RE: DVD?

[Ralph Giles <giles@raj.phys.sfu.ca>]

On Sun, 7 Nov 1999, Terry Katz wrote:

> > > DLT. DVD-RAM and DVD-R drives are now becoming affordable, but they only
> 
> Sure, at $5400 why doesn't everyone have a DVD-R drive ?  or do you mean
> affordable to the pressing companies ?  (DVD-RAM drives are more like
> optical drives .. they don't use a standard dvd-r disc.. at least the ones
> i've seen .. they were more like a cartridge with a high capacity disc ..
> not as much space as a dvd, and not compatible .. but i could be outdated
> .. )

Erm... (runs to check some of this)

Looks like you're correct that dvd-r is still US$5400. I'd heard rumors
that it'd come down closer to $1000, but couldn't find such a listing. I
was surprised to find DLT drives are down at that level, though. They were
US$3000 last I checked...

You're only half correct for dvd-ram. Drives are under US$500 now.
Single-sided disks are available w/o the cartridge at this point, and the
capacity is only 2.6 GB. The double-sided disks apparently come in
cartidges at this point. Single-sided media is around US$18, double-sided
around $30. There's a new 2.0 spec for dvd-ram that is to deliver the more
usual 4.7 GB capacity, with drive support next year sometime.

It's not clear how many dvd-rom drives can read dvd-ram, so you may have a
good point there as well.

 -r