How Do I Pick A Good DVD Duplicator?

When you start to look around at buying a DVD duplicator, you will soon realize that there are many different options available. For someone who is new to the industry, all the various technical terms can be somewhat confusing. To help you through the decision-making process, it is useful to understand the different types of duplicators available and how they work. You also need to consider what your duplication needs are. Once you are familiar with both these aspects, the selection process becomes far easier. Here are a few tips to help you along.

Consider Why You Need a DVD duplicator?

It is a good starting point to first assess the reasons that you are looking at purchasing a DVD duplicator. As an example, you may be filming seminars and then creating DVDs to sell to customers so they can have the seminar content to refer back to. In this case, consider how many DVDs you would be duplicating at a time as well as what sort of time frame you have in which to complete the duplication. Also, look at what computer systems you currently have. Your first choice will be to get a duplicator that is compatible with the system you already have. If not, you may have to purchase additional software which raises the purchase price of the DVD duplicator. Will you be using the duplicator often, only once a month or once every few months? This will determine the capacity of the duplicator that you choose. In addition, consider if you will be burning standard DVDs, Blu Ray disks or CDs. Not all duplicators can offer you all three functionalities. Think of where you be performing the duplications. Do you need a machine that is compact and portable or is it likely to stand in an office? Lastly, budget is an important factor. While the top-of-the-range duplicator may attract your attention, it may be well out of your price range. You may need to compromise on some of your requirements and settle on a duplicator with fewer advanced features but still does the job.

What Are Some of the Best DVD Duplicators on the Market?

There are several brands that lead the market in terms of DVD duplicators. Each has its own specifications so one is not necessarily better than another. The features and price of each is what is most likely to determine which one is best for you. Let’s look at some of the top brands available and go through their notable features.

Standalone Duplicators

Xerox has a series of standalone duplicators that have some impressive features. The duplicators come in a range of sizes and capabilities to match your business needs. A unique feature of this system is that it has a drag-and-drop function which makes allocating files to a DVD drive for duplication quick and easy. Shark duplicators are reputed to be the industry leaders in DVD duplicators. They are also priced at the top end of the market. Their standard machine is known as the Sharkcopier SATA manual tower. More advanced systems include the Sharknet Duplicator which allows the duplicator to be networked between several different PCs. This is a feature that is particularly useful in an office environment where more than one user may need to create DVD duplicates. The Sharkcopier Daisy Chain series allows several duplicators to be linked together. This allows users to duplicate on as many as 60,000 towers with just one controlling PC. The Econ SATA duplicators are similar to the Sharkcopier duplicators but come at much more affordable prices. They have the capability to copy CDs, multilayer DVDs, Blu Ray discs and standard DVDs.

Compact Duplicator Options

Often you may need to make DVD duplications when you are traveling or away from the office. Carting a bulky DVD duplicator with you may not be an option. Thankfully, there are few compact duplicators that are small enough to travel with. Granted you won’t be able to copy more than a handful of DVDs at a time but it certainly beats copying then one by one on your laptop. The Slim Micro CD / DVD / Blu Ray Duplicator can copy up to five DVDs at a time and is compact enough to take with you out of the office. The Sharkcopier Light Scribe is the compact version of the standard Sharkcopier. This duplicator can give you an output of up to 15 disks at a time.

Vinpower Digital.com has almost any type of cd duplicator on the market today, as well as other formats. We have the expertise to help you at every stage of planning to enhance your optical disc duplication. Visit us online today!

The Blu-ray Rollercoaster: Adoption Rate Surges Again

Every time a new, trailblazing technology debuts, pundits and technology-lovers begin the process of predicting just how fast it will replace its predecessors and competitors. It happened with CDs, it happened with DVDs and it is happening now with Blu-ray. If you check the news stories (and op-eds) of the last three years, you will find that the adoption rate of Blu-ray players, not to mention the pricier recorders, has fluctuated up and down in strange and often unfathomable cycles.

Generally, though, the sales have gone up after movie studio announcements of popular movies coming to the format, and down during periods of no news. In the world of tech, especially consumer electronics, the saying that no news is good news is completely wrong. Tech adoption rates, after the initial surge from early adopters and well-heeled gadget-lovers, depend on PR and media presence. After 2009, a flat year for Blu-ray growth and adoption, things appear to be heading up again.

