DVD-R Plays to the Mainstream

I ran the pre-production DVR-A03 Pioneer sent me through a battery of tests to determine its DVD read and write performance, as well as how it handled legacy CD media. Since I’ll be spouting both CD and DVD numbers, I’ll also mention that 1X (1.385MBps) in DVD-speak is the equivalent of about 18X in CD terms, where 1X is 150KBps. The DVR-A03 garnered a 3.2X DVD-ROM read rating on Testa Labs’ DVD Tach 2.02 test software — above average for a 4X-rated drive — and successfully burned both a 4.2GB data DVD and a 4.2GB movie DVD in just under 28 minutes per disc.

At that speed, DVD-R can give tape drives a run for their money in the archival role, especially in light of tape’s relative instability. If DVD-R discs last anywhere near the estimated 75-year lifespan (after being written to), and media prices continue to drop, DVD-R could quickly become the solution of choice for archiving.

The 8X/4X/24X-rated DVR-A03 also grabbed a 15.1X CD-ROM reading rating from Testa Labs’ CD Tach, wrote a 680MB data CD-R in just over 10 minutes, and burned a 680MB CD-RW disc in just under 20 minutes. With 24X/10X/40X CD-RW drives coming down the pike, the DVR-A03’s numbers hardly impress, but the fact that it writes to that media at all is a perk — DVD-R is this drive’s raison d’être, and why you’ll want it.

Unfortunately, the v1.1 DVD-RW media that can be read by most commercial DVD movie players and DVD-ROM drives isn’t available yet. The v1.0 media is being phased out and can only be read by Pioneer’s own drives. However, I have no reason to doubt that the DVR-A03 will reliably write to the new DVD-RW discs at 1X.

Fear and Loathing in Hollywood

The skeleton in DVD-R’s closet is its ability to serve as a medium for disseminating illegal copies of movies. Not so much on a commercial basis, but much as audio CDs are traded casually now. The CSS copy protection scheme that protects DVD movies from casual replication is road kill on the hacker highway; but without affordable delivery media, trading illegal copies has been strictly geek stuff, until now.

DVD-R media now costs less than a commercial DVD movie, which when combined with the DVR-A03 puts the temptation and the means to pirate in place. The impact of casual copying may not be felt as strongly as it has been in the music industry, since movies aren’t generally watched repeatedly as music is listened to. Cheap movie rentals also reduce the incentive. But by the time the price of DVD-R media reaches that of CD-R, Hollywood might be feeling the impact of casual trading.