Burning DVD's , how is the quality?

I buy my DVD's. My buddy says I'm crazy not to get a dvd burner and copy rentals with a free program (he uses dvd shrink). Is there any audio or video difference in quality compared to a standard dvd? Also, can a burner provide dolby digital or DTS format? Will it be able to upconvert if played on Denon 1910 player?

This statement is not a judgment of your decision, but this forum really isn't the place to discuss illegal activities.

I am aware it is illegal, and as I stated, "I buy my DVD's". Between my kids (2&4 YR OLDS) and myself we havecollected over 250 titles. I prefer to have covers to organize and protect our discs and will continue to buy dvd's. My kid's just received 6 dvd's through the mail from a club my wife joined. I just wanted to settle a discussion my friend and I had about the quality of burnt DVD's. I told him I believe it's not going to be the same audio/video quality from a $99. burner. Just curious.

It is not illegal to make archived copies of DVD's you own, however, it does sound like your friend is taking the illegal route, as many do...To answer your question, it depends. Some retail programs on the market will make an exact copy of the original with a disclaimer placed at the beginning when you first watch your copied version. Before dual layer burners hit the market, you would have to span your copy across 2 4.7 GB discs. Many, if not most movies are Dual layered.

There are also many products, including shareware like DVD Shrink that can compress the information to fit on a standard 4.7GB dvd, and you will lose quality (A and V), although some people might not notice the difference. Also, many of these products will allow you to burn the movie only, and leave off the special features and menu's, in this case you can normally fit the entire movie, uncompressed, on a single DVD, including the DD or DTS track if you would like.

Since we are talking legal back-ups here..............

In reply to:
Is there any audio or video difference in quality compared to a standard dvd?

Very little if done right. DVD X-Copy is by far and away the best.

In reply to:
Also, can a burner provide dolby digital or DTS format?

Yes but it's not the burner that does it, it's the software. 1Click DVD Copy for example gives you the option of DD or DTS if they are both on the disc.

In reply to:
Will it be able to upconvert if played on Denon 1910 player?

Huh?

Most commercial DVD's are dual layer, with a max of around 8.5 gigs of information.

Dual layer burners are getting cheaper, but dual layer media is not, still close to $3 a disc. Single layer media is about 40 cents a disc for the good stuff, and is what most people have and use.

When copying a movie for archival, and using single layer discs, compression needs to take place....all done to the video portion of the movie. So depending on how much compression is needed, it can affect the video...but not the audio.

Some software allow you to take some portions of the disc out...such as the extras, menus, and audio tracks to create more room so less compression is needed.

I used DVDShrink, which is free, and have found it much better than DVD X-Copy.

I have a 5 year old son and I copy every single childrens movie that I have. I do not mind buying them once but I will not buy them twice. DVD Shrink will copy Dolby Digital and DTS with minimal loss of sound quality.Loss of Video quality can only be seen on HDTV's but he does not care. You should do this for any disk you use a lot or any disk that will be exposed to Peanutbutter & jelly fingers. It is well worth it.

In reply to:
I used DVDShrink, which is free, and have found it much better than DVD X-Copy

Really? With DVDShrink I get pixel break up all over the place on my Denon 2900 but with DVD X-Copy in movie mode only, I get none. I take it you don't see it on your 2900?

I have a total of 7 different DVD copy software titles on my computer (I went through a phase!) and to date, I always go back to X-Copy. I would give 1ClickDVD a close second. DVDShrink would make my top ten but I have yet to see it produce a DVD where the video quality matched that of DVD X-Copy. Then again, I'm very fussy. Some people might not even notice what bugs me!

Some issues may be due to what burner people are using also. I have had good luck with my Plextor and so far, my 2900 likes the DVD's that it produces.

Only thing I don't like about DVD X Copy is that stupid message they put at the start of all burned DVD's.

What version of DVDShrink do you have, and how do you have it configured? I always do "deep analysis" and picture to "sharp"....comes out great.

the latest version is 3.2.15

I've had good luck with DVDShrink and the "Deep Scan"/"Sharpest" setting selected.

Places like the Movie Trading Company here in Dallas sells used DVDs for 5.99 to 12.99 - I choose the buy used route - I get the nice cover, which looks way nicer than a stack of standard DVD covers

I use DVD Decryptor and then DVD2One to make perfect copies of my owned movies, I usually don't include all the special features crap...

I then purchase cheap cases and download my cover inserts from www.cdcovers.cc and print them on a color printer.

Do any of you use a Denon-2200? I have tried making copies of my movies and playing them on this unit, and it doesn't work. I am using a Lite-on burner 8x, latest firmware. I have used numerous types of media as well. It will burn successfully, but when I play it, it will only play for 5-10 minutes, then just stop??!?!

It is extremely frustrating. Has anyone had any experiences with this unit?

Not sure Din, I currently have an older Toshiba Prog. Scan player that has worked great through the years and has a great picture. Not sure what to tell ya about the 2200.

Actually that sounds to me like you've got a lot of errors on the disk. There's two things to check for on a burned disk, which are generally checked simultaneously by any diagnostic software that can check for them. These are PIE and POF (parity inner error, parity outer failure). There's a very brief description of them buried in a huge pdf here on pages 47 and 48. Basically the specification says that a player has to be capable of playing a disk with fewer than 280 consecutive PIEs and if POF > 0 then it can be expected that there will be noticable errors.

The fact that your disk begins to play, and then stops, would say to me that you're burn has a ton of errors in it. I'll have to look around to find something you can scan one of your burns with to check for PIE/POF (I use PlexTools, which comes with my plextor drive.) Very high PIE or any POF can be caused by a lousy drive, but generally I would say it's caused by over-speed burning of media, or low quality media. I won't burn a DVD faster than 2.4 speed, even if it should be rated for it, and my burns end up in the region I would call "excellent" which is Max consecutive PIE < 20 and POF = 0. Something to look into anyway, if the player just had a problem with burned DVDs, it wouldn't recognize them at all. It cutting out like that really points to bad burns.

Din...I use a Denon 2900 and have found that the quality of the media is very important to this player.