has anyone stopped encoding video?

[shrinkydinx]

with hard drives getting cheaper and bigger at the rate they are, sometimes it seems like it would be easier to just leave all my tv episodes as .vob's on my hard drive, instead of encoding them. perfect quality, no time spent encoding, and they would play fine in bsplayer.

does anyone do this?

[setarip_old]

Yes...

[Sirber]

no, need to burn too for backups :)

[Doom9]

250 GB (let's make it simple and forget about 1000 vs 1024) - 10 GB for the OS / 8.5 GB per DVD = less than 29 DVDs. I own roughly 400, so even with the 3 500 GB (the max I can put into my PC), I still couldn't even store 1/3rd of my DVD collection.

If we assume 4 episodes per DVD-9 and 6 discs per season, I couldn't even store one year's worth of all the TV series I'm currently interested in. Now imagine getting all those episodes as 20mbit HDTV streams ;)

[Doobie]

with hard drives getting cheaper and bigger at the rate they are, sometimes it seems like it would be easier to just leave all my tv episodes as .vob's on my hard drive, instead of encoding them. perfect quality, no time spent encoding, and they would play fine in bsplayer.

does anyone do this?

Even with my multi-terabyte hard drive system, I have to spend a couple of hours deleting picture dups from usenet downloads just to make room on my system for one VOB. :D

I fess up, I only have a small drive but I've been meaning to buy one of these large monsters someday.

[Tommy Carrot]

No, and i'm probably never going to do that. I hate the idea of wasting the storage space with inefficiently coded videos. :D Not to mention i never have enough free space.

[unskinnyboy]

No, the VOBs have place on my hard disk only till the moment they get converted to some other format (usually MPEG-4) and I get satisfied with the resultant encode. Then shift+delete. Storing VOBs, and that too TV eps, is a criminal waste of storage, however cheap disk space is. Besides, I always forget to send in the mail-in rebates for my HDD purchases, so it isn't that cheap for me as it might be for others. :\

[DeathTheSheep]

If you have a fast codec (XviD), why not encode? Your files would be just about the same visual quality as .vob at q=2 or q=3 (I can go up to q=5 ;)) but be tiny compared to the .vob.


Nearly perfect quality, little time spent encoding, works in any player, and I can store multiple times more stuff. Besides, its more easily burnable for backup purposes.

Just see no point to keep a 4.7GB .vob when I can get a 1.5GB XviD or (even better) a 700MB x264 High Profile file.

Frankly, I see no point NOT to encode video.... especially if you want more.

But I have to agree, for people who only have
- a small amount of video,
- Super-large hard drives
- No time to encode
- No external devices like PPCs/DivX certified players
- a slow processor
- need for absolutely perfect quality video at all times
...well, for this kind of person, wasting time encoding serves nearly no purpose.

I'd have to say, though, that asking this question to a community of video encoders is bound to get you pro-encoding results. Cheers!

[BITS]

Well forget hdd's, i'm looking forware to 100GB DVD's (someday i suppose). hdd's still are not that cheap for the comparison of space to a dvd-5. However, for a home theatre like doom's up there, somekind of hdd+dvd system would be defiantely needed. You can't really store movies on DVD with this. Well you could, which brings up this ?. Has anybody the instructions on converting those 100+1 CD disc changers for PC use? Along time ago on a site forum for ps1 (Taran's PSX Page) someone linked to plans for this, but that being ~7yrs ago i can't find them. The plans even included the schematics for the iR device to control it, the whold thing looked ugly, but worked. At that time it was very costly (~1000usd), to do it today would be extremely cheap. This is something i've been wanting to do for a few years, just don't have a clue where to start :-(. You can find these 100+1 changers used on sites that still work fine at very cheap prices, i've seen them for aslow as 40usd.

[shrinkydinx]

personally i dont encode dvds at all... spending 60 seconds getting the dvd is no big deal when what youre watching is 2 hours long. but tv episodes - i only save 60% of the filesize for each and lose some quality. but 60% isnt much when you compare it to like 90% for mp3's and such...

i think if more things were compatible with .vob's i might quit encoding. ive got 550 empty gigs, after all. :D

[CWR03]

The problem with leaving them all on your hard drive (ignoring the eventual issue of filling it) is that if your drive fails you may lose all that data.

