Cheaper DVD writers

[confus-ed]

Saw an add for a £200 ($300 usd), now I ain't thought about one of these at all, I understand about the two recording formats and compatability issues with players but beyond that nothing.....

[kato]

With all the people pissed at HP and phillips for saying that drives would be upgradable to DVD+RW via firmware then not honoring this statement and making people buy new drives, I bet you could pick up one of those DVD-R drives pretty cheaply on ebay.

[confus-ed]

No ebay, NEW !

[freddy]

which one u looking at ?

hav,nt realy got involved with the dvd copying side due to pricing (rip off britain).

strieght question : can u (legally or not) copy a dvd rental film from *****busters to a blank DVD ,,,,AND will it play in a stand alone DVD player.

if the answer to this is yes then , i think A: its a good price and B: ,,if u give me the link then i will go and buy one.

BUT if the answer is no ,,,then apart from keeping xgig of data on a disk ,,,(its got to be cheaper cdr @ 34p) ,,,i cant see any reason to buy one yet.

cheers freddy

[Archer]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> can u (legally or not) copy a dvd rental film from *****busters to a blank DVD ,,,,AND will it play in a stand alone DVD player. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mmmm.....Hot subject with overlords here ....Thoeretically as per CDs you would need to overcome the encryption and copyright protection first and the DVD type used i.e Juliet would have to be compatable with the player.One way used at the momment is to convert them VCD`s,this said yes it is illegal in many ways.

[freddy]

it,s funny , a mate rung me up as i was reading confus-ed post , RE: a philips standalone copyer , as i have had dealings with the philips standalone CD-R ,,,,and having to use (theoreticly) philips own brand of disk ,,,,,which are approx £2.00 each ,,,but in practice a (still expensive) audio cd ,,,i advised him to obtain more info.

now re: the dvd writers , i have just opened a page at <a href="http://www.vcdhelp.com" target="_blank">www.vcdhelp.com</a> ,,and looking a reviews on CERTAIN machines , they can be read from a standalone .

have got VCDs off to an art (for legal use of course)using CLADDVD xp 1.3 with frameserver (dvd2avi) and TMPGEnc , using a hand written MCF file , ,,,,dont rush em ,,leave it running overnight on 2passVBR and high quality (slow)

buit if u want your prossesser "cooking" run TMPGEnc ,,,multi times!!!!!!

limit before crash (xp1900/2k/1g mem) 8 x 2hr films = cpu at 62c ,,,,

freddy

[Archer]

Seems an informative link it would seem by your info that a very high spec machine would be a requirement for your "legal" copying to get even an adequete output along with lots of harddisk space.
Perhaps you should consider investing in a dual processor type and/or refrigration cooling would not be out of the question.
There seems to be a lot of postings,shall we say, of on the edge subjects these days.

[freddy]

for the "average" dvd-vcd then i would recomend a prog called dvdx (NOT DIVX) , the output from that is "acceptable" , but not good enough for me. this prog is freeware and can be d/loaded from the above site. you do of corse have to tick a box to accept that you are not breaking any laws.
also in the uk we have "slightly different " laws -yes pireting if not looked on nicely by the law, a large proportion of progs regarding ripping encoding etc a specificly not allowed to be d/loaded if u live in the US.

and no , i usually only do one encode at a time ,(about 4 hrs + 10mins for clad+frameserving) , doing 8 entails a lot of time - and apart from that , my internal s/ware modem won,t kick in!!!!

Don,t try this @ home kids.

now i,m sorry mods , but the above progs are available in the UK ,,,and as clearly stated , any copies are for your own use.

freddy

[Archer]

Just saw a ...cough... of Star Wars Clones the other day someone had obtained,it was in two 170Mb files and produced a screen about 3x2 inches needed a lot of squinting to watch and seemed to be a lot of work to go to for such a poor copy.

[freddy]

agreed , i have also seen that "illigal" copy , at a party the other night. that "pireted copy" was recorded in a cinema (did you see the guy stand up , towards the end) with a camcorder!!!! and can be found on several "questionable" sites.

the quality on that is bad.
using the first system i suggested , mose films are full screen ,or by pressing the ZOOM button on your stand alone it will come to full screen.

as you may have noticed the majority of players in the UK will not play "copies" ,,,and a lot will not play copied music CDs , all machines at argos/dixons/debenhams/index are "locked" to dvd only ,

but any person (in the UK)wanting a machine that will play dvd/vcd/audio/copy-audio/mp3s ,,,then i can suggest "asda" model 950 (not 1000) , this is on offer at about £89.99.

good luck and happy watching , freddy

[confus-ed]

Errrrrr I want to know about DVD writers, I'm pretty straight on the idea of copyright...... :rolleyes:

Legally, here(uk), Europe & North America the rule is simple - 1 copy for backup purposes, where you keep the backup copy & what you do with that are another story....

I want to know about writing times both data & 'copying', media costs, reliability, support all that stuff..... :confused:

[Raffaz]

If you want good DVD players you should check out techtronics.com. Excellent value and they all come chipped. Ive had my player for over 3 years and it can still cope with the RCE disks even though they only came out about 1 and a half years ago.