Are DVD drives dieing?

[ranchhand]

Sheeesh, seems like I am getting awful "posty" here, the last few are mine. Not intentional.
Anyway, I would appreciate some thoughts.
I have a lot of DVDs with old camcorder movies of the family, kids growing up, you know, the usual....
My brother just discovered a ton more that I am having converted, and will archive.
I just went to Newegg to order a new DVD drive for my sister-in-laws unit (that I built for her) since one of her old ones died. I noticed that there appears to be a lot less drives available than I remember, and it is difficult to find a Lightscribe drive. As I remember, there used to be at least 7-10 pages of drives with many being Lightscribe enabled. I occasionally order from Amazon, and it seems the same thing there. I am concerned, because if DVD is being phased out I will have to decide to what platform I will have to transfer my archives. And there is no point creating archives on DVDs for the new ones I am going to do. Am I losing it, or as anyone else noticed this?

[hech54]

it is difficult to find a Lightscribe drive.

That's because they suck(ed) and don't last as long.

[oldfart13]

Blu Ray drives will also burn DVDs. Get one when they are on special. At Boxing Day, outfits like Tiger Direct had good quality ones for under $60. Dunno about Lightscribe as I never used that function on any of the drives I bought...

[sanlyn]

LightScribe and its hardware were not reliable. If you can play your DVD's in standard players, you're OK. Becauase consumers didn't go for the gimmik they are disappearing. I'd think about using standard DVD, as well as archiving your current recordings to external drives.

[jman98]

What hech54 said.

I got into Lightscribe maybe 5 years ago. At that time, printers that could print directly to discs were insanely expensive ($300 US and up). Lightscribe was a cheaper alternative. I've got a few Lightscribe labels that I'm still proud of that I designed myself.

Prices on printers that could print directly to discs dropped. Now you can get them for probably around $100 or so, maybe less for some models. I got tired of the following with Lightscribe.

1) The darkness of the burns was really subpar. It took 20 minutes to burn the labels in the darkest mode and they STILL weren't dark enough most of the time.
2) I used my best Lightscribe drive ONCE to do a dual burn of a label. It did get the label darker, but the drive was never the same after that. I never did that again.
3) EVERY Lightscribe drive I had, EVERY one of them, eventually got to where it lost functionality. First they all lost the ability to burn DVD+R DL discs. This was followed either by a loss of the ability to burn CD-Rs or single layer DVDs while the other one worked.
4) Burning in color directly to ink jet writable discs is not only quicker, but the quality of the labels on media like Taiyo Yuden's Watershield discs is just as superior as it can possibly be to even the best that Lightscribe can do. And remember - it takes about 20 minutes to do your best possible Lightscribe burn once, let alone worry about doing a second burn to improve the darkness. I can print to my discs in 1 minute or less.
5) Despite being stored in temperature controlled conditions and away from direct sunlight, many of my Lightscribe labels are fading into oblivion and in another year or two a good number of them will be completely unreadable.

There's really no reason any more for using Lightscribe except just being a stubborn idiot. Lightscribe discs are getting harder to find too. Most of the hardcore users have given up on it like I have. I used to defend it here against all attackers, but when the price for printers dropped to reasonable levels to make printing to discs affordable, there was no more justification for it.

[jman98]

If I haven't dissuaded you from using Lightscribe, I haven't checked recently but LG was still supporting it on some of the BD burners a couple of years ago. I'm not a huge fan of LG BD burners. They don't write to most BD-R LTH media for example.

[ranchhand]

Ok guys, thanks for the thoughts. What I am really concerned with is if anyone has heard rumors or has info on whether DVD optical is on its way out, and if so, what is the new storage medium of choice? The only alternative I can think of is SSD, but in my opinion SSD still needs some time to prove itself. If after 10 years it still holds data perfectly like mechanical drives do I will switch. But, right now....

[pepegot1]

DVD is going to be around for a long time. Blu-Ray is not a smashing success. 4k is a dream today.

[usually_quiet]

Ok guys, thanks for the thoughts. What I am really concerned with is if anyone has heard rumors or has info on whether DVD optical is on its way out, and if so, what is the new storage medium of choice? The only alternative I can think of is SSD, but in my opinion SSD still needs some time to prove itself. If after 10 years it still holds data perfectly like mechanical drives do I will switch. But, right now....

I still use write once DVDs and BD for backing up recordings, but DVD media sales are dropping. While I don't think we are anywhere close to having no burnable optical media available, increasing numbers of people find it more convenient to store their video files on hard drives or USB sticks. I suspect that may of them are willing to take a chance on loosing everything and don't back up their data to a second drive.

[ranchhand]

Yeah, I kind of was thinking along those lines also. Ok, thanks all.

[Kerry56]

If you want a full sized dvd drive, you should consider getting one soon if you don't already have one or two. The drive manufacturers have already made it known that they are moving to slim drives in the future, for however long they continue to produce optical drives.

Blu ray burners may be an exception to this, as they are still getting a decent profit from them. The current crop of Pioneer blu ray burners are probably the best drives available at the moment.

[aedipuss]

the money to be made from dvdr drives got really small, so lots of manufacturers got out. there are few drive makers these days and even fewer chipsets. lots of drives with different names on the front are identical inside.

[ranchhand]

Yeah, I think that streaming and storing videos on servers is becoming more popular now, probably affecting optical drive sales.

[jman98]

Um, you do understand that the lifespan of SSD is expected to be much more than that of conventional hard drives, right? Not sure how much more evidence you need at this point. However, note that while any technology is going to have a few lemons, most of the "SSD sucks" reviews are from idiot users who didn't update the firmware on their drives. The truth is that all SSD drives ship in need of firmware updates before use.

CDs are STILL here. So is CD-R and CD-RW media and drives to burn them. VCDs are STILL being made and sold in the same places they always have been. DVD media will be around for many many years to come.

Keep in mind that about 95% or more of people who store their media on hard drives do so with the expectation that the hard drive will last forever and there's no need for backups. We've already started to get a trickle of posts from desperate users wanting to know how to recover their precious media files after some kind of catastrophic failure on the hard drive. Many of us have reported CD and DVD burns 10+ years old that still work fine.

[fritzi93]

Just to re-iterate a few points:

1) Lightscribe seems to be dying out, and deservedly so. Hub printables are better in every way. I expect that media availability may become a problem, apart from junk CMC media. And forget double-layer. I used to use verbatim lightscribe DLs, but about the time I went to printables, they discontinued them. No manufacturer offers them any more AFAIK.

2) Fewer models doesn't necessarily mean DVD burners will be unavailable any time soon. I expect they'll be around a good while yet. If Kerry is right about full size drives, that would concern me. Which leads to:

3) You could buy a couple DVD burners now for about $20 bucks apiece if you're worried. That's incredibly cheap. My first one cost more than my current BD-ROM and BD-RW drives put together.

4) My LG BD burner burns DVDs just fine, although it won't hold a bitsetting selection between reboots. Anyway, I tested it, but use my several DVD burners instead.

5) Speaking of Blu-Ray, you can archive a lot of stuff on a BD25. Not that I'd rely on them exclusively, but between them and hard drives (and/or SSDs), you'd be pretty well covered.

Good luck.

[Constant Gardener]

Don't ditch your Lightscribe drive yet:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/21/ucla_dvd_burner_supercapacitor/

You never know when you might want to use it for something else.

[budz]

Be like me buy dvd drives in bulk!
That way you'll always have spare ones to use when one dies!