Burning DVD's with a CD-RW? Or do you need a DVD player on your computer?

[Atomic-Design]

Subject

[RocketJeff]

To burn DVD's, you need a DVD Recorder. There are many different burning formats available, none have settled as an industry standard (more info (http://www.a1-electronics.net/PcHardware/CD-RW/DVDrecordinfo.shtml)).

There are plenty of DVD recorders available, the low end is usually about $200.

[CPimaging]

You need a DVD burner to burn a DVD. I have a Sony DW-U10A, it burns 4 formats! The link above has left one format off their list, DVD+R.

Here's another link explaining DVD formats: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,104702,pg,2,00.asp

[RocketJeff]

The many different (and incompatable) formats, as well as the high cost of media, is one reason I haven't bought a DVD recorder yet. Hopefully there will be some consolidation of the industry to get to at least a defact standard soon...

[satis]

or.... are you talking about burning DVD movies to CDs? You CAN do that... SVCD is the main format for that, but it usually takes 2+ CDs to burn one DVD movie. If that's what you're talking about, check out DVD2SVCD

http://www.dvd2svcd.org/

[Saiyan_Trunks]

I agree with satis.

SVCD is good, however some people say that the quality is a little worse, but I never really seen that much of a difference.

[satis]

yea, that's really dependent on the bitrate you set it as. If you try to squeeze a three hour movie onto 2 CDs (or 1!) then it's gonna sound and look like crap. But on 4 CDs (Lord of the Rings) you can't tell the difference. No menus, of course, or extras, but the movie itself is flawless.

Just for the record, I only advocate this for personal backup reasons. And it's very time consuming... on a 1.2ghz machine with 512MB of RAM (PC 133) it took about 24 hours to backup a movie. On my 2ghz pc with 1024MB of RAM (DDR333), it takes about 9 hours. So be prepared to let it run for awhile.

[CPimaging]

Why not just buy the movie? Spend the 20 bucks for the real deal. Putting a movie onto CDs is just a waste of time in my book.