Kiosk and you shall receive

Redbox is a firm that rents DVDs via self-service kiosks in almost 25,000 locations nationwide. In July 2010 the company announced that it was going to offer what it calls super-size rentals ($1.50 Blu-ray movies) in about half those places right away, with (they hope) all locations serving them up by the end of the year. The kiosks are becoming familiar sights at military bases, grocery stores and fast-food restaurants all over the U.S. and Redbox has good data on rental patterns and growth potential.

Such recent films as Bounty Hunter, The Book of Eli, Green Zone and Brooklyn’s Finest are among the first Blu-ray titles being made available at Redbox locations. Customers can visit the company Web site at Redbox.com to check availability of Blu-ray titles in their area. The firm explained that the number and selection of Blu-ray movies would vary by location, but that new titles would be added every week. The company did not say if it would standardize the listings nationwide.

Whither the hardware?

Like other technologies that start out expensive and take time to drop in price, Blu-ray adoption has been less than swift, but seems to be trending up. An industry study published in Screen Digest reports that DVD is still good enough for most people, and that consumers in a tight economy are having at least some trouble justifying the additional expense of both the players (and recorders) and the rentals. Nothing slows new-tech adoption like a recession, but new devices with true potential seem to weather the storm and bounce back as people’s finances do. This seems to be happening now with Blu-ray.

Of course, this specific sort of resistance will wane not only as the economy picks up steam but as prices continue to drop for the hardware. In March 2010, the Target chain began selling a Philips BDP5010 Blu-ray Disc player for $69.98, featuring support for DivX (compressed movie files) and a SDHC card reader. The player also has BD Live, meaning it can download additional materials over your broadband connection, and HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) that integrates all device controls into one remote device.

The naysayers

Among the Blu-ray naysayers are such tech industry titans as Steve Jobs of Apple, who put his money where his mouth is by making the newly-released Apple TV a streaming-only device. (You can stream your movie library from your computer, of course, but the Apple TV has no more internal storage.) At Apple’s June iPhone 4 event, Jobs dismissed Blu-ray as “a bag of hurt” and ventured that it would be soundly trounced “by Internet downloadable formats.”

Still, makers of Blu-ray hardware and movie studios are positive about the future. There are certain fundamental changes required of consumers, especially the requirement of a special disc player and the fact that the improved quality can only be appreciated on an HDTV. Consumers that do not have newer, high-resolution TVs or monitors have little reason to invest in Blu-ray hardware, so there is something of a threshold for buyers to cross. This is what they see happening now, say Blu-ray proponents.

Future still bright

The ABI Research firm predicts that penetration of Blu-ray players (excluding PCs and game consoles with the technology built in) will more than double in North America. From about 8 percent of TV-owning homes in 2009 the figure is expected to hit 18 percent by the end of 2010. Another bright spot is the recent Nielsen data that shows Blu-ray movies accounting for 11 percent of all DVD movie sales. This is a 60 percent increase during a year in which DVD sales, as a whole, dropped about 1 percent.

Taking a lesson from CDs and DVDs, we can safely say that Blu-ray is here to stay. As the economy picks up and prices keep falling, we should see the adoption rate rise again as the world welcomes a new and better way of watching movies.

Vinpower Digital.com has almost any type of cd duplicator on the market today, as well as other formats. We have the expertise to help you at every stage of planning to enhance your optical disc duplication. Visit us online today!

The Importance Of Using Quality Media With Your CD/DVD Recorders

Whether you are using your PC’s built-in DVD burner or a commercial record-and-print solution with a robotic arm, the quality of the media is of primary importance. If you are replicating, duplicating or just making a mix CD, you want your disc to last, stand up to normal use and play the music and/or movies as clearly and well as ones you buy in the store. Bottom line, you cannot expect great results if you are using the cheapest optical media available, unless you caught a great sale on first-rate discs.

