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Hewlett Packard DVD100i

Become the Next Speilberg - write your own DVDs

 The DVD writing market has had a bit of a shake-up in recent months. Panasonic have had their DVD-RAM system for some time now but the disks are only readable in other DVD-RAM drives. In a split reminiscent of the old Beta/VHS battle of the early 80’s, the market has split in to two different camps, DVD-RW and DVD+RW. DVD-RW was first to market with a number of drives from different manufacturers and now the DVD+RW gang has started to hit the streets. The DVD100i from Hewlett Packard is one of an increasing number of DVD+RW devices on the market.

DVD+RW’s claim to fame is improved compatibility across different systems although how much of a difference this really makes is open to question. More on that later. The DVD+RW standard also allows for DVD+R i.e. write once disks. These ought to be rather cheaper than the +RW variety but the DVD100i doesn’t support this standard. What it does let you  create though are DVD+RW, CD-R and CD-RW disks. DVD+RW disks can be recorded at up to 2.4x on this drive. DVD-RW drives currently only support 1x. The DVD+RW standard doesn’t support dual layer disks however so the best you will get is double sided disks holding 4.7GB per side. All very confusing!

Installation

The DVD100i is an IDE device and is installed just like a normal CD-ROM drive. The bundled software includes myDVD which allows you to take your own video footage, stills and music and incorporate them in to a DVD title complete with menus. HP DLA is the equivalent of DirectCD on CD burners and allows you to treat the drive like a hard drive. You can save files to DVD+RW disks from within Explorer or other applications.  RecordNow is for creating normal CDs and provides all the usual features you would expect on a normal CD burner. SimpleBackup allows you to backup and restore your precious data and includes full disaster recovery features. Finally, Power DVD allows you to watch the DVD’s you have created as well as commercial ones.

Specifications

The DVD100I can record DVD+RW disks at 2.4X, CD-R at 12x and CD-RW at 10x. Playback of normal CDs is at up to 32x. As mentioned, a DVD+RW can hold up to 4.7GB of data. This can be either as data or as a video DVD. DVD+RW blanks aren’t very cheap and this is one area where the opposition currently has an advantage as the DVD-R write once disks are much cheaper.

Does it Work?

I started by grabbing some digital video footage from a mini-DV camcorder on to the PC's hard drive. I then fired up the myDVD application. MyDVD is a basic package but can do most of what you’ll need initially. You can opt to work on your own or have a wizard lead you through the steps needed to create a DVD. It features various backdrops plus a menu creator. For simple stuff it is easy to use but it takes some fiddling to get anything a bit more ambitious set up. Once you are happy with the layout and content, you can start to create the DVD+RW. If you are including video footage and it isn’t in the standard DVD format (which DV isn’t), you will have a lengthy wait as it is converted via the supplied CODECs. The disk burn starts once the conversion is complete so have a packed lunch handy.

The finished DVD was initially a disappointment. It wouldn’t play in either of the two DVD-ROM drives I have although it worked OK in both the ‘proper’ DVD players I tried. A quick bit of digging on the net revealed this wasn’t unusual and a lot of DVD-ROM drives appear to have problems. However, compatibility charts are sprouting up all over the place so check out www.dvdplusrw.org/resources/compatibilitylist_dvdrom.html  if you are worried. The next issue was that the quality of the video wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. A second web search revealed this to be a common problem and the smart thing to do was to use your own software/CODECs to do the conversion rather than rely on myDVD to do it all.

This might all sound like doom and gloom but if your goal is to create disks to watch on a DVD player in the lounge and you have access to tools like VirtualDub to assist converting from DV to MPEG2 then you’ll get good results. It is worth the effort as it is strangely satisfying to see your own DVD’s playing on your TV although in my case it brought home just how shoddy the original camera work was. Time to make more use of a tripod I think!

As far as data goes, the large capacity is a big advantage and the speed is fast enough for daily use. When using HP DLA it is incredibly handy having all that space to dump work in progress to when working on large bulky projects without cluttering up your hard disk.

Conclusion

The DVD100i isn’t the perfect DVD mastering system but that is more a limitation of the DVD+RW standard and the source formats than the drive itself. On the plus side the 2.4x write speed makes a big difference. You’ll need huge chunks of hard disk space to get the best from it and you’ll also want to spend some time fiddling with VirtualDub or its equivalents to get the best results.

For my money, DVD+RW looks a better bet than DVD-RW for now and if you’ve settled on the DVD+RW format, the DVD100i gives you everything you need to get you going. However, the more cautious amongst you may wish to sit on the fence for a few months to see what the second generation drives bring in the way of improvements and cost cutting as £400+ is a lot to spend on the wrong horse in the race.

Iain Laskey

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