Sony has a 400 CD/DVD changer - I'd love something like that for the PC. Can you imagine just launching a game and having the changer load the appropriate disk automatically? Or an alphabetical list of the files backed up to DVD, regardless of which disk they're on, which would load and play when the file is selected? I'd buy one.

[Inventive Software]

I recently bought a 250 GB WDC (Western Digital Caviar) hard disk for the princely sum of £60 (24p per GB). I ain't gonna be able to fill it as the computer I have only allows for hard disks up to 128 GB.

I currently have 2 hard disks, an 120 GB dragon that's housing my Win98SE and Mandrakelinux OSs, and a 20 GB one that stores everything else.

When I encode the DVDs, I have to be very careful what codec I use to encode. See my specs and you'll know what I mean. ;) Having a large hard disk eliminates some of the hassle of encoding, but I still prefer to encode because it means that I have a soft copy of the movie.

[CWR03]

I ain't gonna be able to fill it as the computer I have only allows for hard disks up to 128 GB.
Are you aware of PCI-slot RAID controllers? They're very cheap and remove the restriction of maximum hard drive size.

[Inventive Software]

Yeah, but the only spare slot on the motherboard is blocked by the graphics card fan. Besides, RAID is more hassle than it's worth.

What I really bought that 250 GB monster for was my new computer, when I upgrade the bloomin' thing. :D

[bjorn toulouse]

my stuff tends to be on the hard disk for too much time. Back up dvds 1 day tops but my DV stuff can be on for months. despite upgrading from 30 --> 120 last year this year alone I have added an extra 200 then a 300 external still spend an hour or so a week trying to find space. Still trying to get good encodes from xvid but I seem to get better results from the MS mp4 v2 codec. Im obviously doing somthing wrong.

[dimzon]

250 GB (let's make it simple and forget about 1000 vs 1024) - 10 GB for the OS / 8.5 GB per DVD = less than 29 DVDs. I own roughly 400, so even with the 3 500 GB (the max I can put into my PC), I still couldn't even store 1/3rd of my DVD collection.
:goodpost:

[jult]

Still trying to get good encodes from xvid but I seem to get better results from the MS mp4 v2 codec. Im obviously doing somthing wrong.
You should really go with H2.64/AVC using the x264 codec instead. It's so much better than Xvid it's a shame not to do that (with the future in mind).

You can easily do that with VirtualDub or VirtualDubMod.

[zambelli]

If you have a fast codec (XviD), why not encode? Your files would be just about the same visual quality as .vob at q=2 or q=3 (I can go up to q=5 ;)) but be tiny compared to the .vob.

Nearly perfect quality, little time spent encoding, works in any player, and I can store multiple times more stuff. Besides, its more easily burnable for backup purposes.
Nearly perfect quality? In the same way that we used to think 128kbps MP3s were near CD quality? :rolleyes:

We live in a world of high def TVs, upscaling DVD players and blue-laser HD players that use 18Mbps. Do we really need to take already inefficiently encoded DVDs and re-compress them even more? I'm with Shrinky on this one. It just doesn't seem worth the trouble, and it's certainly a no-starter for any selfrespecting videophile.

The average DVD movie title (without the extras) takes only about 5.5 GB. Yes, there are some titles that take up 7+ GB, but there are also some that take up only 4 GB. Even if you didn't want to store this on a HDD, you could still easily burn it to a dual layer DVD which are just as cheap as hard drives.

I'm not saying there's no reason to re-encode movies - obviously 5GB is still a huge upload/download over the net, and some stuff (like old TV) probably doesn't require pristine quality. But for most part, backing up DVDs to 700MB CDs just seems so 1999 and perhaps it's time we all moved on.

Now... HD backups. That's a different story. ;)

[shevegen]

I always convert it, even if quality suffers, its better compression level for me IMHO.

[jult]

Now... HD backups. That's a different story. ;)Well, we're now at almost 4 Gigabytes for 1 Euro in harddisk world. So what are the advantages buying plastic/laser-media? They are more expensive per byte storage room now!

The only problem we will encounter is the portability of those disks. The room they need. And since you don't want to suffer in speed, you will need eSATA or at least USB2/firewire800.

I'd say boxes like these have the future:
http://www.acryan.com/alubox/ACR-HD50138.shtml

Soon we'll see the same boxes containing 4 disks, benching the cost back down under plastic/laser media.

I wouldn't worry much about storage space for backups anymore.

