Still puzzled re DVDs?

[tony draper]

Right have a birthday coming up,next door asks what can they possibly buy for a man who has everything,so one told em some Dual Layer DVD(one thinks the normal 180 minute ones are to short on recording time,anyway bloke in the shop tells SIL that these will only work in Blueray machines wtf!! be this true?
one's DVD recorder is a LG one that says it is HD.
:confused:

[Sprogget]

Definitely not true & in passing, you're on the wrong end of a format war with your HD hd-dvd player. The digital equivalent of a betamax video.

[tony draper]

Story of my life Mr Sprogget,the gas lighting in the Towers here is costing me a fortune.:uhoh:

[Sprogget]

Fwiw, a blu ray drive can be picked up for 50-70 quid now. You can swap your dvd for a blu ray drive, drop power dvd software in & voila,blu ray on your pc, hook it up to the telly & you're off.

I really, really like Blu ray, the quality is miles ahead of dvd.

[eticket]

Tony,

I have just had a quick look at a LG DVD Recorders' manual (DRT389H) and this particular one can record onto DVD+R DL discs. ie Dual-Layer discs that match the DVD+ specification. (It doesn't mention anything about DVD-R DL.)

However the problem is that these are write-once only discs. They cannot be reused to allow you to record 'over the top of' any programmes that you have already recorded on the disc, have viewed and have finished with, like you could do with a VHS tape. (Or as you are probably already doing with a rewritable DVD Disc such as a DVD+RW, a DVD-RW or a DVD-RAM.)

I don't believe that blank rewritable dual-layer DVD+RW DL or DVD-RW DL discs are available for purchase.

Taken from a wiki article:
A dual-layer DVD+RW specification was approved in March 2006 with a capacity of 8.5 GB.[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD%2BRW_DL#cite_note-1) However, manufacturing support for rewritable dual-layer discs did not materialize due to costs and expected competition from newer formats like BluRay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BluRay) and HD DVD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD), which boasted up to 25 GB on a single layer.DVD+RW - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD%2BRW_DL)

I reckon that you will have to stick with your current non dual-layer discs if you want to reuse them like a VHS tape.

[tony draper]

Roger that,I can of course extend the recording time by burning at a lower quality but if I do thatI may have well stayed with tape.
:)

[P.Pilcher]

Tell me, oh experts: In the old days there was DVD and now we have "blue ray" which provides a highter quality. However, when DVD's first came in, I distinctly remember that the manufacturers, under pressure from the film makers, agreed to never provide a digital output from their players. This was a universal thing because if a digital output had been made available, we were informed then, it would be possibe to obtain cinema quality from our DVD players. A suitable TV projector and a nice big screen would therefore be all that was required to turn your living room into a full cinema!
In those early days a few of the electronics enthusiast's magazines published details as to how to modify a DVD player to obtain a digital output, but this all went quiet years ago and we never hear of it today. Because tellies can be potentially much bigger than they were in the days of the CRT, an increase in definition and HD telly is now a necessity for the largest ones. So is blue ray a halfway house to provide an acceptable HD picture for the largest tellies but a way of preventing the definition of a DVD from attaining its maximum potential value to protect the cinema trade?

P.P.

[Bushfiva]

DVD resolution is max. 720x576 or 720x480 depending on region. Blu-ray is 1920x1080. Digital data streams are available with both standards on compliant equipment.

Digital theaters are 2K, with some at 4K.

[lomapaseo]

Digital theaters are 2K, with some at 4K

What are the units that go with these numerics,

furlongs, pixels, quid etc.:confused:

[Bushfiva]

Resolution-wise, 2K is 2048x1080 and 4K is 4096x2160 pixels. The 2K and 4K standards are authored by the Digital Cinema Initiative: 2K-compliant systems must support 24 or 48 fps, 4K-compliant systems must support 24 fps. They don't take account of common LCD sizes since they're a projection-based standard using TI DLP technology which is manufactured by Barco, NEC, Sony and a couple of others. A while back Sony had the only 4K projector, I don't know what the situation is now.

