DVD's Next Big Leaps

Just when you think it's safe to go out and purchase a DVD burner, new technology shows up--three kinds in this case. The most innocuous new twist is 12X recordable--a speed jump that will save time but otherwise won't rock your world. Contending for the earthshaking technology award are soon-to-be-released dual-layer, double-capacity DVD+R and a still-over-the-horizon product based on blue laser technology called high-def DVD. Blue laser promises massively greater capacity and faster speeds, but as is usual with DVD, a war is brewing over the high-def format.

(For a summary of current and upcoming DVD formats, see the chart, "Making Sense of DVD.")

Double Duty

Dual-layer recordable DVD drives and media (also known as double-layer in the DVD+R format) possess roughly twice the capacity of current 4.7GB media and can hold an entire high-bit-rate, 8.5GB DVD-9 commercial movie. For consumers, that means comfortably fitting 3 hours or more of high-quality video on one disc. But our informal tests suggest that dual-layer discs may be incompatible with at least some current players and burners.

We tried out a $199 internal version of Sony's DRU-700A, a dual-layer, 8.5GB recordable drive that also writes single-layer DVD±R at 8X, DVD±R/RW at 4X, CD-R at 40X, and CD-RW at 24X. (The external version will sell for about $299.)

The DRU-700A easily handled our more mundane tests. Using a vendor-bundled version of Nero software, it wrote dual-layer discs flawlessly in a hair over 45 minutes for a full disc. We couldn't detect any layer-switch lag when playing back the movie we burned, on either the Sony DRU-700A or JVC's XV-N55SL DVD player.

But several caveats are in order. A relatively minor one is that dual-layer DVD+R writing proceeds at only 2.4X, so it requires about 45 minutes to write a full disc. (When using DL DVD+R, you must write a full disc to obtain the proper reflectivity on both layers.)

More important, dual-layer discs will reach store shelves slowly--and will temporarily return us to the $10-a-disc days last seen with the first 1X DVD-R burners, says Verbatim spokesman Andy Marken. As more suppliers come on line, prices will probably drop drastically, but single-layer media will continue to be cheaper for the foreseeable future.

The most serious problem, however, is incompatibility with existing players and drives. Our state-of-the-art DVD burners from Plextor (the PX-712A and PX-708A) and Memorex (the True 8X) wouldn't recognize video that we burned onto a preproduction DL disc, and only four of the twelve DVD players that we tried to use would play it. Firmware upgrades should fix the burner problem on new models, and Marken says that the goal for production-level media is 90 percent compatibility.

Benq, Lite-On, Memorex, and Pioneer each plan to release a DL drive within the next couple of months; those drives, like the Sony, will support dual-layer for DVD+R. In addition, some existing drives may add DL write support via firmware upgrades. Consult your drive's maker to be sure. The competing write-once format, DVD-R, should go dual-layer by the end of June, when the DVD Forum is expected to ratify the new specification.