[movmasty]

Nearly perfect quality? In the same way that we used to think 128kbps MP3s were near CD quality? :rolleyes:

We live in a world of high def TVs, upscaling DVD players and blue-laser HD players that use 18Mbps. Do we really need to take already inefficiently encoded DVDs and re-compress them even more? I'm with Shrinky on this one. It just doesn't seem worth the trouble, and it's certainly a no-starter for any selfrespecting videophile.

The average DVD movie title (without the extras) takes only about 5.5 GB. Yes, there are some titles that take up 7+ GB, but there are also some that take up only 4 GB. Even if you didn't want to store this on a HDD, you could still easily burn it to a dual layer DVD which are just as cheap as hard drives.

I'm not saying there's no reason to re-encode movies - obviously 5GB is still a huge upload/download over the net, and some stuff (like old TV) probably doesn't require pristine quality. But for most part, backing up DVDs to 700MB CDs just seems so 1999 and perhaps it's time we all moved on.
well, lets say 1gb to burn on dvd or keep on disk.

then i like to customize my movies, cut commercial or parts that should not be there ;) .....
resize, adjust contrast.

and.....you can think that dvd is amall, also vcd was once,

the future....in the future you will have movies of 25/40 gb, impossible do not encode.

[foxyshadis]

Soon? LaCie makes a habit of those, with a number of 4 and 5 disk SATA enclosures. Throw 500s or 750s in there and you have more storage space than most mid-size companies.

http://www.lacie.com/products/range.htm?id=10033

Other companies that make such things include SGD, Kano, and of course you can get whole SANs from any of the big server vendors.

[LANjackal]

I stopped back in 2004 because:

1 - encoding jobs just took too long to be worth it for me
2 - encoding isn't lossless

[Blue_MiSfit]

If nothing else, I continute to encode because it's a very mentally stimulating activity, both in the actual encoding and in the discussions on this forum!

While it's true that re-encoding is never lossless, it can very very close, and sometimes the subjective visual quality can improve.

While hard drives are very cheap these days, the argument has been made that it's still just not pracitcal to archive a large DVD collection straight to VOBs - especially if you are concerned with redundancy.

Even with my 750gb of storage I'm running out of space... I've got several hundred DVD backups, scads of MP3s, and ~ 230GB of TV shows!! It's amazing how much compression and storage capacity can make me such a glutton.

~MiSfit

[jult]

Soon? LaCie makes a habit of those, with a number of 4 and 5 disk SATA enclosures.
http://www.lacie.com/products/range.htm?id=10033
Other companies that make such things include SGD, Kano, and of course you can get whole SANs from any of the big server vendors.
Those are already equipped with disks, and often redundant arrays. Plus they're not the cheapest ones. What I mean is the stacking of cheap disk hubs, like with these (http://www.acryan.com/alubox/ACR-HD50250.shtml) (expected in january 2007) where you buy the HDs yourself. That way your price will remain below that of burned lasermedia.

I wonder how long the average new SATA2 HD will last, compared to the average DVD.

[foxyshadis]

Well, LaCie ships them with drives, but other companies have both disk-full and disk-free configurations. That was just a cursory look around the internet to see what's current. And it's not always that expensive - see hitachi 4 disk (http://www.supergooddeal.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=HM2T-RAIDB4U2&Click=17583) and other 2 disk enclosures (http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_drives/1tb.htm).

The basic point was eSATA enclosures have been out for over a year. You can scope out newegg or tigerdirect or similar, they have all kinds of bring-your-own-disk enclosures available, with full SATA or eSATA speed, and even more options for USB/firewire. 2-disk empty enclosures aren't available on newegg, but they are available from other companies.

[jult]

Well, LaCie ships them with drives, but other companies have both disk-full and disk-free configurations. That was just a cursory look around the internet to see what's current. And it's not always that expensive - see hitachi 4 disk (http://www.supergooddeal.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=HM2T-RAIDB4U2&Click=17583) and other 2 disk enclosures (http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_drives/1tb.htm).

The basic point was eSATA enclosures have been out for over a year. You can scope out newegg or tigerdirect or similar, they have all kinds of bring-your-own-disk enclosures available, with full SATA or eSATA speed, and even more options for USB/firewire. 2-disk empty enclosures aren't available on newegg, but they are available from other companies.
My basic point was that you won't be carrying those big boxes around, you will if you can stack them per disk. When I wrote "Soon we'll see the same boxes containing 4 disks" I was actually thinking of HDs getting 4 times as small as their current size, so you'll have 4 disks in one 3.5" size unit. Which we see happening already.
I don't see myself with that hitachi case, because it's too large. I do see myself with that AluBox, cheap and portable.

