Frankly, at this point I hardly care about either HD DVD or Blu-ray media. I want to (and am able to) author HD high quality on regular old DVD+-R for both types of players. If it takes them a couple of years to get the high priced media bugs worked out, that is just fine with me. As I remember, it took a couple of years before DVD+-R was anywhere near reliable as well.

"I want to (and am able to) author HD high quality on regular old DVD+-R for both types of players."

Laurence, please share with me how you are able to do this for both players.

Bart

bartkean,

Look here.

j razz

I use Ulead MF+ to make the HD DVD compatible discs. It works great.

Blu-ray compatible AVCHD discs are a little trickier right now. I can burn raw footage from my Sony CX-7 camcorder onto an AVCHD disc using my standalone http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665185948VRD-MC5[/link] burner and the resulting AVCHD discs play perfectly in my PS3. I have not been able to do this from my PC however.

None-the-less, other people have reported success doing this with Nero. I own Nero 7 but was having problems with it constantly working in the background trying to index all of my media files. I ended up taking Nero 7 off my system because of this. I have Nero 8 on order and hopefully it will work without this problem.

Also MF+ is supposed to be adding this capability shortly.

In any case, the AVCHD discs that the VRD-MC5 make work really well and have me convinced that the AVCHD disc format is will be an excellent way to distribute my HD projects to Blu-ray player owners in the near future.

Pinnacle Studio 11 is also supposed to do the AVCHD on DVD-R format now.

VRD-MC5 is a sweet piece of hardware!

Yes it is, on several levels:

1: It is a nice portable stand-alone DVD video recorder. With most video recorders you need a screen. This one has the small LCD screen built in.

2: It is a cool way to burn raw DV footage onto DVD-Rs. A pretty cool way to get raw footage to a producer for instance.

3: It makes archiving photos off of digital cameras really easy.

4: It makes archiving HD footage off of AVCHD cameras really cheap, easy and fast. If I shoot on my regular HDV camera, I basically save everything I shoot on a DV tape which costs seven or eight dollars. With my CX-7, I shoot a bunch of home footage, delete the junk, trim the good, and when I get around four gigabyte of good video material, I save it to a 30 cent DVD-R with the VRD-MC5, delete the stuff off the 8 gig memory stick and start over. The discs play right off in the PS3 at full HD quality. Really cool stuff!

"Bwhaaaaahahaaaahaaa...."

OK, this thread has been much more civil than the last one on this subject, let's try to keep it that way.

OK

In my best blink3times voice.

Kind of interesting as to what you see as legitimate information. I give you at least 3 different documents from 3 different sources on the same perils of BD and you declare ALL of them wrong. But then you see what appears to be a bad quality JPG, in German, (which could be just about anything... including a draft from someone's cad program) on the perils of HD DVD.... and you take it for its word.... well... okay... you go right ahead!

Maybe it's true... maybe it isn't. If it is then it is no doubt a bit of a piss off, and we'll stand back and see how long it takes them to figure out the problems. In the mean time, we still have 3x dvd which has proven to be quite the workhorse.

@blink

But then you see what appears to be a bad quality JPG, in German, (which could be just about anything... including a draft from someone's cad program) on the perils of HD DVD.... and you take it for its word.... well... okay... you go right ahead!
===========================================================
No, I don't use CAD, it was Paint Shop Pro X.


On a serious note.

MediumRare from CDRlabs.com:


More than a year after the first Blu-Ray recorders, the latest issue of c't (No. 20/2007, available now in Europe) has a look at the first HD-DVD burner available: the Toshiba SD-L902A.

This drive is a typical, in that it's a slim line (notebook) drive and only available in some top of the line Toshiba notebooks- you'd be hard pressed to get one without that "packaging". Furthermore, it's a 1x burner and takes over 56 min for a SL disc (15 GiB) and more than 114 min. for a DL disc (28 GiB).

The only media presently available comes from Verbatim (both SL and DL).
...
Remarks:

- The Audiodev test drive couldn't read the second layer of the DL disc.
- The burner was able to read these discs, but an external Xbox 360 drive choked on them.
- The listed price in Germany is 3350 (including a Qosmio G40-11L notebook ).

Frankly, this drive is less than impressive- slow, expensive, poor quality burns and hard to get. And this more than a year after BluRay burners became readily available!

Unless something drastic happens, HD-DVD burners are dead. Maybe that's another reason some studios are plugging this format exclusively?


Full post is here: http://www.cdrlabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=170049#170049

Good quality JPG is here: http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g242/Jogfrantic/p120_detail.jpg

"OK, this thread has been much more civil than the last one on this subject, let's try to keep it that way."

You know, I pore through these threads mainly just to learn, and at this point, the main thing I want to learn is how to make AVCHD discs. I've got the process for making HD DVD compatible 3x DVD discs down. It's cool, but it's only about a third of the tiny market of people with HD compatible players. I want to be able to make AVCHD discs so that I can cater to the other two thirds of the market. Name calling and baiting of the other side doesn't really do that much for me. I just kind of gloss over it while I'm trying to learn.

Which format I prefer is really kind of irrelevant. Right now, about two thirds the market seems to prefer Blu-ray, and AVCHD discs can please them quite nicely for about thirty cents a disc. That's what I want to be able to do.

This quote taken from your RELIABLE report:

The only media presently available comes from Verbatim (both SL and DL). '

Now this is SUPPOSED to be a reliable report.... Right??? ;)

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=2546&Nav=|c:57|&Sort=3&Recs=10

These disks have been out for AT LEAST 6 months.... don't believe me? Call Tiger Direct and ask them how long they have been listed for. So do you think maybe the report got something else wrong too?? I don't know.... and neither do you.

Blinky, keep it civil or you'll get this thread deleted, too.

Whether C'T had access to the Ritek disks that blink refers to, or the journalist missed that they are available isn't all that relevant. That one issue doesn't remove the fact that the tests done on this recorder doesn't bode well for HD DVD burners of any quality any time in the near future. If ever. C'T is a quality magazine, and the test is quite clearly thorough and in-depth. Most of the relevant testing was in fact not done by C'T at all, but by an independent lab.

Verbatim generally makes very high quality media while Ritek generally have significantly more quality problems. If this is the quality you can expect with Verbatim, given the quality difference between the two brands, if you bought Ritek disks you'd probably have the worlds most expensive coaster maker.

It seems that any reliable HD DVD burning is at least 18 months in the future, and then you'll probably only see reliable Layer 1 burning. Not something you'd hold your breath for.

"Whether C'T had access to the Ritek disks that blink refers to, or the journalist missed that they are available isn't all that relevant."

It sure as heck is relevant! What else has been missed? How can anybody be sure this is not a simple disk incompatibility? I make a lot of 3x dvd and one thing I know for sure is that you can't use just ANY disk. I will get read errors on the second layer of a maxell disk for example. Verbatim is no doubt a good disk... but that doesn't necessarily mean it's compatible.

Don't get me wrong... I'm not supporting OR denying this report. Maybe it's true... maybe it isn't. What I am saying is that it is ONE report from ONE source, and I have already picked up one non-truth in a simple quick scan.

The bottom line here is easy and RELIABLE hi def burning at an effective price level and I've already had some experience with Blu ray burning. I blew close to $250 in blank disks trying to get something working. If this report is true, then we may be forced into having to choose the best of 2 disasters, which will not be good for ANY of us.