home video on dvd Warning

I think from the CDR experiences, there are a couple of potential problems.
First and most annoying is tolerances. It seems that some recordings were
not made with a terribly accurate system, and these then don't play very
well in another machine. Age seems to have little to do with it.
The second is the dodgy media one, which unfortunately is hard to pin down,
as it seems not to be down to the make of blank, just luck. I'm sure someone
techy might well say its the burn that does not treat the media correctly,
but whatever the reason, they do deteriorate, but some do not!

Obviously you also need to make sure the discs are not getting scratched or
if stored in a place with no climate control, getting subjected to extremes
in temp. This can do for tapes just as much as CD./DVDs though!
Brian

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Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"William Skaggs" wrote in message
...
"Gary" wrote in message
...
I have just checked my DVDs with home video on them and some are
unreadable and some are fussy.

I suggest anyone with similar should do the same. before it is too late.

Gary

The best back up for home recorded DVD's is the original tape. The only
problem with that is years down the road, you will have a hard time
finding a working machine to play them on.

I will take one exception to your comments though. The video quality on
DVD's does not get "fuzzy" over time like a tape might do. They can
refuse to play, or skip and freeze, or even get pixilated, but not fuzzy.

-Bill

On Wed, 2 Dec 2009 13:52:29 UTC, Paul Heslop
wrote:

didn't they used to call it disc rot or something?

I sat through a presentation on CDs by a chap from IBM at a conference
years ago when CDs first appeared. Two things I recall:

1) In order for them to be writable they basically had to be
chemically unstable.

2) The only thing, he said, that says the data will still be there in
ten years time was intuition. Because at the time they had not been
around long enough. I am not convinced that accelerated ageing equals
real ageing.

--
Regards
Dave Saville

"GMAN" wrote in message
...
In article , "Vincent"
wrote:
"Gary" wrote in message
...
I have just checked my DVDs with home video on them and some are
unreadable
and some are fussy.

I suggest anyone with similar should do the same. before it is too
late.

Yep - recordable optical media seems to become unreadable in a few years.
I've noticed this too. I used to backup my Playstation 1 games and use the
backups. They were expensive branded CDs, and now all of them (10 years
later) are unreadable.


More than likely its the laser in the playstation 1 that has become weaker
over time.

That is a very common problem.

But, I first noticed the problem on my emulator on my PC, not the PS. When
multiple discs stopped working I suspected my PC's CD drive, so I tried them
on my laptop, and then on the actual PS1. In all cases they wouldn't read,
so I don't think it's just the PS1 that's at fault. The drives read other
CDs fine.

Replace the laser mech in the ps1, its only around $10-20 to do so.

Yeah - I've done that twice in the past. But these days I always use an
emulator and the PS1 (last time I checked about 3 years ago) still read all
my original discs fine.

Thanks for the advice though.

--
Vincent

"Max Demian" wrote in message
...
"Ato_Zee" wrote in message
...

On 2-Dec-2009, Clint Sharp wrote:

Sunlight, humidity. Temperature changes and time can all kill writeable
media.

You forgot oxidation.
Not that keeping them in the dark, in a mu-metal box (best to cover
everything), under vacuum, in a dessicator (just in case of any residual
air,
or from moisture released by any organic component), at a constant
4 degrees C, is viable for most of us.

What about cosmic rays?

Better store them two miles down at the bottom of an abandoned mine to be
on the safe side.


Googling around, it seems that the general consensus is that Flash memory
lasts around 10 years. The cheapest 4GB (i.e. comparable size to a DVD) is
£3.67
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-4GB...dp/B000TZ5WRC/

However, I have hard drives from 1992 that still work today via an IDE to
USB adaptor from Maplin. I'd suggest two hard drives would provide adequate
long term storage.

--
Vincent

On Thu, 3 Dec 2009 11:33:38 -0000
"Vincent" wrote:
However, I have hard drives from 1992 that still work today via an IDE to
USB adaptor from Maplin. I'd suggest two hard drives would provide adequate
long term storage.

I've got a hard driver from 1994 connected to a motherboard from 1999 and both
still work fine. If you buy decent kit and look after it, it'll generally
serve you well. Unless its made by Humax - premium price, amstrad reliability.

