DVD-RAM

Did the DVD-RAM record at a higher video resolution than that of the rest of the DVD's(+/-R,RW..)?

Jonathan Jernigan

I have a few and they are awesome, and nobody I show them to ever heard about them before.

Tom G

Out of curiosity, did you see my earlier post on a request to make a video on the M-Disc format? Is it something you're considering doing?

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

I used to believe in something. Now I see it's all a complicated web of lies. If you can't trust that something's really a DVD-RW, what can you trust?

Kyle Olson

Son of a .... I spent a lot of time trying to find information on what a DVD-RT was.🤦🏼‍♂️ Then I went back to the video and I thought I was crazy at first because I kept seeing "DVD-RW", but then I found it. Yay me, I guess! BTW, I am looking forward to learning about the difference in the -R vs +R. Thank you for all your hard work. I find the videos very interesting!

Retro Game Club podcast retrogameclub.net

Huzzah! You noticed! So, I don't actually have a DVD-RW, and that disc was simply a DVD-R. So the W was fake, added in post. I thought it looked fairly convincing, but it was just the right amount of wrong to possible create suspicion. So for the last instance of using that shot, I switched it to a T to make it obvious that I was cheating. I wanted to use Q, but the font was really different and didn't seem to match at all, so I used T. Congrats on finding that easter egg! I like to mix these in from time to time.

Technology Connections

At 11:56, the upper right disc says "DVD-RT". In previous shots, it said "DVD-RW". What's up with that?

Retro Game Club podcast retrogameclub.net

Interesting video. I’d seen DVD-RAM when it came out and wondered what the point was (my need for *slow* large rewritable storage was small). But TV recording seems like it was pretty much the ideal niche. Camera usage might have worked, but SD/SSD seems likely to always be the replacement after tape. As you say if it’d been 16x DVD-RAM early it might have been a reasonable archive/backup medium. But that two went from streaming tape to hard drives as cost decreased. Ewen

Ewen McNeill

P.S. I love these videos you're doing. Keep up the good work!

Mike Bird

One thing I'd like to know is why the CD/DVD cartridge never took off. I had smallish children, and we made our own CDs and bought DVDs. It was a godsend to have a method to keep the dirty little fingers away from the optical media. I could get cheap cartridges for like $0.10 each, and put in any DVD or CD I wanted. The sleeve it slid into when not being used also held the booklet, so I didn't need the "standard" case. But then they went away, and I guess it wasn't "cool" enough for Macs who would eventually get to the point that when they wouldn't eject a DVD, the Apple store had to give me a new iMac (2010) AND a voucher to buy the DVD that was stuck in it.

Mike Bird

One month between my suggestion in one of comments on YT and release of this video. I'm totally convinced it wasn't coincidence :D Thank You buddy! :)

This was a really informative episode. Never knew what was the difference between DVD-RW and DVD-RAM :) Wonder if BD-RAM is something which was in the making but never became a thing. Similar episodes with tape data storage technologies would be nice :)

István Nagy

If I recall right, Windows XP (and onwards) also provides the ability to format a DVD+RW as a removable disk without any special software, whereas DVD-RW had to be written by session. The main issue I had with DVD+RW was reliability as even minor scratches caused readability issues, whereas DVD-RAM was more robust. Nero provided software called InCD that could format CD-R, DVD-R, CD-RW, etc. as a removable disk using what's called packet writing. Rewritable discs could be read with any OS that could read UDF. Non rewritable discs had the obvious drawback in that deleting files did not recover space and had to be finalised from what I recall to be read on a DVD-ROM drive or a PC without InCD.

Seán Byrne

I was a huge fan of DVD-RAM and used it as part of my backup protocols for years.

Chris Wallace

Man, I remember playing Quake off a CD-RW drive! It was neat, but every time I hit quick-save, it was anything BUT.

Ketafuki

Great video! I remember hearing about DVD-RAM when DVD burners became prevalent in the early 2000s, but never knew much about it. Thanks! Also, congrats on reaching 250k subscribers!!

Biggest use I ever saw for DVD-RAM was archival. With server storage space being at a premium, there were a number of software packages that would archive files according to last usage date. The recorder was like a twin-tub washing machine, 2 drives and about 50 slots for cartridges. Will try to find a pic. ( around 1996/7 )

mark barratt

For longevity (basically, archiving video of the grand kids) I buy Verbatim Datalife Plus Blu-ray archive disks. I have no idea what makes them better though, I just trust they are as good as they say they are.

Stephen Bell

I haven't put much thought into it yet, but it is intriguing.

Technology Connections

Have you thought about a video on M-Disc, talking about longevity? I have some if they are hard to find now.

Big Car

YES A NEW VIDEO❤️

DVD-RAM definitely should be receiving the Laserdisc Memorial Lifetime Achievement award at this point. Great idea that just never found its market.

Kevin Kostka

I didn't take it into account explicitly, that's for sure, but I did pepper in a few comments here and there that highlight this issue. Such as the need for 52 Zip disks. Still, even though in 1998 it was a rather absurd amount of data, by 2003 I don't think it was... in a sense the format could have been quite future-proof. Even into the late 2000's 4 GB of storage space was quite a useful amount. Of course now, that's about 1 file from my camera!

Technology Connections

I think there's something you're not taking into account by calculating the price per Gigabyte - most users didn't have this much information they needed to write and rewrite, so it's not like we could all the Gigabytes on a disk easily. We couldn't get that much information from the internet, and if we were copying a CD, the best form of data for some time, we just wanted an identical disk. We rarely wanted all that data on a single disk anyway. For that reason the $500 entry rate was not very appealing.

Kyle Olson

Awesome stuff!

Tedd