Sony Dual Layer DVD+R Drive Available; No Media Yet
 

Just found out from Sony directly - the drive is available and in stock (DRU-700A) but there's no dual layer media yet and it doesn't come with it. So if you're looking to buy a new burner now, the DRU-700A is the way to go, but dual layer media might not be available for a couple more weeks.

Needless to say, if anyone hears about DL media becoming available, please let us know. ;)

Yes, there is but in Japan!
1 disc is about 16USD!
Have fun!

Any link on where to get it, Bogdan? Thanks!

Hmm... I thought I saw announced in a web shop DL media - couldn't find it today.

Here's a link to Mitshubishi media:
http://www.mcmedia.co.jp/japanese/news/press/0034.html

Thanks but I can't read Japanese. ;) I guess I'll just have to wait till they become available here later this month or next.

another thing to note is that at this time, theres very VERY minimal support..

no doubt there will be a DVDA2 patch comin out soon consinering theyre both sony products... ;)

Nero comes with the drive and support DL burning.

The huge question marks though are -

- How does it handle the layer break and PTP / OTP?
- Will these movies play in stand alone video players?

Unfortunately no reviews have yet mentioned either of these two things.

Sorry Peter - it's Mitsubishi media announcement that it starst from May.14th. There is always a delay for actual media to hit the shelfs of coarse. The drive itself should come bundled with 1 of those disks though.

OK, this time I have something better - read here:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=2045

Also dvd forums are good place to look. Eventually the firmwares matter a lot.
Read a quote from a new owner of Sony 700a:

quote__________________

"I've been having some probs with my new Sony DRU700a writer at first it refused to write at 2x to RITEK G04 and was giving bad writes to FUJIFILM03 at 2x and not so great at 4x on either (Can't select 6x and 8x writing for this disk as it isn't even listed in the media list).
I speed hacked the media table to allow 1x writing to ritek g04 and it then would write at 2x, but these where terrible burns, they looked like zone-clv, 1 3rd light, 1 3rd darker and 1 3rd really dark, pio scans where awful... So changed the firmware to the original Lite On 832s firmware, enabled 1x writing for ritek medias, also enabled 8x writing for 8x +r verbs?? and it works like a dream, every disk tried now at 2x is perfect, i even flashed back to 700a stock just to test and got bad burns again.
Thse drives are supposed to be the same, but i think i've found that the firmware shipping in the lite on is superior to that in the Sony.

P.S. my retail boxed Sony came with no DL media, even though someone in the US claims his did, there isn't any media listed in the itinery so i haven't been able to test DL media, my local comp shop reckons he'll get me some in next week, yeah right m8, just keep smoking that crak pipe"

quote end_______________

Well Verbatim in the US is saying end of May. I won't hold my breath, but I will keep my fingers crossed:

http://www.verbatim.com/news/news_de...D91B6B8EC9A36D

I just hope they're not priced unreasonably. I could see them making the disks cost $10+ just to deter piracy. After all, who would copy a movie to a $10 DL disk when they can buy it for less than twice that price?

Ah, one store is taking pre orders and saying they will ship after June 30, 2004:

http://www.americal.com/pd/94912.html

The price is not terrible for such a new product, but I'll hold off on preordering all the same just to see what else comes along.

All in all it seems for now the DL thing is not the best choce.

First media is at least 2x more expensive than 2 normal brand disks.
Second the write speed seems 3x slower than recording on 2 normal disks.

May be waiting to May next year is the better choice?

It depends on why you want it. If your goal is to make DVD-9's that people can watch in their video players (which happens to be my goal) I'm more than willing to pay $6 per disk and wait for the 2.4x burn time.