B2003

wrote in message ...
On Thu, 3 Dec 2009 11:33:38 -0000
"Vincent" wrote:
However, I have hard drives from 1992 that still work today via an IDE to
USB adaptor from Maplin. I'd suggest two hard drives would provide
adequate
long term storage.

I've got a hard driver from 1994 connected to a motherboard from 1999 and
both
still work fine. If you buy decent kit and look after it, it'll generally
serve you well. Unless its made by Humax - premium price, amstrad
reliability.

B2003


I have just copied 50 year old film of my childhood. I have some reel to
reel tapes just as old. they still work.
In the old days if a tape got damaged only the damaged bit was a problem but
now we have all this digital stuff 1 small problem and the whole thing is
scraped.

Gary

On Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:41:21 GMT, Paul Heslop wrote:

Robert Roland wrote:

On Wed, 2 Dec 2009 16:01:05 GMT, "Ato_Zee"
wrote:

Like if I transfer all my multi-media stuff on to a 1 or 2TB drive?

Come to think of it, with a vacuum pump, and fused glass
feed-throughs, I could evacuate the chamber, and keep it in the
fridge.

Don't try to run a hard drive in vacuum. The heads fly on a cushion of
air to avoid crashing into the platters.


not to mention the dust you get in the average vacuum :O)

You're supposed to empty the bag before putting the hard drive in it.

Let me guess: this is off topic - or at least off-wall :-)

--
Gene E. Bloch letters0x40blochg0x2Ecom

On Tue, 1 Dec 2009 12:22:41 -0000, "Gary"
wrote:

I have just checked my DVDs with home video on them and some are unreadable
and some are fussy.

I suggest anyone with similar should do the same. before it is too late.

Gary

Further to similar info above:

Had a tour around RCHME Swindon a few months ago and went into their
'optimum storage conditions' archive (via the airlocks!).

The guy showed us their recentish DVD archive which uses the best gold
'lifetime guarantee' blanks that money can buy. Regular analysis was
suggesting that they might just last five years.

GrahamC.

On Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:22:37 GMT, Paul Heslop wrote:

"Gene E. Bloch" wrote:

On Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:41:21 GMT, Paul Heslop wrote:

Robert Roland wrote:

On Wed, 2 Dec 2009 16:01:05 GMT, "Ato_Zee"
wrote:

Like if I transfer all my multi-media stuff on to a 1 or 2TB drive?

Come to think of it, with a vacuum pump, and fused glass
feed-throughs, I could evacuate the chamber, and keep it in the
fridge.

Don't try to run a hard drive in vacuum. The heads fly on a cushion of
air to avoid crashing into the platters.


not to mention the dust you get in the average vacuum :O)

You're supposed to empty the bag before putting the hard drive in it.

Let me guess: this is off topic - or at least off-wall :-)

off topic? what can be more on topic than vacuums and hard discs?
watching tv nowadays is a bit like sitting in a vacuum of
tastelessness :O)

Mostly I just watch the news. Which makes me think you're right :-)

--
Gene E. Bloch letters0x40blochg0x2Ecom

In article , "Vincent" wrote:
"Max Demian" wrote in message
...
"Ato_Zee" wrote in message
...

On 2-Dec-2009, Clint Sharp wrote:

Sunlight, humidity. Temperature changes and time can all kill writeable
media.

You forgot oxidation.
Not that keeping them in the dark, in a mu-metal box (best to cover
everything), under vacuum, in a dessicator (just in case of any residual
air,
or from moisture released by any organic component), at a constant
4 degrees C, is viable for most of us.

What about cosmic rays?

Better store them two miles down at the bottom of an abandoned mine to be
on the safe side.


Googling around, it seems that the general consensus is that Flash memory
lasts around 10 years. The cheapest 4GB (i.e. comparable size to a DVD) is
£3.67
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-4GB...dp/B000TZ5WRC/

However, I have hard drives from 1992 that still work today via an IDE to
USB adaptor from Maplin. I'd suggest two hard drives would provide adequate
long term storage.

I still have the scsi drives from my Atari ST chugging along fine since 1985.