Format and write to a DVD-RW

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 15:01:23 +0000,
  Alan <alan at lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 08:03:11 -0600
> Bruno Wolff III <bruno at wolff.to> wrote:
> > When you replace your drive, you may want to consider whether or not it
> > can be reflashed under linux and whether there is alternate firmware
> > that lets you change regions freely and/or disable macrovision. Updates
> > for burners are common to provide the burner with information about new
> > media (blanks) that were developed since the drive was first produced.
> 
> DVD playback only drives are so cheap nowdays you might as well just buy
> one for each region you care about and put them all in the PC.

My budget for computer equipment is such that I would rather spend a little
of my time, than buy extra drives. I mostly use the "special" firmware on
principal. In practice, I very rarely watch DVDs on my computer and they
are always for the US region. But I don't like the MPAA segragating market
that way (which I don't think is even legal in some countries). Nor do I
like them imposing macrovision or other DRM on the hardware vendors.

Being able to flash with Linux is nice. Some of the vendors are requiring
Windows XP now for their tools, so it isn't just a matter of booting into
DOS to reflash a drive, you have to have a version of XP around that you
can boot into.