The first DVD player was released in the US market in March 1997. Sony released their first commercial DVD player in April 1997. Since then, the number of DVD players sold in the US has risen to more than 85,00,000, while more than 1,22,00,000 DVDs have been sold.
The acceptability of DVD as the most preferred storage media on this side of the planet is slowly but surely picking up with good reason. DVD ROM drives are fast becoming regular devices in PCs, and computer users as well as DVD movie enthusiasts are aware of the fact that DVD writers not only allow you to back up data, but also copy movie DVDs.
Why DVD?
Say you need to take a large backup, and say your options are a new large hard disk, a DVD Writer or a tape drive. Investing in a new hard drive may look feasible, but suffers from the portability angle. A tape drive can be very expensive for a SoHo busin
ess.
And this leaves only the DVD Writer. Commonly available DVD media in the market today costs around Rs 120, while a DVD Writer costs approximately Rs 5,000. The costs involved in purchasing a tape drive and cartridges may be too much for a SoHo business, leave alone a home.
This is why the DVD comes out tops. While offering more than six times the storage space of a CD, it is also very affordable now. Yes, it does take some time for writing data on to a DVD, but this is better than juggling seven CDs around one after the other.
The Format Wars
Buying a DVD writer is just a matter of minutes. However, buying the right one will need some research from your side. First up, let us clear the confusion among the various formats of DVD media available in the market.
The DVD R/RW format was developed by Pioneer and released back in 1997. However, they faced various compatibility issues.
The DVD R format is further split into DVD R (A) (Authoring) and DVD R (G) (General) formats. The difference is the laser used to write on them. DVD R (A) and the DVD R (G) are not compatible with each other: DVD R (A) disks are not recordable in DVD R (G) drives and vice versa.
In addition, the capacities of these disks vary according to format. DVD R (A) disks have
a capacity of 3.95 GB, and DVD R (G) disks are available in capacities of 4.7GB.
The DVD+R/RW format is relatively new it became available worldwide only in late 2001.The DVD+R made its appearance in only in mid 2002.
DVD R/RW and DVD+R/RW media are not compatible with each other. You cannot write DVD R/RW disks in DVD+R/RW drives and vice versa. This can be quite a hassle and hence manufacturers have come out with dual format DVD drives, which can write to either type of media.
DVD R media get written at a lower speed than DVD+R media. The theoretical limit for both these type of media is 16X, and a select few DVD+R/RW drives have already reached the limit whereas the DVD R format is yet to do so. Another reason that makes DVD R/RW look bad is the finalisation property when writing a disk. Say you want to write a video DVD comprising different clips.
In the case of a DVD RW disk, you will need to finalise the DVD (marking the leadin and lead out) before you can use it on a standalone DVD player. For a DVD+RW disk, this need not be done it will be compatible with a standard DVD player. This is the DVD+RW VR (DVD+RW Video Recording) feature. DVD R/RW and DVD+R/RW are compatible
with 85 per cent of stand alone DVD video players.
The Dual Layer Format
All DVD media available in the market are limited to single layer single sided mode (DVD5) and can hold up to 4.7 GB of data. Some manufacturers sell dual sided single layered media (DVD 10), but this is a fast disappearing species since the same amount of data can fit on a single sided dual layered DVD 9 disk.
Dual layered media has not been available for the general users until now; however, Philips and Mitsubishi Kagaku
Media have developed the DVD+R/RW dual layered media meant for general users. Not to be left behind, Pioneer has released the DVD R dual layer format for general users, continuing the format wars.
Dual layer media is still in its infancy since DVD writers that can write on dual layered media cost more than the usual dual format DVD writers do. Similarly, dual layered media is scarce worldwide and still not freely available in the local market. Another factor is that only the DVD+R/RW format is available in the dual layer format, for now.
For the purists who would rather opt for a dual format, dual layer DVD writer there still may be some time to go before you can actually lay your hands on one.
Trends
The market for DVD Writers is exploding. The average selling price of DVD recorders was expected to fall by as much as 50 per cent in late 2004 as Taiwanese shipments of DVD recorders increased sharply, a governmentbacked market research firm in Taipei said. Nomura Securities estimated that
the global
DVD recorder market would reach $4.6 billion in 2004, while Pioneer estimates global demand to more than double in 2005 to 8.24 million units from a forecast of 3.6 million units for 2004.
Many users quote compatibility issuesa result of the format wars as one of the problems they face when making a buying decision. Naturally, all format recorders, which can record to all DVD media, are the answer.
Says R Manikandan of LG on the major trends in DVDs in 2005: DVDs will become very popular in 2005. Overall Prices of DVD media is expected to come down owing to volumes spiralling upwards. "DVD writers will become the most popular drive in the market," he said. LG offers the world's only all format DVD Writer. It is the fastest DVDWriter at 16X, and can support all the formats in the world."
The last word comes from Ashmit Shah, a student in Mumbai. He says about his hard disk crash: "My hard disk crashed on me all of a sudden, the way they always seem to do. What in the world would I have done if I had not taken a backup of all my data onto DVDs?"
The point here is that it had taken just about a dozen DVDs and a few hours for the entire backup.