[johnhamler1]

whatever you say, u can not trust these HDD.
if one fail, it s thousand hours of you work you have lost.

i just hope the 8 gig media will be one day cheaper, actually they cost around 8$ for 1 disc(tax) against 2-3$ in the USA at walmart.

[BITS]

i will alwasy encode. When you have a DVD at X size, and if it is possible to retain 90/95% quality at 65% of X, it seems like a no brainer to me. Some movies you can retain full quality noticable to the human eye at less than 1/2 the size. Take animation for instance, or even better anime, be a waste of space to not compress it.

What i think we all really need, atleast me, is a 1000+1 dvd-9 changer. Or a stack of 10 100+1 disc changers with a pc dvd DL writer in it, with a controllable interface. This way, you can use it for a auto loader for backing up, and optical offline storage.

if i find a used/broke 100+1 cd changer at a thrift store, i swear i'm trying this. i've already found about 12 explode diagrams for various models. i don't care if it looks like ass because i'll hide if it complaints become too great. From looking at the diagrams this is very easily done, but it won't look pretty unless you make a custom case. Since all the devices i have seen so far can use iR, using a cheap etho2ir adapter would be a great option for network control. i'm being serious about all this, none of this is fantasy in the least bit.

[jult]

That's interesting, but both the laser-media as well as the reader have a life-span. I've had many CDR die on me after 6-7 years safe storing. And the laser-readers also die on me surprisingly fast, like after 7-8 years of rare use.

Keeping that in mind, it *does* pay to store stuff on HardDiskDrives. It really is cheaper nowadays. You just copy-paste to the next generation larger disks every now and then. On average my HDD's die on me after 6-7 years of 24/7 power-on spinning time (in servers), and in about 9 years normal desktop use. Sure, there are those bad disks that live shorter, but there are also bad DVDs with a shorter than expected lifespan.

The biggest advantage of HDD storing is of course its access-time, the read/write-speeds. I believe HDDs have a brighter future than laser/plastic storage media. Really notice the HDDs are getting stronger and more reliable by the year, while I can't say the same about laser-storage media. Time will tell..

[BITS]

.
.
Yeh but to me the reliablity of storage is of 2 points.

1. What can go wrong, will.
2. Overtime, everything is going to be obsolete or atleast depreciated.

So, being that is my perspective, why bother with hdd's? i can pay right now .20usd per 4gb dvd-5 (i'm averaging here). So, for a 400gb hdd, which 100usd is a good and fair price to pay for, i'm losing 80usd since i can get a 100 spindle of dvd-5's for 20usd. For 100usd i can either get one 400gb hdd, or 2tb of optical discs. And we all know a 400gb is measured in decimal and a dvd-5 is actually bigger than 4gb even in binary, so really i get even much more for my money, damn near another 400gb if you compare the exact differences.

From reading the above, what will that 100usd 400gb hdd be worth when larger optical discs (say 30gb each) in 7 to 8 years are pushing close to the 0.20usd margin each? if i would buy that 400gb hdd right now for 100usd, in probably just 4 years i will be looking back saying "hmm, maybe i should of saved the money at that time and went with optical discs, i could of made a better investment with that 80usd". And in 7 years, what will that 400gb hdd cost then? That's when i would defiantely feel bad about choosing the hdd path.

it all depends on how much money you got to spend. if money was no object to me, i would have a huge array of 750gb hdd's. But when i'm only in the market practically at 400gb per 100usd, the investment of a huge hdd over optical discs is just depreciated too quickly. Right now, if i want a hdd movie, i know i can compress it down considerably and still see little to no difference in quality, and my eyes are what make my decisions. So i can spend 20usd for 400gb of storage today, and still even in 4 years it won't be much cheaper for a 100 spindle of dvd-5's. But that 400gb hdd for 100usd today, well in 4 years that same hdd will be very close to just 40usd. So, for the long haul, optical discs are the wiser investment for people that do not have lots of money to spend.