If you have a high failure rate when burning discs, it could be one of five things (usually):

1. Your burner does not support the media format you are using.

2. The media is not compatible with your disc burner.

3. You are not using the right combination of software, hardware and firmware.

4. There may be a problem with your PC.

5. You have a bad batch of media.

DVD-R versus DVD+R

There is some confusion still lingering about the difference in recordable formats of DVDs. Luckily, CD burning does not share this problem (there are only CD-R discs, not CD+R ones). The story goes like this: Pioneer developed DVD-R to be compatible with both DVD video players, like in your living room system, as well as the DVD-ROM (DVD-Read Only Memory) readers in PCs. After approval by the DVD Forum, an industry consortium, DVD-R was adopted by a slew of hardware manufacturers.

For companies that did not want to pay the big royalties to use that solution, it was actually cheaper to develop a competing format. This is just what another large group of manufacturers did when creating the DVD+R format. This group dubbed itself the DVD+RW Alliance. It is difficult to conclude if one format is better than the other, as neither has any significant advantages (or disadvantages). Both are able to burn discs that will normally play in standalone DVD players, but not always. It is best to read reviews and choose a device that fits your requirements, and then buy the proper media for it. Some burners now accommodate both -R and +R, as well as -RW and +RW, discs.

Brand name questions

Most blank CDs and DVDs are made by a handful of factories located in Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea and other countries. Therefore, it is not the brand so much as the manufacturer that will tell you if the media is high quality or not. Fuji, Imation, Memorex and other brand names outsource their disc manufacturing, so the way to tell if you have a quality disc is to check what is called the Media ID.

DVD burners are made to read the Media ID and Write Strategy information from blank media, but they do not capture or display this information for you. You can download freeware and shareware programs that will check the Media ID, as well as the Write Strategy (maximum burn speed and other details) of the disc. For instance, DVDINFOPRO is available free of charge at www.dvdinfopro.com. If you were to run a test on a Ritek disk, the test would show the Media ID as RITEKG04 (see list below). The test also ensures that the Media ID is not forged, since the Write Strategy speed of 4X would match the Media ID speed data.

These are the Media IDs of several high-quality DVD media brands:

RITEKGx = RITEK

OPTODISC = Optodisc

RICOHJPN = Ritek or Ricoh

PRODISCS03 = PRODISC

MCC = Mitsubishi Chemicals

PVC = Pioneer

Media ID, Write Strategy and burning speeds

The Media ID is information about the disc and its source. Write Strategy is information that reveals the maximum speed at which the disc was made to work properly. Burning faster than recommended is a common cause of disc-write errors. Just about every modern DVD burner will read the Media ID to determine the appropriate write speed for the burning software. There are several ways to check the Write Strategy to make sure that the Media ID is not forged to allow the statement of a higher, incorrect speed. You should never burn at a faster speed than the Write Strategy states. Search online for “Write Strategy evaluation tools” to get a utility that will help you do this, if you so desire.

Remember to keep your DVD burner’s firmware up to date. It may be that your DVD burner cannot clearly read the Media ID (in other words, the discs are fine but your PC cannot tell) and this will result in burning at the lowest supported speed, not the highest. For all kinds of answers to CD- and DVD-burning questions, check the Web sites of the DVD Forum, disc manufacturers and DVD burner makers.

Vinpower Digital.com has almost any type of cd duplicator on the market today, as well as other formats. We have the expertise to help you at every stage of planning to enhance your optical disc duplication. Visit us online today!

A Game Lover’s Article On Choosing The Most Ideal Video Card

Selecting the right gaming desktop computer can be a tough call. There are so many quality makes and models out there it can be overwhelming. You might be tempted to forego some fancy options for a cheaper price. This can be risky.

On the other hand, if you buy a cheaper model, you may find yourself regretting it over time. Especially if a new game comes out that you are not equipped to play. Here are some tips to help you pick the most appropriate PC for gaming.

Resolution. Whatever monitor you choose, the PC you buy should be able to support your LCD’s native resolution and possibly its maximum resolution, as well.

Native resolution refers to the number of pixels it supports without having to scale an image up or down. For example, if you want to open an image with a 1680 x 1050 pixel native resolution, you have to have a video card to support it. If you do not it will compromise the image quality.

Interface type. Take note that DVI cables will often provide a sharper image than when VGA cables are used. Be sure that the video connectors on the PC match the monitor. Converters are available but they don’t always work. They may also sacrifice image quality.

