Which DVD?

Life

Anyone remember the VHS versus Betamax war when video recorders became popular? Well, history is repeating itself in the DVD arena. It seems the big boys cannot agree on a standard player/recorder, which makes it difficult for the consumer to choose one to buy. Not only are the standards different, but the terminology is bewildering.

To understand the situation, a little history is required. Basically, there are two organisations responsible for this competing standard. The oldest is the DVD Forum, which consists of companies like Apple, Intel, Pioneer, IBM, Toshiba and others. It was responsible for the original DVD-ROM and DVD-Video standards. The second organisation is known as the DVD+RW Alliance; it also has some serious players like Sony, Philips, Dell and HP to name a few. This consortium created its own standard; what makes them interesting is that between them they have a sizeable home consumer market share.

Current DVD media standards

In the marketplace, at the moment there is DVD ROM, DVD Audio, DVD Video, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM. Confused? It’s not surprising.

The easiest way to look at these standards is to see what format produces what.

DVD ROM

The replacement for the CD ROM, it is a format common to most DVD players.

DVD audio

DVD Audio produces higher quality audio than current CD Audio. It includes coding for Dolby AC3 and surround sound; dual-sided DVD Audio can store up to two hours of surround sound audio. For the music industry, it is easier to copy protect DVD Audio and include more information such as text and images. It may be some time yet before this media replaces the current CD standard.

DVD video

When you go to the local video store, this is the format the film industry uses. Total capacity is a maximum of 17Gbyte and many home DVD players use DVD ROM drives to play the movie. It can hold 133 minutes of Mpeg 2 video, plus multiple audio channels.

DVD-R

Developed by the DVD Forum and Pioneer, DVD-R has 4.7Gbyte storage capacity. It is the basic unit of DVD storage, can be read by most drives and it is a write-once format. It is also the format used on Apple computers. There are two modes of writing to DVD-R discs, called authoring: General and professional. General is for consumer use, while professional allows for copy protection and anti-piracy measures and is not available to the public.

DVD-RW

This is the re-writeable version of DVD-R. It can be written up to 1000 times and has a shelf life of 100 years.

DVD+R/+RW

The DVD Alliance grew out of the DVD Forum about six years ago; its claim to fame is that its standard is fully compatible with all DVD Video and DVD ROM players. DVD+R is a write-once medium of 4.7Gbyte capacity, while +RW can be written to up 1000 times. It also says that its standard is more reliable as it uses a technology called ‘defect management’ for better backups.

DVD-RAM

Created by the DVD Forum, DVD-RAM discs can be thought of as similar to hard disks. Unlike DVD-RW, which writes data sequentially, a DVD-RAM disk can be written to randomly. They are mainly used as data storage and only work in DVD-RAM drives. Physically, they look like a CD housed in a floppy disk. They are sold as single-sided at 4.7Gbyte or double-sided 9.4Gbyte. These discs can be written up to 100,000 times.

Compatibility

So does your new DVD player support home DVDs written, for example, three years ago? This is not an easy question to answer. DVD plus can read DVD minus discs, but not the other way round. DVD burners built by the DVD Forum members can only work with DVD minus media types. The organisation has introduced a new standard called DVD Multi, which will read all DVD Forum media formats — note DVD Forum media only. On the Alliance side, its more willing to end all this nonsense by offering a multi-standard drive that can work with minus as well as plus R drives and media. Sony’s DRX-500UL is a good example of this. Its external drive supports out of the box DVD+RW/R, DVD-RW/R and CD-R/RW. It comes with USB 2 and iLink cables for high-speed data transfer and excellent user-friendly authoring software like MyDVD, ArcSofts’s Showbiz and Veritas Record Now. What this machine shows is that it is possible to have all your formats supported in one box. Which begs the question: Why has it taken six years to produce a drive that supports all formats? What would have been really impressive is if all adhered to an agreed format and not leave the consumer confused. For sure it’s great to see the capabilities of these drives but if I archive vital data now, will I be able to use it again in ten years time, given that future formats may diverge just as much as in the past?

There is some good news on the horizon, as both HP and Apple, two of the largest PC manufacturers in the world will supply multi-standard drives. And so if I upgrade now, will it play the home video I recorded three years ago? The simplest answer is probably not, so buyers beware!

Which way to go?

