Have you jumped onto the high definition movie train yet?

[Harrison]

It is the price of blank discs which has stopped me buying a Blu-Ray burner for the PC. The actual drivers are down to under £200 now and quite affordable, but with each blank disc cost quite a lot it isn't worth it currently. Dual Layer DVDs can hold over 9GB so they are fine for the moment, and have dropped in price recently to under £1 each.

I do however agree that HD does look a lot better than SD, and the difference between SD DVD and HD BR is very noticeable. However, I know many of the less popular films have just been upscaled for the format, so there is no point buying those as a decent DVD player with upscale and HDMI looks good as it is. But for the big films like Avatar, Star Wars, Alien, T2 etc BR is definitely the format to have them on.

I do however have a decent setup with Sony 5.1 DTS receiver and Eltax home cinema speakers, plus nice large sub, so the only thing missing is actually the BR player. I might get one later this year.

[Phantom]

The prices for BluRay are exactly the same as DVDs first appeared a decade ago. So wait 1-2 years, and you will buy blank BR disks in the price of DVDs and so on.

[Harrison]

Exactly, and it was the same for CD-Rs too in the beginning. I remember a single blank 650MB 2x CD-R costing £10.

I had to buy a CD-R when at university in 1996 for a multimedia project we were doing, and I remember sitting there with my fingers crossed waiting for the extremely slow process on a Mac with external Lacie burner to complete the process. But then by the end of 1998 I was buying packs of CD-Rs and burning them at home without any worries (although still many coasters back in those days as computers were definitely not as stable as they are now).

Actually, has anyone else noticed that with each new larger disc format the current computers seem to suddenly become a bit unstable and crash prone? When CD was first around you didn't dare breath on the keyboard, let alone touch the mouse, and had to disable screensaves and virus scanners to get the disc to burn successfully.

Then in 2001 the same was nearly as bad for the first DVD writers. Writing a DVD-R took over an hour and you just had to leave the system to get on with it and go and do something else. I don't think I had as many coasters with early DVD as I did with early CD, but it was still an unstable process.

And now with BR-R has anyone experienced similar unstable behaviour?

[outlawal2]

Yep, that is why I haven't tried a dual layer Blu Ray disk yet... Waiting for the software to catch up with the hardware in terms of stability... I think it is simply a buffering situation... Each new format adds HUGE amounts of data and the current buffering schemes that are incorporated in the software are insufficient to guarantee a perfect uninterrupted stream of data LONG ENOUGH to complete the huge write process... (Works OK for CD's and now DVD's, but not 25 or 50 Gig Blu-Rays) As you guys have said, each new format introduces huge amounts of data and instabilities because of it. A few years and the software will be sufficiently "smarter" and we won't have these issues..

Until the next big format comes down the pike..

[Harrison]

There is also the issue of the actual drives and their firmware. Early units for a new format are bound to not be as stable, and as these new technologies come down in price they can afford to add more ram for buffering on the drive itself, as well as develop better error correction and buffer underrun technology in the firmware, and then the software can utilise it to for better stability.

BTW< what software are you using to burn blu-ray?

[Phantom]

The newer version of Nero can write BRs?

[outlawal2]

There is also the issue of the actual drives and their firmware. Early units for a new format are bound to not be as stable, and as these new technologies come down in price they can afford to add more ram for buffering on the drive itself, as well as develop better error correction and buffer underrun technology in the firmware, and then the software can utilise it to for better stability.

BTW< what software are you using to burn blu-ray?

I am using the latest Roxio Creator 10 I believe...

[Harrison]

I stopped using Roxio software years ago after loads of issues. Nero supports BR writing.

[Phantom]

Don't laugh, but I still using Nero 6.0.

[outlawal2]

I stopped using Roxio software years ago after loads of issues. Nero supports BR writing.

Interesting as I stopped using NERO for the same reason! I also never liked how Nero always felt like a mish-mash of apps just thrown together.. The overall feel was not to my liking and then I had a lot of issues and it soured me on it completely..

I remember the last Nero I bought I downloaded a trial version and liked it well enough to buy it so I did.. Then when I downloaded the full version, I had a HECK of a time getting the templates and such to download and even though I had bought the full version it still said Trial all over the place and when re-installing it I had to input the original trial key and then the full key repeatedly.. Anyway, I just always felt like it was Billy Bob's software written in some hillbilly's garage somewhere... Really unprofessional feeling to me..

And since I am on a roll picking on Nero I might as well gripe about Roxio... The latest version doesn't allow you to pick and choose what you want to load so you end up filling over a GIG of hard drive space for a burning application. I HATE the fact that they removed the ability to pick and choose what you load. I will say that it HAS been stable with everything except the Blu-Ray stuff so it gets kind of a thumbs up on that front, but still not perfect by any means..

I wish they would write a version similar to TOAST for the Mac... Simple, elegant and easy to use and doesn't take up a lot of space... But apparently the PC folks all want all-encompassing do everything in the world burning apps... Or at least the software companies seem to think so anyway..