December 21,2002

Well, technology's at it again.  Now they're saying the VCR is heading for oblivion and DVD is the new wave.  Problem is, there is still a lot of discussion as to the exact standard to be used so I think we are going to see a lot of compatibility problems in the beginning.

You can now get a DVD burner for your computer.  Again there are different standards and the one which will win out is up for grabs. My advice is if you want to get one, get the DVD-RAM/DVD-R.  When you make a DVD disk to be played, most players on the market right now will usually play the DVD-R disks without any problems. 

When I purchased my new PC, one of the determining factors was the type of DVD recorder. Gateway is using DVD-RAM/DVD-R and Dell is using DVD+RW/DVD+R. I'm not going into specifics about the standards, but again you always want to go with the one which it appears will end up being the standard format. 

Trouble with this is, I remember when I bought a 486 computer with an EISA system bus because it was the way the computers were going to go.  You guessed it, engineers being the type of people they are, they decided to scrap the whole idea and go a different direction.  It's a crap shoot, so you just have top decide when it's time and make your best guess.

There is some pretty cool software for authoring your own DVD movies.  If you have a newer PC, or a converter card, you can hook up a digital camcorder directly to the computer to download movies.

If you want to convert VCR tapes to DVD, you'll need a analog to digital converter.  The software allows you to splice video and still pictures, or any graphics file format image.  You can setup transitions of all types between movies or pictures, and you can also add audio of any type.  Some pretty neat features and very easy to use.

If you have any questions or comments, click