Tuesday, June 11, 2002 |
22:55 - Curiouser and curiouser.
http://www.recipe4dvd.com/103/
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It was also pointed out to me by the Cap'm that the Apple DVD-R discs I bought from Fry's yesterday might well be only $5 each (as opposed to at least $10 for the competition) because the discs are "General" media rather than "Authoring" media, and therefore less versatile. Follow the link above for a run-down of the differences between the two-- the cheaper discs are artificially prevented from being used as "cutting master" discs, the idea being that they're priced for consumer use and crippled so people can't use them to copy DVD movies, while the "Authoring" discs (which can be used to create master copies) are much more expensive. The drives themselves are different too; they use different wavelength lasers (635nm for Authoring, 650nm for General), and neither drive can write to the other's discs.
(Note, by the way, that the consumer drive-- the Pioneer DVR-103/A03, which Apple calls the SuperDrive-- can also write DVD-RW, CD-R, and CD-RW discs; the laser is compatible with those formats. The pro drive, the DVR-S201, can only write to the Authoring discs.)
Now, I went searching for other DVD-R media, and this is what I found at Memorex's site:
http://www.memorex.com/products/product_display.php?cid=41&pid=39&oid=43
These are the discs I saw at Fry's; note that the SRP is $10. However, there's no mention in the specs, the related FAQs, or any other discs in Memorex's catalog of whether these are General or Authoring discs. But if it's true that General and Authoring discs and drives are not cross-compatible, then these would almost have to be General discs-- or else Memorex would have a whole lot of unhappy customers with DVR-103 consumer drives unable to write to the discs.
So, yes, it's true that I hadn't researched this when I posted this morning, and it turns out I still have a point purely by accident. But hey, I'll take what I can get!
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