And lets not forget, there is a certain vacuum to both permanent and optical storage. We've all been there. The stacking of spindle over spindle until you're lost in a storm of plastic, with your only form of navigation being what colour of a sharpie you used at a certain point in time to reference age of each spindle (not including the ones you never wrote anything on). The stacking of hdd over hdd trying to decide which way is better to lay the hdd, face down or face up upon the next one just incase the hdd stack falls over. it's like the days of floopies all over again when you just cycled through them in a very twisted but advanced method of making sure they just still worked. it is this vacuum that has actually pushed me more towards optical regardless of size, just because of static and the shifting of the hdds always raises an alarm in my mind. Optical, not at all.

i cannot argue any access times, or read/write operations of any kind over a hdd, i just can't justify them financially. And to end tonight, in the last 4 years i have had bad luck. i have had 2 power failures and many sata drives die, in total losing over 3tb worth of hdd's. So to me arguing the point of the corruption levels of any storage device, optical or permanent, is one of misfortune and winning streaks.
.
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[foxyshadis]

If you need that much space, there isn't a particularly good, cost-effective solution. Tape is expensive, hard drives are expensive, and stacks of DVDs get scratched, lost, and mixed up too easily. I guess you just have to wait for the next storage revolution, or invest in raid and a box to hold them all.

As for size: DVD-5 = 4.3GB decimal, so 100 is the same as a 430GB hard drive.

I'm just amazed some people have this problem. My off-disk storage requirements have actually shrunk from a few years ago, so I could consolidate a whole stack of CDs and DVDs onto a small external drive. I guess I don't bother to save many movies anymore; I just buy, watch, and shelve until I sell them off.

[BITS]

HDD's use too much power aswell, that runs up your energy bill. And turning on and off your array of hdd's when you want to watch a movies isn't going to help the life of them any. it's all about taste and how much money you have. Also the next revolution of storage is hd/br. So i don't have to wait for the revolution, for it's already here, but i do have to wait until i can afford to take part in it. Although i would like to write 25gb or 50gb (dual layer), again the price is too high compared to the depreciation level.

TW, a dvd-5 is 4.3 in decimal? i don't think that is correct. i think a dvd-5 is 4.7 in decimal, and something like 4.38 in binary. i'm off to work, have a great day.

[foxyshadis]

Yes, you're right, it is 4.7, sorry.

[SeeMoreDigital]

I must admit I don't generate all that many MPEG-4 back-up's nowadays!

I prefer to extract the "main movie" element of my DVD's, re-author them (complete with original chapter points), turn them into .ISO files and store them on external HDD's...

I'm then able to use my Zensonic Z500 (High Definition Network DVD Media Player) to play them in hardware and view them on my TV :D

[DarkNite]

I will almost always encode, but not necessarily for space saving reasons. Often encoding the material has to do with improving subjective quality, scaling, returning material to progressive in software (where I have a say over what is done where and how), or various other reasons for having to process material in order for it to be pleasing to my eyes and satisfactory for display upon large LCD's fed by HTPC's.

Until everything is released in a well mastered 1080p format, and there are set top boxes that handle several formats equally well, I will continue encoding and using HTPC's for display. Hmm... At the moment that seems like forever.

"Take your glasses off and sit 20' from the screen. You'll never know the difference, and you'll save yourself a ton of time that you could be spending drinking beer and playing WoW." - Bud

[jult]

And lets not forget, there is a certain vacuum to both permanent and optical storage. We've all been there. The stacking of spindle over spindle until you're lost in a storm of plastic, with your only form of navigation being what colour of a sharpie you used at a certain point in time to reference age of each spindle (not including the ones you never wrote anything on).I'm not like that, I've made a habit out of putting something down on the transparent circle inside with a permanent marker. Started doing that in the ninetees, and still do that. Also often put the burn-date in the title, depending on the type of DVD.

Anyway, as far as pricing goes; With the Samsung SpinPoint disks you now get 4 GB for 1 euro. The writable DVD's I buy are a little more expensive than that, that may be because I don't buy large spindles and tend to go for high quality brands.
Indeed, there's the electricity-cost, but then, you'll also need that to read/play your DVD's so that doesn't really count. Turning HD's on and off doesn't matter much, as far as my experience goes. When they're off you're actually prolonging their life, so it evens up on the bad.