Serious gamers would never buy a computer with integrated video. Sure, it’s a cost savings, but it focuses on price over quality. Often it means other features have been reduced to keep the cost down.

The best choice is a PC that uses a dedicated video card. It pays to do your homework. Check the model number on Google and read some reviews or go on some other web sites to determine if the card has enough power to allow you to play the game at the proper resolution. If you want to do some serious gaming, buy a PCI express 2.0 card.

If you’re a moderate gamer that plays only flash-based or Facebook games, you may want to stick with integrated video. It will give you want you need to have fun.

Enjoy more of this writer’s tips on subjects including roofing jobs and roof replacement cost.

categories: computers,hardware,video,video card,technology,information technology,games,advice,entertainment,graphics,fun,personal computers,product reviews,laptops

How To Get A Customized Optical Disc Duplicator

It is easy to get hold of most any kind of optical disc duplicator, and the range of models already available probably covers most needs of both businesses and individuals. The state of the art today, of course, is the Blu-ray format, but leading manufacturers make duplicators that handle CDs and regular DVDs, too. You can get standalone, single-function duplicators as well as ones incorporating LightScribe-type technology that will label your discs while being duplicated (or in a separate step, if you like). There are autoloading models for all disc types, models that duplicate and print full-color labels, others that can load image files straight from a connected PC and models that do not need a PC connected at all.

Both manufacturers and high-tech dealers offer these and many other pre-made models and styles, and take care of most needs with their list of popular offerings. However, you may need some special duplicator for a very different kind of workflow. So where do you go for that? It is not likely that Toshiba or any bulk manufacturer is going to ramp up a factory line to make you a single Super Duper Duplicator. However, if you look around a bit, you will find some high-tech firms that not only specialize in stocking all kinds of disc duplicators but have the in-house, on-site expertise to build you a customized product.

Core staff

You need to find a company that has a staff with broad expertise. It may be that you do not need a custom unit at all, and when you find people who are experienced with all stages of production planning in this environment, they may be able to show you how to enhance your present optical disc duplication setup to do new things. If that does not work, you will want to confirm that the company has the research and development know-how to design, develop or collaborate in the creation of products and applications that will get your job done. Firms at the forefront of duplication technology are constantly expanding the high-tech boundaries to improve the functionality of CD/DVD duplicators.

The leading suppliers of CD and DVD duplicators got where they are by providing high quality products, reliable technology and responsive customer service. The best of the best will be able to show a strong engineering focus from the beginning. If the company has a solid research and development team (meaning software, mechanical and electrical engineers, along with computer programmers) then they should have the capability of designing, developing, enhancing or collaborating on original products and applications in the field of optical disc duplication.

Multiple areas of expertise

It takes a combination of skills and people to create a new product, even if it is just a variation of an existing one. You will need the help of software engineers who will develop what is called the firmware for a unit’s controller, as well as software to interface between the user and the unit through a PC, if that’s the approach being used. There are plenty of standalone, non-PC-tethered units that can be customized to client specifications, of course. Unique products may also require the input of circuit design teams that will design original board structures. If the company you are talking to about custom duplicators can do this, it means they have the ultimate flexibility to develop applications and products that suit the unique and essential needs that you have.

Even further, if your custom manufacturer has integrated circuit (IC) designers on staff, your new product can have custom chipsets on its circuit boards. This is the route to take if you want to have a custom application that perfectly, and consistently, meets the requisite product specifications. The more directly the job can be controlled (leaving out as much human error as possible, that is) the better the average results will be over the long run. A duplicator manufacturer with IC designers and other high-tech engineers is definitely the place to go when you need a product that is not, as they say, right off the shelf.

Robotics and more

Many of the custom-style duplicators, as well as off the shelf ones, make use of the quickly accelerating technology of robotics. There are many ways that robotic technology can be used in the optical disc environment, simplifying the workflows that aim at being one-stop shops of duplication, printing and even sorting. If you are looking for disc duplication that is something different, something original and something unique, you need to find a firm that not only stocks and sells the top devices, but has the brainpower and production know-how to create news ones just for you. Look around and you will find them!

Vinpower Digital.com has almost any type of dvd duplicator on the market today, as well as other formats. We have the expertise to help you at every stage of planning to enhance your optical disc duplication. Visit online today.