> I think it would be helpful, quite a few people have privately > mailed me asking for the status of this drive, and the author of > cdrecord is willing to add patches to fix any problems
The rest of this message was my response to a user who posted a question to our local LUG about whether he should buy an HP DVD200i at best buy for $300. The user didn't seem to understand the whole DVD-R[W]/+R[W] issue. Since I threw away money on the wrong drive over the same mistake at one point, I felt compelled to provide some additional information. These are my observations about the Sony DRU-500A in hopes that this information will be useful. Please feel free to correct anything that is wrong here. ------------------- With the Sony DRU-500A, just be aware that dvdrtools does not work. You need cdrecord-prodvd to write DVD-R or DVD-RW format. It is free (as in beer) for non-commercial use. The author charges a modest $100 for a commercial license. DVD+R and DVD+RW format work great with dvd+rw-tools. The big issue is what format you want. There are five recordable DVD formats: DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM. DVD-RAM is really in its own category. DVD-RAM is basically an optical hard drive. It was designed for a different purpose from the others. DVD-R and DVD-RW are analogous to CD-R and CD-RW. They are official recordable DVD formats sanctioned by the DVD consortium. (I personally don't think this necessarily makes them more legitimate than the +R and +RW formats, but others may differ.) DVD-R discs are readable on virtually every DVD-ROM drive and DVD-VIDEO recorder. The free tool that you can use to write DVD-R and DVD-RW is dvdrtools. It is known to work with the Pioneer DVR-A04. I believe it works on the DVR-A05, but I'm not sure. There is some experimental not-yet-released code in dvd+rw-tools that supports DVD-RW in packet mode. I don't know the details. DVD+R and DVD+RW are formats devised by a group of companies including Sony, HP, and Philips, if I recall correctly. The claim to be the more compatible format on the basis of the physical media details being closer to DVD-ROM than DVD-R and -RW, but evidence suggests otherwise. DVD-R is certainly the most widely readable read-only format. For both types of formats, the write-once format (-R, +R) is more widely readable than the write-many format (-RW, +RW), but otherwise, it's very device dependent. The Sony DRU-500A is the only drive on the market right now that can write all four formats, though as I said, it can only write the +R/+RW formats on Linux with free and open source software. (Also -RW in packet mode, but still no -R.) It also supports 4x DVD recording. (So does the Pioneer DVR-A05.) Note that the Pioneer drive is a -R/-RW drive and the HP is a +R/+RW drive. I'll share my specific experiences. I have access to a Sony DRU-500A, an HP DVD100i (the predecessor to the 200i: supports +RW but not +R), and three different DVD-ROM drives: a Pioneer DVD116, a Creative Labs PC-DVD, and the DVD/CD-RW combo drive on my HP Omnibook laptop. The compatibility results are pretty surprising. All the drives can read DVD-R fine. HOWEVER, the creative and pioneer DVD-ROM drives have a hard time reading DVD-R discs that I write using cdrecord-prodvd on the Sony DVR-500A. I haven't figured out why. My laptop's DVD drive can read DVD-R and DVD-RW without any trouble including the very same DVD-R discs that the other two DVD-ROM drives can't read properly. The Pioneer and Creative DVD-ROM drives don't have any trouble reading DVD+R or DVD+RW format, but it takes the drives as long as 30 seconds to recognize a DVD+RW disc when you insert it. The Sony DRU-500A reads everything readily, as does the HP DVD100i. With the various compatibility issues I have, I end up writing a DVD-R and a DVD+R version of stuff I want to use widely. For archiving and backups, DVD-R is my preferred format. At present, no progress has been made, or does it seem any effort is being made, to support DVD-R and -RW with the Sony-DRU500A under Linux with dvdrtools, but I'd bet this will change some day. There is also a rather serious problem with dvdrtools and cdrecord-prodvd which is that it ignores the speed parameter when you write discs. This causes problems if you use a disc rated at 2x or 1x on a 4x drive. The recording software, even if you specifically tell it otherwise, will try to record at higher speed than the media supports. This will generally cause either write failures or, worse, successful writes and discs that can't be read. I suspect that is at the root of the problems with discs that I've written on my Sony DRU500A that I can't read on my Pioneer DVD-ROM drive. This problem comes up from time to time on the dvdrtools mailing list, but nothing is ever done about it. dvdrtools and cdrecord-prodvd apparently refuse to honor the speed parameter for writing CDs as well. These are both based on cdrtools 1.11 alpha releaes. cdrecord with cdrtools 1.10 does not have this problem but also doesn't support DVD recording. Even so, I'd agree with the assessment that a Sony-DRU 500A would be the first choice, and that the Pioneer DVR-A05 would be the second choice. If you care utomst about DVD-R capability under Linux, go with the Pioneer. I suspect, however, that this must not be the case if you were considering the HP drive. The way I look at it, the Sony drive does everything the HP drive does under Linux right now and has the potential to do much more. It already does much more under Windows. Since it costs about the same, there's no reason to look further than the Sony DRU500A if you want DVD+R/+RW formats. This turned out to be longer than I thought, but hopefully it will be useful.... -- Jay Berkenbilt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.ql.org/q/ _______________________________________________ Dvdrtools-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/dvdrtools-users
