HD-DVD Burners?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Jeff, I never said it wasn't possible. I said it was DIFFICULT. The average consumer PC is far less expensive and powerful than your old BTO workstation is even by today's standards. That system may be ancient but it is a custom built WORKSTATION with a fatter data pipeline thanks to your workstation CPU and RAID workspace. It's about as close to the the average consumer desktop (one you can drive 15 minutes away and buy) as RED is to an HDV camcorder. RAID isn't even a possibility on most consumer desktops without resorting to eSATA add-in cards because the boards don't have RAID-capable SATA chipsets and many of the cases used by Dell, HP, and others now only allow 1 HDD because of the memory readers and other front end USB/Firewire/audio out crap with cabling that occupies the space that another disk would be sitting in. Some high-end Gateway units are now sporting RAID functionality out of the box with two 500GB WD HDDs in RAID-1/JBOD and that's about the only one you'll find on retail shelves. 10K Craptor? That's usually only available BTO and frankly a waste of money these days given that there are 7200 RPM drives that can keep up with it in data flow while trumping it in capacity for just a little bit more money. Most consumers are only willing to spend 600-800 dollars at the most on a PC unless they are a gamer and anyone who wants to do multimedia without the PC headaches is likely to use an iMac or MacPro for their creative work.

I guess I'm just not sure where you're coming from with this and with some of your comparisons. The one system I mentioned is just one I have that can toss around HD like it's no big deal and it's probably the oldest one, and that's why I chose it for an example. It's hardly a "workstation" class CPU, not even when I bought it. It was popular with gamers at the time, but HP was using the 2.0 and 2.2 GHz versions of that very same CPU in commodity desktops being sold at the local Office Depot and Sam's Club. Yeah, the RAID-0 made a difference, but my comparison was more geared toward saying I've been able to edit HD with off-the-shelf hardware for over 3 years. Common, consumer PCs these days will blow this system out of the water. I've bought a few over the last year or so that do. That's why the system I mentioned is now a "crappy basement computer" as I said. The only reason I keep it around is because it's incredibly stable and never crashes, but it just serves these days as a render node and print server.

But the difference between that system I referenced and a common PC these days is hardly as stark as a comparison between an HDV camcorder and a RED One. Also, those who are interested in editing HDV (or other forms of HD) are going to buy the system that they need. So, like I said, I'm not sure what you're getting at. People who are content buying a $600 PC for general computing tasks are not out there buying HDV camcorders... No, they're the ones buying the $229 Sanyo DV camcorder with the 4X optical zoom and the 20X digital zoom.

I can run over to Sam's Club and buy a $800 HP complete with LCD monitor that will handle HDV editing far better than that old system. Without altering any hardware, just wiping the hardware and putting on a clean install of WinXP without all the bloated shovel-ware the system comes from the factory with. Tweak a few BIOS settings and off I go. I've also got both a Macbook Pro and a PC notebook. The PC cost me less than $1K and both can handle dual streams of HDV or DVCPROHD and I would consider them both pretty mainstream, consumer products. Oh, a Macbook can do it too no need for the "pro".

[Scott M]

Jeff where can I buy that drive? So you can just pop the HD-DVDs and Blurays in and they work? Any software needed?

thanks!

This is the model in reference I believe:
http://us.lge.com/products/model/det...GGC-H20L.jhtml

This one also writes Blu-Ray
http://www.lge.com/products/model/detail/ggw-h10n.jhtml

[Jeff Kilgroe]

NewEgg has the GGC-H20L for $299

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827136133

There's also the GGC-H20[C], which appears to be discontinued. I have one of those -- it's the same drive, but without LightScribe ability. I paid $280 for it back in October from NewEgg.

The GGW-H10 is scarce for some reason -- I've heard a few different reasons, but don't know which (if any) are true. But it's supposedly a great product if you can find one.

Mwave and a few others have the H20 too.. I haven't shopped around for price on it.

[Häakon]

That way you'll not only save money but you'll avoid the problems with the ever changing software and hardware that is currently used not to mention avoid investing in a format that might lose. Both formats are going to undergo significant changes to their hardware and software in the next two years with the introduction of more layers and advanced interactivity features.

Welcome to being an early adopter. :-)

Clearly, from a financial and even arguably a logical sense it would make sense to wait. Some have even predicted that disc-based media is on its way out, what with movies and music now being quickly downloadable via broadband. I think not having a physical master of your stuff (that's typical far less compressed than the stuff you can download) is still way too important to be purchasing my entertainment online, but that's a totally different discussion.

The reason I bought a Blu-ray player and burner was that I've been shooting HD for several years and I'm tired of having to smoosh hi-res content on standard def discs. If you can wait it out for two more years, more power to you! :)

[Rob Lohman]

The GGC-H20L comes with an OEM version of PowerDVD which will playback both HD DVD and Blu-ray. I was really eyeballing this drive (especially since Best Buy had it for $225 or something last week, not anymore), but PowerDVD (or any other playback soft) does not integrate with Windows Media Center yet. I'll wait a bit longer and hopefully this drive drops a bit in price as well.

Otherwise it looks like a great drive. The only thing that has me a little concerned is that it doesn't list dual-layer support for HD DVD (it does for Blu-ray). Weren't those discs on the horizon?

[Lexicon]

The GGC-H20L comes with an OEM version of PowerDVD which will playback both HD DVD and Blu-ray. I was really eyeballing this drive (especially since Best Buy had it for $225 or something last week, not anymore), but PowerDVD (or any other playback soft) does not integrate with Windows Media Center yet. I'll wait a bit longer and hopefully this drive drops a bit in price as well.

Otherwise it looks like a great drive. The only thing that has me a little concerned is that it doesn't list dual-layer support for HD DVD (it does for Blu-ray). Weren't those discs on the horizon?

There is no true multi-layer writable standard for Blu-Ray (expected next year) but both have had dual-layer ROM for quite a while and the current drives have no issues reading them since many big titles on both formats are on dual-layer discs. HD-DVD has one on spec but it's not actually out there except in Asia. However, PC playback is pretty much a hit or miss activity since the software stinks due to format software changes and cracked software player keys which has rendered many titles unplayable until updates are available so I would not get a dual-format drive unless you have a stand-alone player for both formats to use as well. Of course you can always use the circumvention software but that hasn't been tested with every title and doesn't do anything for interactivity which is a big issue with the PC software.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Rob, and anyone else looking at the GCC-H20L. It is a great drive. The bundled software is garbage. To make full use of its playback abilities you'll have to buy the full version of PowerDVD or WinDVD or similar. The included copy of PowerDVD is crippled horribly.

I can understand waiting -- I'm not sure what DVD software out there will support both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as well as integrate with media center.

The drive does support dual-layer for HD-DVD. Most every HD-DVD movie title out there is dual-layer. They probably didn't see the need to list that as a supported feature whereas the Blu-Ray camp made a big deal about the dual layer thing a few months back. FWIW, a drive must support reading of dual-layer media to qualify for the HD-DVD logo and licensing.

[Rob Lohman]

Thanks for that info Jeff!

I'm waiting for this: http://www.arcsoft.com/products/totalmediatheatre/

Apparently it's quite good with BD & HD DVD and it should be out soon. I just hate I missed the good Best Buy deal, oh well....

Did you buy that drive Jeff? Happy with it?

I'm also trying to figure out all the HD stuff in the US and it's a big mess. Especially cablecard on a computer. Ugh. But that's a different thread :)