At a flashy press conference a month ago to promote its new Total Hi Def Disc, Warner Home Video invoked the heroic image of Superman rescuing a crashing airliner. Expected later this year, Total Hi Def disc (THD) will combine HD DVD on one side and Blu-ray Disc (BD) on the other side, thus delivering …
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These days it seems that every Tom, Dick, and Harry is cobbling DVD and CD copiers in their basement workshops. So it’s reassuring to have options available from established vendors. Best known for its Editor’s Choice-winning Bravo line of automated systems, Primera Technology has expanded its offerings to now include a manually operated standalone tower …
We all know that writable Blu-ray Discs (BD) store a lot more information than HD DVDs. But does it really matter? When it comes to employing them in next-generation high-definition (HD) camcorders, it certainly does.
To my mind, seamless evolution requires that, in addition to their own media, BD and HD DVD devices record and play high-definition video (HD) content to and from writable DVD (DVD±R/DL/RW) discs.
It would be better if some products never saw the light of day. Certainly, that’s the case with DVD rewritable dual-layer (DL) which is scheduled to appear early next year. Sure, manufacturers promise great things, but why introduce yet another soon-to-be outdated technology to cause more problems for a confused market?
Isn’t it amazing that for all of the careful design they put into CD and DVD technology, the engineers never stopped to consider how discs might be labeled on the desktop? Thankfully, the marketplace has come to the rescue with its own solutions—some good, some not so good, but all ingenious in their own regard.
Why are recordable and rewritable DVD media saddled with the same labeling options as CD-R and CD-RW discs? Felt pens, sticky labels, and inkjet, thermal transfer, and re-transfer printers serve CDs and DVDs alike, but shouldn’t DVDs enjoy something innovative and special?
Playing compressed music recorded to recordable and rewritable DVD discs seems to me to be the most logical path forward for the consumer electronics industry.
By incorporating CD-RW support directly into future operating systems, Philips, Sony, Compaq, and Microsoft have unilaterally declared CD-RW to be the replacement for the floppy disk. They call it “Mt. Rainier.” What others may call it is another matter — maybe high-handed? Or arrogant? It’s like declaring darkness the industry standard if you aren’t smart …
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