HP DVD+RW 1, CD-RW 0
David Dorn examines HP's move to ditch CD writers for DVD writers, and heralds the dawn of a new age... well, sort of!
So, HP is to get out of CD-RW in favour of its new DVD+RW technology. Indeed, we can expect to see a new Pavilion range in November sporting a DVD+RW drive in place of the more usual DVD ROM/CD-RW combo that many makers are shoehorning into their kit today.
In many ways this comes as no surprise; it's true to say that hardly any home user is without a CD burner of some description, something that's particularly true of anyone buying anything other than an entry-leve machine this year. A quick glance at a few adverts here and there confirms the theorem - most PC manufacturers offer their wares with a CD-RW already installed.
The upshot is, of course, that the market for add-in/on CD-RW drives has dwindled down from what it was even last year, and prices have, of course, dropped through the floor. An advert came to me yesterday offering a 20x10x48 drive for £84 including VAT. That's almost exactly what you'd have paid for a 12x8x48 a scant couple of months ago, and is a drop from the £150+ such a drive would cost less than three months ago.
So where does HP's decision take the market?
Standards
Well, that's an interesting question. For starters, there are three main 'standards' that DVD writers adhere to - but not all at once! There's DVD-RW, DVD-RAM and now DVD+RW. One or other has to become the dominant standard, much as VHS came out the eventual winner over Betamax in the video recording stakes. Here's the thing - the eventual winner will be whichever one is incorporated into a standalone DVD recorder for home use at an acceptable price - and that means sub £500 from a manufacturer with the clout and reputation of Sony, Panasonic, Philips, Toshiba and the like.
The 'winner' will also need to have support from 'play-only' DVD units in the home, and again at the kind of prices that we're used to paying for CD players for stereo system - which means sub £150.
Given the historical cost of DVD writers, we've fought shy of reviewing them on Practical PC before now - anything costing better than £1000 before VAT and which has all the availability of hen's teeth is not really likely to have mass appeal. But there's now at least two drives at sub £600 prices becoming available, each from a different maker, and each supporting different standards. We've got the orders in, so we'll be able to report back as soon as they arrive.
Advantages
In the meantime, what advantages would a DVD writer bring to we average PC users? Massively increased data storage for one. Currently, we're limited to 700MB on a CD-R or RW, whereas a single sided DVD would provide 4.7GB of space. That would make backing up a 40GB hard drive a better proposition than using CD-RW, but, and more excitingly, you'd be able to transfer at least a couple of hours worth of video to one side of a DVD platter at full DV quality.
For me, that's a major advantage. Given that Mini DV tapes are still quite expensive on a per hour basis (compared to VHS tapes) and are far too easily lost (they're tiny little things), the prospect of being able to simply shuttle the whole tape across to a writable DVD has much to recommend it.
It means being able to re-cycle tapes that much quicker, to begin with, and there's no fear of a tape being mangled by being left atop a monitor and having its contents erased.
It's the same kind of thing I've done with digital photos - they're dumped to CD the moment I get back in front of the PC. There again, with a re-writable format of DVD, the potential for photo storage is huge - and one thing digital photography does encourage is a great increase in the number of images shot!
Bottom Line
The bottom line is that HP's move should see the mass market in DVD writers taking off. Prices ought to drop considerably once the takeup is high enough, and even if £500-600 seems a lot now, by this time next year you can expect to see that price halved. A couple of years down the road, and we'll be looking at £100 DVD writers. The only question is, what standard? As of this moment, there's no way of knowing.
