To make the recovery disks for my new HP laptop, the nice Tech Support man in India suggested I use DVDs. Otherwise I’d go through a whole mess of CDs.
But I bought a 50-pack of the write-once variety. Dumb. The kid at Staples said they’re good only for data - not music. Any chance he’s wrong?
(In this same, stupidity-laden trip to the store, I also bought a wireless optical mouse. Moronic move — for my purposes. Should have got a corded optical. If you can live with a corded mouse for your laptop, you won’t have to continuously buy AA batteries for it.)
He might have meant that you can’t play them in a CD player. As far as the disk itself is concerned, music data is data. So as long as you have something that can read the disk and that understands the file format of the songs, you’re fine.
What are write-once DVDs good for - besides data storage?
Frisby!
Write-once DVDs are more likely that RW to be supported by ordinary domestic players - in my experience, they’re also just plain more likely to work - I dabble with video editing and DVD authoring from time to time and I thought buying a couple of RW media would save me money for testing the various stages of output near the final production, however, about a third of the time, burning a DVD video to RW media just plain doesn’t work for me - I can see the files on the computer, but the domestic player just refuses to read it. In these cases, wiping and burning exactly the same content, to exactly the same disc, with exactly the same parameters, then works fine the second time around.
I do get occasional coasters with write-once media, and I have had whole batches of discs that were unusable (I think because of a dye compatibility issue or something else in the media codes), but I have nowhere near the confidence in the integrity of RW-stored data that I do for data stored on a write-once disc. I think I could honestly make more or less the same statement about RW versus R CDs
DVDs that play DVD-R and DVD-RW (but not DVD-ROM) have been available for years, but you should chack out media compatibility if you are going to be using them. Also, be aware that what works on your machines may not work on your friend’s (e.g. for sharing video albums by mail, etc.) Check out the [ueser-reported] database of media/player/recorder compatibility at http://www.videohelp.com
While I haven’t bought a new player in a couple of years, I’ve always sought out players with a broad range of file/format/media compatibility. The few extra bucks (often very few) can be a very worthwhile investment. For some reason, a lot of the ‘top’ brands don’t bother these days. I remember when Sony DVD players held themselves out as the gold standard (if a Sony couldn’t play it , it was a dud) but that certainly hasn’t been my experience in recent years. Almost anything on the market (including some years-old models by fairly well known makers, like the $50 Philips DVP-642) seems to play more home-recorded disks than the pricier once-fancy brands. Yes, it’s annoying that some brands are effectively disposable, emphasizing a broad feature over build quality to make more [and repeat] sales, but a lot of my friends have knowingly chosen that compromise, and been happy with it.
The one odd thing that I’ve found with DVD-R discs is that a DVD player that can read CDs with MP3 files or with JPG files cannot (or will not) read DVDs with MP3 files or JPG files on them. You’d think that adding this capability would be easy, but perhaps there aren’t enough people who burn DVDs with MP3 or JPG files. Perhaps that was what “The kid at Staples” meant by “they’re good only for data - not music”?
If you look at the DVDs and CDs on the shelf you will see that some of them are specifically designated for “Music” on the label.
This means that a portion of the purchase price is designated to pay royalties to musicians and artists. AFAIK from a technical viewpoint, this means that standalone music recorders will not record on a disc unless it has this special flag embedded in it. Most (if not all) computer CD/DVD drives don’t care about this.
My Sanyo DVD recorder does as well. And to my surprise, it’ll display JPGs saved on the DVDs too. And wasn’t there a DVD player advertised a couple of years ago that had a feature of displaying your “virtual photo album” on screen?
It’s just a matter of time before some company begins marketing an audio DVD player for cars to pander to the mp3 player crowd who can’t imagine not having 4GB of music on hand at all time.
This only goes for certain CD-writers.
For instance Philips had a standalone cd-writer for use in your stereo-system, which would only burn on these discs.
Normal writers don’t make any distinction between normal DVDs and the ones where you have to pay royalties on.
I disagree. Sure, I can upgrade my own DVD player for cheap, but I’m not about to bring it over to my friend’s house when I bring a movie over, nor do I want to deal with the inevitable tech support if I loan a DVD to someone.
Yes and no. You can put anything on a DVD-R that you can on a DVD-RW. As other posters have said, some DVD players are more compatible with write-once discs than rewritables, but these days, even the cheapest players should be able to play anything.
But he’s right in a larger sense: DVDs aren’t much good for music at all, whether they’re rewritable or not. There’s a standard for music on DVDs, DVD-Audio (which is why DVD movies always have an empty AUDIO_TS folder), but no one really cares about it, and it’s hard to find the players or the discs. You can put MP3 files on a DVD, and many DVD players will play them, but some will only play MP3 files from a CD. Car MP3-disc players typically only read CDs, not DVDs.
Sounds like a problem with the player, not the media. I’ve had no trouble with DVD+RWs in my Philips DVP-642, or the Norcent DP-300 before it. Perhaps it’d save more money in the long run to get a $40 unit that can play rewritable discs?
Only CDs.
Normal writers also don’t qualify under the Audio Home Recording Act as “digital audio recording devices”. The main reason to use standalone CD recorders and the expensive “music”-labeled media they require, other than convenience, is that the AHRA allows you to legally copy CDs for noncommercial use as long as you use the right devices and media.
How could it be? - take a RW disc and burn authored DVD content on it, and it won’t play, take the same disc back to the computer, wipe it and burn the same content on it again, using exactly the same processes and maybe it will play. I know my player is fussy about some dye types. It’s more likely to be a problem with the writer (although it shouldn’t be, because mine is fairly new and is a good make).
If your computer can read it, the data is there, and a DVD player should also be able to read it. I suspect your DVD player just has trouble reading the less-reflective RW discs… you might even be able to get it to read one just by ejecting and reinserting the disc instead of burning it again, but perhaps you’ve tried that already.
