One day we'll laugh....

[jzaman]

I have been playing with a bunch of (purchased) programs since the early days (October)through numerous betas and revisions: Currently DvdXcopy 1.41, Dvd2One 1.02, Instant Copy .114, and Dvd95Copy 1.23. In every forum I registered with there are brilliant users, workaround guides and converts for a particular approach. Without these pioneers all the bugs or limitations would be more painful. Unfortunately it has gotten to the point where an engineering certification may be required. I come from that kind of background but I balk at using math and multiple utilities for DVD duplication. A year or two from now when the software is ready we'll all laugh at the kludges we had to create.

[2COOL]

I was thinking the same way too. One day, someone's going to come up with a bug-free program that let's you have everything in your DVD at 99.99% video quality like it's original. It'll also be a click-click, user-friendly program with options to keep whatever I want. I'll look back at all my guides then, which would be old news, and let out a big sigh. Well, at least, I learned something along the way.

[atreides93]

By the time that happens, we'll all be using blue laser DVD-R's and can easily fit the whole thing without changing anything except of course making it start with the movie and skipping previews and other time wasters..

[MackemX]

yep, you can get nearly 3 DVD's onto a blue ray DVD

and that day will be sooner than you think, as they are on sale in Japan in less than 4 weeks time for £2500 with a blank costing £20

buy it here (http://www.avland.co.uk/sony/bdzs77/index.htm)

the thing is then the movie industry will give us even better quality movie's which will use a full 23Gb so the whole backup process will start again!

I doubt very much they will use CCS encryption but some new technology so it looks like we have just about turned full circle and gonna go back to the days previous to DVDDecrypter when it takes off and sells to the masses, may be a few years yet but it will come

[mpucoder]

Well, I'm already laughing at the stuff we did in the past. My first rip to DivX was the Matrix (I know, I was ambitious) and it took about a month, using 20 or so programs.

But, MisterX is right, IF the movie industry adopts the blue-ray itself, they will have the chance to correct their past blunders with copy protection. The question is, will the market go along with it? I think the higher density media will catch on, but with HD movies (not NTSC or PAL). Our broadcasters in this country are already converting to digital, which offers current resolution or HDTV, and compatible digital receivers are being sold. That might splinter the market, with low quality DVD going the way of VHS in time.

[JonRead]

Anyone know what sort of copy protection Blu-Ray has yet ? Also has it been hacked already ? I bet the Chinese get their first :)

[fusion007]

ive only been doing dvds for 6 months or so and in that time making a dvd has changed in so many ways,using dvddecryptor,dvd2avi then tmpeg then authoring it and even having to use another prog to burn it, that was then, ic and dvdcopy etc is now,well i guess they will have 1 prog that does the lot soon(and actually makes a good job).i guess some of you guys who have been doing this stuff for years will have seen some changes?

[valnar]

The DVD format, even in the future, will require a DVD disc to play in a standalone player. Blu-Ray won't change that. However, as HTPC's become more popular, Blu-Ray will certainly be the ideal storage for multiple ISO files which can be mounted in Daemon Tools. At that point, we'll all be upset for reducing the bitrate in the first place of all the DVD-9 discs and sacrificing quality.

If you really want to futureproof your backups, just keep them on a hard drive in the original ISO format. Oh look, a 200GB hard drive for only $234.00.

Now re-read my post in 2 years and that price/size ratio will seem outrageous.

:(

-Robert

[jbk]

Historically, hardware technology changes much faster than does software and content is even more of an issue. Consider that even today a large number of older movies haven't as yet been issued on DVD. Even if the movie industry adopts new, denser, and higher quality technologies it seems unlikely that there will be an immediate and wholesale shift in consumer oriented products. As much as they might want to I don't think the movie industry can afford to instantly "obsolete" their customer's investment in DVDs and players. I also don't think they could do it even if they thought they could get away with it. Keep in mind that VHS is still viable in the minds of a good many people many of whom have large (and still growing) collections. The same applies to DVD as well.

To be sure, new technologies will continue to emerge and become "standard." Will that obsolete our collections? Personally, I don't think so, or at least not for a long time. The fact that Divx compatible stand-alone players are now beginning to emerge hints at a rather different possible future.

JBK

[jdobbs]

If you want to get a good laugh you should see some of the VCDs I did a few years ago... 352x240 and still blocky as hell. I was proud back then, but now it's downright embarrassing.

I can envision VALNAR's comments -- in a few years we will have a couple of hundred movies stored on a single 10TByte drive and call them up when we want to watch them...

Of course we will eventually start demanding that all our movies be in HDTV format and the blue laser disc will "barely" hold it (only if we compress it more) -- and we'll all be anxious for some other color/method to be released!

It never ends, does it?

[Xayd]

I think HDTV progression will be very ugly before it's all over with.

With HDCP and such being debated and it looking like the American media interests will not only refuse to offer new content before it's implemented, but in the case of CBS for example threaten to pull current HD broadcasts, I think this is finally gonna be the battle royale of consumer rights lawyers versus copyright lawyers. If broadcasters start to throw the switch on HDCP encryption this year, there's gonna be a huge class action suit involving the broadcasters, consumers, manufacturers of HDTVs, etc.

It'll be interesting to see how it all pans out, but with the current climate (being that new technology and what consumers want takes a backseat to copy prevention), DVDs and analog broadcasts will continue to be the most common mediums for quite some time.