One of our chief frustrations regarding DVD burning has been the challenge of cramming a full-length movie, which can run to 7GB or more, onto a DVD that can hold only 4.7GB of data. (Well, that and the questionable legality of the practice.) In any event, to burn a full-length movie, you usually either have to strip out elements of the DVD or compress the file, which can adversely affect video quality. In fact, part of why movie studios load extra features, such as trailers, additional footage, outtakes, and subtitle tracks, onto DVDs is to make them more difficult to copy--and to entice you to purchase them in the first place.
The recent debut of double-layer (DL) DVD burners marks the end of this particular frustration. Unfortunately, as is often the case with new technology, DL DVD burners beget some bummers of their own.
First the good news: DL drives let you write up to 8.5GB on special double-layer discs--that's about 4 hours of DVD-quality video, more than enough to contain the content of most commercial DVDs, or a whopping 16 hours of VHS-quality video. Better yet, DL drives are just as fast with single-layer media as single-layer-only drives. In addition to burning DL discs at 2.4X, the first generation of DL drives burn single-layer DVD+R and DVD-R discs at 8X and DVD+RW and DVD-RW discs at 4X. The current generation of DL drives, including the Memorex 16X DVD+/-DLKWL-1F161, can write DVD+R media at 16X, DVD-R media at 8X, and DVD+/-RW at 4X.
Now the not-so-good news: DL media still tops out at a sluggish 2.4X, which means a long wait for discs with a lot of data or a feature-length movie, and this applies to new 16X double-layer drives as well. We waited about 45 minutes to burn movies with the drives we've tested so far. Of course, unless you're planning to burn handfuls of DL discs daily--and we doubt you will be while blank DL media hovers in the $10 to $15 range--waiting almost an hour for a disc to burn shouldn't be too much of a burden.
But what if that DL disc you just burned won't play in your DVD player or in the combo drive in your buddy's PC? Unfortunately, our tests have encountered this scenario more than once. Because older PC burners and home recorders don't have parameters for DL in their firmware, they usually can't recognize the disc, whether it's blank or recorded. Sony has posted firmware upgrades for its older DVD burners to help them read and play DL discs.
Set-top players and generic DVD-ROM drives should be able to play and read DL discs, although we've heard that some players, particularly the VHS VCR/DVD player combo units, don't like DL discs. Generally, the playback compatibility with standalone DVD players is pretty good, and it's expected to improve as the technology matures.
In testing two of the first DL burners to hit store shelves, the Sony DRU-700A and the Lite-On SOHW-832S, we discovered that DL DVD playback indeed may be a real problem. The DL discs that we burned with these burners played in most, but not all, of the set-top players we tried, but fewer than half of the PC-attached single-layer DVD recorders we tried could play them. Discs burned on the Memorex 16X double-layer drive played back on every set-top player but worked on only two out of six PC-attached drives in our informal tests. We've tested only a few DL burners at this point, but for now it seems that buyers should beware: The DL discs you burn may not play in every device.
CNET does not encourage or condone the illegal copying of copy-protected discs, and doing so places you in violation of intellectual property laws.
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