[rotz]

I capture and save many good BBC, etc. programs directly off satellite (DVB-S) to hard disk and don't transcode them from the original MPEG2. I just save them off to a single layer DVD. This means that when I watch the programs in the future, I'm watching bit-for-bit the original quality as transmitted, with no difference between live or recorded viewing. And because I occasionally watch these programs on a home cinema projector, I'm more likely to see the difference in quality between the original and any recoding. Every defect is amplified on a large screen.

As for protecting the discs against damage, long ago I bought a large transportable DJ case which holds 1000 discs in soft plastic sleeves. The disks hang vertically so there is no weight on top of the discs. I do worry about decay of optical media, but at least this way the discs are less likely to be scratched, or exposed to dust or moisture. And a single failure will not take out the entire collection.

Another advantage of keeping the programs on removable media is that it's easy to take a disc to a friend's place for viewing there. If content is archived on internal drives then you always have to make a copy first.

I know people who keep their media on large RAID arrays, up and running 24/7. To me this is environmentally unfriendly and economically unsound.

So include me in the never-transcode, and archive to optical media, camp. Interesting discussion though!

[weaver4]

No, converting is fun!

[ron spencer]

with hard drives getting cheaper and bigger at the rate they are, sometimes it seems like it would be easier to just leave all my tv episodes as .vob's on my hard drive, instead of encoding them. perfect quality, no time spent encoding, and they would play fine in bsplayer.

does anyone do this?

VOBs are encoded though...so you have already done that. I keep all my DV though...captured via Canopus ADVC100. Space is cheap....

[experttech]

Well i have to encode - I have DV AVis which are 15GB per tape and I have about 10 tapes which is ~150 GB

Now if I have to distribute them to friends and family I cannot give out 150GB!! I have to encode to x264 and DVDs. No option.

[Morte66]

I encode for two reasons:

- The encodes look better than the original, i.e. I gain more in AviSynth than I lose in x264.

- I use a media server, but even if I'm backing up to DVDs encoding saves me time. Burning/verifiying a DVD5 takes about 15 minutes, if I compress by a factor of about four that's a quarter as much DVD burning. The encoding might take 8 hours, but that's computer time while I'm doing something else. Swapping DVD-Rs takes my time.

[experttech]

- The encodes look better than the original, i.e. I gain more in AviSynth than I lose in x264.

I need to understand this better. Are you saying you clean the source using Avisynth filters like Convolution3D etc?

Does this apply to DV videos as well?

[Morte66]

I need to understand this better. Are you saying you clean the source using Avisynth filters like Convolution3D etc?

Yes. Some mix of denoise, deinterlace, despeck, ColorMatrix, PAL->24fps conversion, etc. Some of this processes can't quite be run in real time, especially if you get into advanced versions for problem material, so they need to go in an encoder chain if I'm to use them at all.

Does this apply to DV videos as well?

It's especially useful for digital TV data, since that tends to be below DVD quality. I don't have a camera, if that's what you meant by "DV".

[DarkNite]

Almost all DV sources I've worked with could use a lot of help. Even the HDV I've worked with IMO needed some TLC in the post processing department. That opinion is mostly based off of my experience with the Canon XL H1 and HV10 so YMMV.

[experttech]

It's especially useful for digital TV data, since that tends to be below DVD quality. I don't have a camera, if that's what you meant by "DV".

Ok. I was referring to Digital Video (DV) format which is 25Mbps - Videos shot with Camcorders are trasnferred in this format.

Most of my DV videos are quite clear but some (eg night shots) have noise. Of course things like color saturation etc can be improved.

[dvon76]

250 GB (let's make it simple and forget about 1000 vs 1024) - 10 GB for the OS / 8.5 GB per DVD = less than 29 DVDs. I own roughly 400, so even with the 3 500 GB (the max I can put into my PC), I still couldn't even store 1/3rd of my DVD collection.

If we assume 4 episodes per DVD-9 and 6 discs per season, I couldn't even store one year's worth of all the TV series I'm currently interested in. Now imagine getting all those episodes as 20mbit HDTV streams ;)
Can you explain to me what the DVD-9's are and what they can hold and basically why you need them and things like that. I just heard of them for the first time the other day? JUST curious, Thanks, Danny

[DarkZell666]

DVD9 is simply a dual-layer DVD (like movie DVD's you buy).
They were very expensive a couple of months back, dunno know.

They're usually used to backup a movie DVD without reencoding anything (plain DVD copy), instead of shrinking it to a DVD5 (DVD5 being the traditionnal 4.3GB DVD we use everyday ;)).