The Silver Screen Oasis

As an Amazon customer, today I got an e-mail advertising a 1938 film, which has been available since 2007 (manufactured by Alpha and sold at 7.99), issued by "Synergy Entertainment" at 9.99.

What annoyed me a little bit is that it read: This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. I had never seen a product offered in this way in the USA. Is this becoming a regular trend?

DVD-R's are not as durable as regular DVD's, so I think the product is expensive.

Any thoughts?

feaito wrote: What annoyed me a little bit is that it read: This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. . I had never seen a product offered in this way in the USA. Is this becoming a regular trend?

I'm not someone who could give you a definitive answer as to whether or not this is the wave of the future, but both Sony and Paramount have been discussing opening their libraries up to burn-on-demand for some time. To date I don't think either company has done so, but despite your observation about DVD-Rs and their durability as compared to other types of DVDs, I'd nevertheless welcome faster access to certain classics that have long since vanished from the public eye since VHS died, not to mention several Sony-owned TV series that either have yet to see a DVD release or have been stalled (Maude and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman are two examples).

So all that to say - while it may not be the ideal format, I prefer burn-on-demand to never being able to acquire the title at all. But yes, the nicer DVDs with extras and commentaries are certainly preferable.

-Stephen

Thanks for the reply Srowley. I agree with you, but what really annoys me is:

1.- The "mafuctured on demand" is written in relatively small letters and I think it should be displayed more prominently because otherwise it looks like a regular DVD.

2.- If the Alpha DVD is 7.99 and this DVD-R is 9.99, it does not make sense to me. Products burned on DVD-R should be much cheaper.

On a production line it takes a few seconds to produce a commercial DVD and place it into its packaging.

A burned DVD-R copy takes longer and is more labor intensive, perhaps the reason for the higher price.

It's much better to have the original (commercial) DVD. With a burned copy one never knows if it's a "bootleg" copy.

Thanks for your feedback Talkietime.

Feaito, I have a couple of thousand DVD-R discs in my collection (most of them I've recorded myself) and I've yet to have a problem with any. Will they last forever or at least longer than me? I really don't know, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. After all my house could burn or some other disaster might happen that could destroy my collection too.

While I've never seen any of the majors do "manufactured on demand" I found that some of the smaller "niche" companies do it. I can understand why. I can see where a company like Alpha, who might have a thousand or more titles in their catalog, would. This allows them to carry titles that might only sell a handful of copies a year. Otherwise, it might not be worth the expense of offering them. Like most other companies, they set their prices by what they think the market will pay.

As for production time, most of these places use high speed burners which will make a copy of feature in as little as five minutes.

Sure it would be nice to have to have every title available on a commerecial DVD, but that's just not going to happen with titles of limited interest. I think Amazon should be commended for indicating that it's manufactured on demand so that consumers, like yourself, have a choice as to whether or not to purchase it.

Markfp,

Thanks for your feedback.

As far as I know Alpha hasn't DVD on demand and my point was that at least for me, it did not make sense that a movie released on a regular manufactured DVD issued by Alpha was two dollars cheaper than the same film burned on DVD-R "on demand", by another company.

I agree with you in that many worthwhile limited-interest DVDs won't be ever released, so in that respect DVD on demand is a good alternative.

I do worry though about the durability of my hundreds of DVD-R which have some highly valuable & cherished films I've obtained thanks to the generoisty of many friends all over the world, especially since some of the burned CD-Rs I have obtained with very rare music, have already begun to fade, play badly or won't play anymore. It's not something we should lose any sleep about, but it still worries me quite a bit.

Besides, I've also read that the manufactured CDs and DVDs are not supposed (even if you take care correctly of them) to last more than 30 years or so, because they tend to rot and degrade.

Besides, I've also read that the manufactured CDs and DVDs are not supposed (even if you take care correctly of them) to last more than 30 years or so, because they tend to rot and degrade.

I asked the husband about this, he's very knowledgable in this area. CD's are tougher than DVD's and DVD's are a lot tougher than blu-ray discs. Going forward do we need to burn all our large collections onto new DVDs or are we likely to have the ability to download whatever we want to watch, or will we backing up all our films onto the film equivalent of an ipod. I really don't know. I like the fact that DVDs can be manufactured to order this way all of us who are into more obscure films might get the chance to buy from somewhere other than with bootleggers.

Feito, I guess I don't really worry about this because, without doubt, there will be some other form of media storage before DVDs implode or whatever happens to them.

Those of us who collected VHS went through the same thing with worries that our collections would decompose in some way. I spent over a year transferring all my VHS to DVD. (or at least those I knew were not likely to be available on DVD) Interestingly, all my tapes, some 20 years old, held up fine. Of course, the quality wasn't the same as DVD, but that was expected.

Having said that, I admit that I am not looking forward to having my entire collection on a credit card sized device. I still enjoy having a wall full of DVDs.

Mark

I agree Mark.

I still have all my movies on VHS, which have not been released on DVD and all the titles I taped off TCM, which are not available on the market.