DVD-9 replication costs about $1400 for 1000 minimum and that doesn't even include packaging. So this is a good deal if it works.

i'm getting the impression here that some of you guys are actually planning on burning dvd+r dl's at 2.4x and selling 'em to the general public? that's what, a 45 minute record time, with some people claiming that the format will never exceed a 4x burn speed.

the real problem is that it's compatibility is totally unproven in the marketplace... it's tough enuf getting the current dvd-r's to work in all players, i sure wouldn't want to spend the big $$$ on this new format, only to be on the cutting edge of compatibility testing... and that $1400 for commercial dupes will look like chicken feed when it's compared to hassling with a bunch of customer returns, and lost future sales.

let it go for year, then take a serious look.

When I only need to make 25 copies, you're damned right I want to use these DVD+R DLs. We'll see if there's compatibility problems. There's no way to know yet, but no reason to be pessimistic. It's just as likely that they work as well as normal DVD+Rs as that they don't.

i know peter mentioned this here is some more info on verbatim...

http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/R...ArticleID=8506

One thing I'm curious about, and I don't mean to start advocating piracy but it's just an interesting topic I think, is whether this media will be useful for that purpose. Can you in fact copy a DL DVD, burn it to this DVD+R DL, and have it play just like the original? And if so, why is Hollywood not super upset by this? I wonder if the answer is, in fact, that you cannot, but if that is the case, how are we mortals to author DL DVDs of our own if it's not as simple as making a VIDEO_TS directory and throwing the files into it without regard to the layer break?

So many questions.

peter, 25 copies isn't nearly enuf to justify the cost of this new format... perhaps there are other aspects of your business model that could somehow benefit from higher media expenses and slower dupe times?

btw, ever hear the old saw about how you can tell who the pioneers are? just look for the guy with all the arrows sticking out of his back.

been there, done that, which is why i'm fud-mongering this new technology so hard :-)

Oh come on, you're just cynical. :) I have faith in Sony.

BTW may be you can find other DL drives are just annouced so it's really only the start for all that. You might be even better off wiating few weeks and read some reviews on the competition.
I'm not a Sony fan but copying shouldn't be issue. You have the right to copy your own DVDs and in the moment there are many utilities to do so. I'm sure that no long after wider publicity of the DL format you can do the same onto DL media.

Except the layer break is an issue. See when you get DVD-9s pressed, you have to give two DLTs and they specifically burn one glass master with layer 0 and the other with layer 1. The layer break is often carefully positioned to minimize viewing impact. Sometimes, even on DVD-9s, the movie is intentionally kept under 4.7 billion bytes so there's no layer break.

Point is, how will the burning software handle this? If you can make an 8.5 GB DVD project in, say, Adobe Encore, and then just burn the whole damn thing in Nero, that'd be one thing. But is special authoring software required to position the layer break just so the Sony drive knows where to put it? Does it have to be at the end of a VTS in order to work right? Etc. Unanswered questions. Potentrially, it may be difficult to back up existing DVDs, as well as difficult to author DVD-9 projects of our own. These are the main reasons I want to get my hands on a DVD+R DL so I can find all this out.

well, the good news is that the burner is cheap, at $199.

the bad news is that it's only giving a 43% compatability rate... i must be some kind of a mind reader... or perhaps it's all of those arrows sticking out of my back after all these years :-)

disc production won't ramp up until 2005, maybe sony will indeed get the bugs worked out of it by then... this review also talks about your layer break issue:

http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/R...ArticleID=8568

Yep it seems under 50% at the moment. And the discs haven't been playing in SL drives.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1596779,00.asp

Jake

Damn those are the first hard compatibility figures I've heard and that is indeed frustrating. I wish there was a way to know if they'd play in my DVD player at least. Hopefully there'lld be broad compatibility testing soon. I'd get it simply to have a reference for my DVD projects before replication, if for no other reason.

One thing, Sony advertises these discs as playing back in "most" consumer video players. 42% is not "most." That makes me quite ticked.

It's all a bit up in the air as you'd expect when things are still being finalised and very little testing has been done.

A guy gave a report that he was finding the DL was having about the same amount of compatibility as SL in most settop players but falling over when it came to ROM drives. I guess things will become clearer as time goes on!

Jake