Time to Get Versatile with DVDs
DVD Players Go Beyond Playing DVDs
As we delved into the art and science of producing a weekly television show the versatility of the now ubiquitous DVD has been a big help.
Most people don't know it- but the V in DVD didn't originally stand for "video." The initials originally meant Digital Versatile Disc. Toshiba, the format's pioneer, wanted to illustrate the ability of the new format to hold large amounts of data. DVD drives have almost become standard PC equipment instead of an option. As the price of DVD burners plummets more and more computers have DVD capability. While most people think of DVDs for copying movies or downloading pirate video, they are a lot more versatile than that!
The standard DVD holds up to 4.7 gig of data. That's almost seven CDs of information on one disk. With fancy dual-layer technology you can almost double that. And that's a great tool for moving large backups or the huge amount of data video editing consumes. But the days of burning a DVD and only using it in a computer are fast disappearing. The new generation of players can read a variety of different video formats from CD or DVD disks.
When is a DVD not a DVD?
Have you ever received a video clip in your e-mail and wished you could share it with your bandwidth-challenged friends? Or maybe even gramps who doesn't have a computer? Now that's easier than ever. Imagine burning that video to a CD and being able to plop it in your DVD player and watching it. And I'm not talking about long term DVD conversion silliness either- I'm talking about copying that file straight to a 50ยข CD-R in a couple of minutes and presto.
The Philips DVP642 DVD Player does just that for under $60. Burn a CD or DVD with MPEG or AVI files and the DVP642 will play it. I experimented with several different formats and was amazed at the wide variety of files it played. Not mention MP3 audio and JPEG images!
So take a look at some of the next generation DVD players available. You might find that you can do a whole lot more than watch those rentals from Netflix!
As we delved into the art and science of producing a weekly television show the versatility of the now ubiquitous DVD has been a big help.
Most people don't know it- but the V in DVD didn't originally stand for "video." The initials originally meant Digital Versatile Disc. Toshiba, the format's pioneer, wanted to illustrate the ability of the new format to hold large amounts of data. DVD drives have almost become standard PC equipment instead of an option. As the price of DVD burners plummets more and more computers have DVD capability. While most people think of DVDs for copying movies or downloading pirate video, they are a lot more versatile than that!
The standard DVD holds up to 4.7 gig of data. That's almost seven CDs of information on one disk. With fancy dual-layer technology you can almost double that. And that's a great tool for moving large backups or the huge amount of data video editing consumes. But the days of burning a DVD and only using it in a computer are fast disappearing. The new generation of players can read a variety of different video formats from CD or DVD disks.
When is a DVD not a DVD?
Have you ever received a video clip in your e-mail and wished you could share it with your bandwidth-challenged friends? Or maybe even gramps who doesn't have a computer? Now that's easier than ever. Imagine burning that video to a CD and being able to plop it in your DVD player and watching it. And I'm not talking about long term DVD conversion silliness either- I'm talking about copying that file straight to a 50ยข CD-R in a couple of minutes and presto.
The Philips DVP642 DVD Player does just that for under $60. Burn a CD or DVD with MPEG or AVI files and the DVP642 will play it. I experimented with several different formats and was amazed at the wide variety of files it played. Not mention MP3 audio and JPEG images!
So take a look at some of the next generation DVD players available. You might find that you can do a whole lot more than watch those rentals from Netflix!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home