Whatever one thinks about the Forum and the Alliance, what is Microsoft’s view on the issue? While they have built in support for both formats into their operating systems, they have recently come down on the side of the DVD Alliance. The next version of Windows XP, called ‘Longhorn’ and due around 2005, will have more support for DVD Plus drives. Using ‘Mount Rainier’ technology, these drives will behave like a big floppy drive using drag and drop without the need for propriety software. Also, as HP and Dell manufacture a massive amount of the worlds PCs and are members of the DVD Plus Alliance, it follows that more and more DVD Plus drives will appear on the market. The salutary feature of Plus technology is that the disc does not have to be formatted or prepared before using it. With DVD Minus it has to be readied before writing. For flexible recording and editing, DVD Plus drives offer the best performance. With DVD Minus drives, any re-editing means copying the data to the hard drive, editing and then burning to the DVD: Time consuming. If one were a betting man, it would appear that using a multi-format drive offers the best solution, but they are not cheap. Multi-format drives are more expensive to manufacture, and at the moment they are difficult to get as they are in demand. It’s also worth remembering when shopping for the cheapest media that you could accidentally write to a disc that will not function in another player.

Most of the benefits of DVD Plus drives seem to stem from the software rather than the hardware and they playback in most drives. The DVD minus camp may yet come out with software that makes their efforts work with Plus drives and thus all this will be ended. However for the immediate future and given the fact the industry’s biggest names are backing DVD Plus, it would be a logical choice to make if you are about to upgrade or buy a new PC.

Practical uses

So what could you use a DVD burner for? Firstly for backing up your valuable data. All Microsoft operating systems have been supplied with basic backup software, so you can copy valuable documents, e-mail or updates to a diskette, Zip disk, CD or DVD. DVD simply offers more storage capacity. If you like to take pictures or home movies with a digital camera, you can burn them to DVD and distribute them to family and friends. The software supplied with many burners is very easy to use. If you need to make a back-up copy of valuable software then DVD is handy; the humble CD ROM can only store 700Mbyte of data, but many programs often run to a gigabyte or more. These backups are allowed solely for personal use in case the original gets damaged. Larger companies can use DVD for data archiving or distributing software updates. Whether its video, data, pictures, music or movies, DVD media means you can get more onto one disc.

Blu-ray disc

As technology never stands still, the future outlook for DVD is inevitably to get more data onto the same size disc. Blu-ray is the next generation, which aims to get up to 27Gbyte of sound and video onto a disc, and there are talks of pushing this to over 50Gbyte. Instead of using a conventional red laser, Blu-ray uses a short wavelength blue violet laser. This system allows for up to two hours of recording of High Definition video or more than 13 hours of standard TV broadcasts. With Blu-ray, you can also record a TV broadcast while editing other video data on the same disc. The disc itself will be housed in a cartridge to guard against dust and fingerprints, much like the DVD-RAM disc. While aimed mainly at sound and video storage, data storage is being considered and would certainly be a contender in the SME market where tape is the dominant data storage medium at the moment.

Upgrading to a multi format drive

So you want to take the next leap and install a multi format drive? It’s easy.

First of all, it depends on whether it is external or internal. Let us start with the external drive. Generally, it follows that the first step is to install the software. Once that is done, power down the PC and disconnect from the mains. Attach the drive to a free USB port and the mains lead of the DVD to an electrical outlet. Power on the DVD drive and then reconnect and restart the PC. During boot up, the PC will find the new hardware, install the drivers for it and assign a drive letter. That’s it! Double click My Computer to ensure that the drive has registered and test it using the supplied software to write whatever information you want.

For internal installation, there’s a bit more work involved. In most cases the software has to be installed first. Once the software is installed, power down the PC and, depending on your system builder, remove the casing to expose either a free slot or remove a drive you want to replace. If the case has a seal saying that removing the cover invalidates your warranty and you are within the warranty period, contact the system builder for advice or to fit the drive for you. Do not open the PC covers with the electrical mains still connected. Earth yourself by touching the bare metal casing to discharge any static or better still wear an anti static wrist strap. In some cases, mounting rails have to be fitted to the new drive so that it can be slotted and screwed into place. Remove the old mounting rails or fit new ones. Do not over tighten. Locate and attach the secondary IDE cable and if there is more than one CD/DVD drive, ensure that one drive is set to master and the other to slave via the jumper settings on the drives. These little jumper settings are found between the IDE and Audio connections. The power and IDE cables can only be inserted one way, so there is no fear of getting the cabling wrong. If this is a single drive, you may have to attach an audio cable from the drive to the sound card. If you are replacing a drive, a word of caution: Do not yank or forcefully remove the power and IDE connections, especially the IDE connector. The IDE ribbon cable can break where it connects to a drive and the break may not be visible. Rock the connector gently from side to side until it comes off. Once the drive is in place, put back on the casings and start up the PC. The operating system will see the new drive and may prompt you for the CD to install the driver. Install any applications that came with the drive. Again do a test write to the drive to make sure it is working.

03/07/2003

Read More: PC & Peripherals