to death and they're not all in print nowadays...

[solarfox]

Myself, I have two main tasks which consume DVD-R media at a rather respectable clip:

First, like Wolfmancatsup, I'm transferring a lot of my video collection from other formats onto DVD. A lot of the VHS stuff is TV broadcasts that may or may not ever get released onto DVD sets (I'll be very surprised if short-lived, little-remembered TV shows like Automan, Mann & Machine, Probe, or Capitol Critters ever make it to DVD, for example, and both Disney and Warner Bros. seem to have no current interest in releasing full-season sets of their animated TV shows like Ducktales or Animaniacs)... and I have a pretty fair amount of stuff that was originally released on VHS, Laserdisc, and even RCA CED Videodisc which is now long out of print and probably obscure enough that it's not likely to be rereleased to DVD anytime soon. It's important to get this stuff transferred before the original media dies off, or before I lose the means of playing them back. Even using half-D1 for the VHS TV shows, it can still take several discs to archive the whole series.

Second, I produce some original videos, which I then sell at a couple of sci-fi/fantasy conventions in various places. For a weekend-long convention, I'll typically need at least ten copies of everything in my inventory to insure I won't run out of stock, which means that I can easily burn my way through a 100-piece cakebox in the couple of weeks leading up to the convention.

[yoda313]

Hello,

Yeah like they said - backup for vhs tapes

Though I don't buy in the 100's just the 25's. Still have plenty I haven't gotten around to burning yet.

And of course DVD backups I've got more and more I've gotten since the holidays that I need to preserve....

Oh and data backup too. Lots of mp3's, family photos, doc files and stuff that's nice to keep on hand in case of crashes

Kevin

[Bodyslide]

I use them for VHS - DVD Conversions. Almost 75 % of the media is for this. I use the remaining 25 % for DVD- Backups and Data. I use around 400 DVD's every 3 months.

[Maldez]

OK, pretty much what I suspected - mostly transferring VHS collections built-up over the past 15 to 20 years onto DVD.

I'm doing the same, mostly old games of my fave sports teams that will never be seen again unless I do the transfer thing. But you know what's goofy about the whole thing? I'm positive I'll never watch 99% of what I'm transferring, but it would just kill me to lose it to the ravages of time, so I burn it to DVD.

[Baldrick]

videohelp.com logs. .

[Padre]

I'm recording tons of series and shows from my home-built PVR (SageTV, Hauppauge PVR250, DirecTV). I probably go through 100 dvds a week. Also trade with others to increase the collection.

Recently switched from ProDisc to TY for two reasons - price and reliability. Now that the price for TY is much less than it used to be, why not buy the best.

[Maldez]

100 DVDs a week? Doesn't that put an undue strain on your burner? What's the average life-span, BTW, of a burner (in terms of numbers of DVDs you can expect to burn before it craps-out?)

Excuse my ignorance, but what is TY? Ditto for PVR.

[zod5000]

i like collecting unreleased concerts on dvd from etree.org. I used to get them from sharing the groove. Anyways it causes me to go through a fair amount of blanks.

[Srembecki]

Personally, I've used thousands of blanks to experiment, experience, and preserve most everything I can. Yes I spend my life in front of this CRT. Call it OCD, whatever. I like to share information, solve problems, educate. It's cheaper than college and probably more thorough. I've mangled, invalidated, trashed more disks than I can remember. If piracy comes into it, I personally prefer to buy from the store. The professionals have better equipment than I. And in the long run it's cheaper. But after all is said and done, I've learned almost every bit, byte and nibble that goes into manipulating the silicon highway.

[Bodyslide]

100 DVDs a week? Doesn't that put an undue strain on your burner? What's the average life-span, BTW, of a burner (in terms of numbers of DVDs you can expect to burn before it craps-out?)

Excuse my ignorance, but what is TY? Ditto for PVR.

My old Pioneer 107 had well over 4000 burns. I know us it in an external enlocsure fro my laptop. My current drive the Pioneer 108 has around 1500 burns on it.

TY is short for Taiyo Yuden

[Padre]

Thanks, Bodyslide, for the TY definition for Maldez.

What's a PVR? A Personal Video Recorder. It's like a TIVO built on a PC platform, with video capture to MPEG2 directly. No monthly fees, and the results are very nice dvds.