Incidentally, a 2K image (and HDTV) is only 2.2 megapixels if you do the math.

The standards allow end-to-end digital delivery of content. Movie prints cost $25,000 or more each, so they can be a bottleneck for smaller theaters trying to get ahold of a blockbuster print. This is why, in the past, the UK tended to get US movies later than Europe: European countries needed subtitled or dubbed prints, so they got new prints. UK could go with prints that had already been show in the US. Digital stuff can be delivered over wire or on hard drives (400GB): duplication costs are effectively nil. This lets a theater assign screens on the fly if there is unexpected demand (or lack thereof) for a movie.

Anyway, none of this helps Mr Draper, who probably needs a cord of good quality logs for his player's boiler.

[tony draper]

Ere coincidently one's DVD thingy is indeed a DRT389H,one had no say in its purchase it being a birthday pressy,however some suplimentry questions,said machine has a HDMI output and the manual says something about upscalable to HD,what exactly does upscalling mean? it also has component video out which when connected to the component in on me posh new telly seems to present a much superior images from a prerecorded DVD,is this the same as the old Svideo when the gray scale and colour were sent on separate conductors?
One is familier with Svideo, many of ther top quality CCTV cameras had composite video out.

[Bushfiva]

When you're using the HDMI cable, the monitor can tell the player what its resolution is. The recorder then takes the 720xwhatever DVD resolution, and rescales it to the resolution of the monitor. The logic is that doing upscaling in the player, the player may do a better job of upscaling than letting the monitor do it. In reality, some players do a better job, and some do a worse job.

In both cases, there's no magical extra detail.

Your recoder, incidentally, can record onto DVD+R, DVD-R and DVD+R DL (that's the dual layer you were wondering about). In general you'll get a better recording on +R and on +R DL than on -R.

In terms of video quality, on your machine it's HDMI, component and S-Video in descending order.

[BOAC]

I have an intermittent boot-up problem which I think is traceable to my somewhat old LG DVD drive, so looking at replacement. I see Bluray is still fairly pricey, and I am not a great DVD high-def user so - advice please? Do I lash out on Bluray, or can anyone recommend a good (internal/desktop) DVD writer?

[tony draper]

Another question re Blue Ray if I may, dont they use special Blue ray disks ie Movies recorded specifically for blue ray players? ie you can buy a standard movie, DVD or a Blue Ray version of he same movie?
Will a blue ray recorder allow me to record movies in full HD ie from a HD digital freeview box?
Just got a rebate from the nice tax man and as it is found money one is giving thought as what to buy with same.
:E

[Loose rivets]

My Sony Up-Thingie is so good, I've not been tempted to buy Blue Ray. Hard to see how it could be better. But, I do want to start recording, so will take on board all on this thread. However, will one's location in Texas make much difference?


Talking of which - with only a little bit of drift - I left my Vaio with me daughter and she tried to play a movie on it. It told her it was the wrong zone. Can this be changed? and if so, will it be fixed there for ever?

[le Pingouin]

BOAC, re. Blu-ray. Unless your computer has a compliant video card & monitor you won't be able to view the content at HD anyway due to DRM requiring a "protected path".

[BOAC]

a compliant video card & monitor - thanks - that solves the dilemma in one:)

[le Pingouin]

Loose rivets, DVD drives can have the region changed five times & then you're stuck with the last choice. There are ways & means but they involve flashing the DVD drive firmware - that risks trashing the drive if you pick the wrong model.

You may be able to play it with VLC: VideoLAN - VLC: Free streaming and multimedia solutions for all OS! (http://www.videolan.org/)

[Loose rivets]

Thanks for that: 5 times huh? I wonder who sat down and thought up that number.

[jimtherev]

Thing is, if you just want to play DVD's, the players are so cheap these days it's worth having a punt at flashing the firmware on a new cheapo or one in the parts box. I was given a few Region 1 films and a spare player, so popped it into the case, held me breath, & flashed. It worked & I watched the movies. The DVD player is still AFAIK working well in a bitsa machine I built for a neighbour - dunno where the movies are now.