I don't think DVD-R is any more fragile or susceptible to 'rot' or decomposition or the bit-byte quality than commercial DVDs. But there are data-film differences - that's why you see DVD-Rs with the purplish 'backing' of its data film versus the silvery commercial DVD data film. There is a necessary difference between "mastering" the data film and then inserting it into the wafers of plastic, and the DVD-Rs have that the empty 'purplish' data film inserted that can later be recorded on by lasers thru that plastic disk.

I don't think it's a film quality difference - I think the higher burn/read failure incidents are caused by the cheapo plastic disk that the laser must burn 'thru' to create the bits and bytes.

Of course, none of that matters - when it doesn't work on your player, then it doesn't work, period.

In our hometown, we have 70, 80 maybe 100 bars with CD Kiosks. Performers in those bars can bring in their data files, load them onto the kiosk's server and if patrons like the music, they can pay $5 or $10 or $7 and get a CD-R burned right there, on the spot, from that artist. In general, if you pay a cover-charge to see the band, you pay less for the CD-R and the bar doesn't take much (sub $1 per disc for the cost of the media). Or if it's a no-cover-charge, maybe the CD-R is $10 and the bar collects $2-3 per disk. For every way the cake is sliced, though, the musicians get their own money for their own work from their own crowds.

This started as a 1-kiosk effort in one bar, and within a year, it's spawned into dozens of multi-burner kiosks in most every bar. The Burn Process usually includes a LightScribe label-burning process, too, so you get Artist, Collection or Album Title and Track Listing. This takes about 2 minutes per. But if you've sat in a photo-booth, you'll spend more time taking the photos plus waiting for them.

We have started seeing the same thing with DVD On Demand from more and more acts. Instead of just audio files, now they bring in videos, too. This process is taking about 3-5 minutes, depending on the number of videos (1 video, 3 minutes, more than 5 takes 5 minutes). Still, this isn't too shabby.

One thing else to note: there is a Standard for CDs, and everyone pays Sony-Philllips for this patent. When DVD Data Film was being designed, EVERY manufacturer rejected any attempts to let Sony-Phillips take their money, so there is no real 'DVD Manfacturing' standard. That's one reason that CDs seem more stable - they are! By patent. And by payment. But since Sony won again with BluRay (over the anti-Sony HD), everyone will be paying Sony more and more money.

Could someone explain to me what the difference is in DVD-R and DVD+R? I understand about RW. I just got a DVD recorder (hooooooray!) and when I went to buy discs to use in it, I was faced with a lot of choices, and no one could explain the difference. I went with the -R discs, haven't seemed to have a problem, but every time I go to purchase (been doin' a LOT of recording ) I never know which way is better. My inexpensive (relative to my purse) recorder is a Sony RDR-GX255. I am not very good at reading manuals, I understand better when told what to do first, then I can go to the manual and it is clear. This one talks about various formats, but doesn't explain differences.

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

the technically challenged knitwit...

knitwit45 wrote:Could someone explain to me what the difference is in DVD-R and DVD+R? I understand about RW. I just got a DVD recorder (hooooooray!) and when I went to buy discs to use in it, I was faced with a lot of choices, and no one could explain the difference. I went with the -R discs, haven't seemed to have a problem, but every time I go to purchase (been doin' a LOT of recording ) I never know which way is better. My inexpensive (relative to my purse) recorder is a Sony RDR-GX255. I am not very good at reading manuals, I understand better when told what to do first, then I can go to the manual and it is clear. This one talks about various formats, but doesn't explain differences.

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

the technically challenged knitwit...

These days, for most intents and purposes, they are the same. Essentially they are competing formats, like Betamax and VHS used to be. DVD-R was introduced first, then DVD+R. In the early days of DVD burners, drives would generally support one or the other format and so one would need to purchase the correct type of disc. These days, most DVD burners support both formats, being "hybrid drives." So check the specs on your drive, and if they say that both DVD-R and DVD+R are supported, then you should be able to purchase either one. This article at Wikipedia gives more technical detail and more comparison info.

Personally I still purchase DVD-Rs even though all modern Macs have hybrid drives and even though DVD+R is supposed to be slightly superior, because the early DVD burners included in Mac systems were DVD-R drives and we became conditioned to purchasing that type of disc.

The Wikipedia article linked above does contain the following caution, but I'm not sure if this is completely accurate: "when creating DVDs for distribution (where the playing unit is unknown or older) using DVD-R format would be preferable because most older (up to 2004) standalone DVD video players and DVD ROM drives only support the earlier DVD-R standard." If true, this may be why manufacture-on-demand services such as the Warner Archive use DVD-R discs.

You're not alone, Knitwit. I asked a salesperson the same question last week because a bunch of DVD-R brands were deeply discounted, and got, "Golly, I don't know. It's whatever your DV-R supports."

My Samsung supports both, BUT when I use a DVD-R the times are off (e.g., program it for 120 minutes, and it turns off at 30 minutes). So I just use DVD+R.

PT & ChiO, thank you! I was concerned that the quality or capacity was wildly different. Didn't realize it is more of a competing product issue..
Now, as has been said before, back to our scheduled programming!!

Nancy