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May 1st, 2007

I need continual help

Warning: This post is really really boring. But I will try my best to jazz it up a bit.

These are some technical problems I am currently having. Any advice you can give would be most highly appreciated.

Problem 1: Buying the correct DVD discs
I decided that I would like to record everything in the world onto one DVD. I have a computer that can write DVDs, but I had no blank DVD discs. “Aha!”, I thought to myself, “I will buy myself some DVDs and then I can record everything in the whole world onto them.”

So I bought some DVDs, but I think they might not be the right ones. I looked up the details of the DVD player on the internet, and these are thus:

The SDW041 (CD-R/RW/DVD+R/DVD+RW Combo Drive) is slim internal type, weight 235g, with steel top cover and aluminium bottom top. It is designed by internal drawer type manual load which only 12.7mm high. It is IDE/ATAPI interface DVD+RW drive, enables to write CD-R/RW, DVD+R/+RW discs and also has the function as a regular CD/DVD ROM drive. The SDW041 has 24X speed CD-ROM disc reading capabilities, and 8X speed for using DVD-ROM discs reading,16X speed CD-R discs writing,10X speed CD-RW discs writing,4X speed DVD+R writing,2.4X speed DVD+RW writing. It supports various CD/DD format and gets many inspection certificates as CE&FCC certificate (EMI license) , UL(Safety license) and TUV.

Read
* DVD-ROM: 8x
* CD-ROM: 24x

Write
* DVD+R: 4x
* CD-R: 16x

Rewrite
* DVD+RW: 2.4x
* CD-RW: 10x

Coffee
* White
* No sugar

I have some discs that are Maxell DVD-R 1×16x speed which seemed to be the standard thing in the shop although there were some DVD+R ones that I decided I didn’t like the look of as much.

I’ve got the wrong ones haven’t I? I need DVD+R not DVD-R, and also 16x discs are too fast. The packaging tells me that dire things will happen to me and my descendants’ descendants should I try to use discs that are too fast. Is that right? Can you record onto 16x discs if your disc writer says 2.4x ? I think probably not, perhaps.

Problem 2: My wires
Lets just suppose, for a moment, that I was in posession of a Mini-DV camcorder. Suppose I wanted to plug that camcorder into the TV but the TV had no suitable sockets and the video had no suitable sockets either. The DVD player does have suitable sockets, but plugging it in doesn’t work. This is a picture of my wires in case that helps:

camcorder wires

Any thoughts about what I should do with these wires would be appreciated. Perhaps I need an adaptor of some sort. “If in doubt adapt”, as someone once thought of saying.

By the way – thanks for the kind comments and e-mails following yesterday’s post. I feel better today. I went to a Basildon cafe and meditated on the cartoon ideas you gave me in the November comments. You have no idea how useful these are to me.

17 Comments »



This is a single Cartoon Blog entry, posted by Dave on Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 at 4:42 pm.

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17 Responses to “I need continual help”


  1. Suzy says:

    Sorry I have no idea … I have a husband whose purpose in life is to answer similar questions from me … I don’t suppose you have one of those on hand do you? I would ask him to take a look at your problem but he’s just disappeared off into our “machine room” (yes, at home) saying that a very important switch blew up! :?

    May 1st, 2007 at 5:05 pm
  2. Suzy says:

    Actually I suspect I may know more than I think – for problem 2 you probably need one of these

    May 1st, 2007 at 5:08 pm
  3. Richard says:

    Dave,
    Suzy has retrieved me from the machine room at home – yes the main switch blew up last night, and I’m having problems with my firewall at the moment, so your problem appears is a welcome diversion.

    DVDs – you indeed appear to have to wrong disks – you need to buy DVD+R disks for your drive, and 4x ones will work well, though you should be fine with higher speed disks – the problems come when you try and write 2x disks at 4x or 4x at 8x – basically don’t exceed the rated speed – you get the idea.

    I never really bother with rewritable disks – they cause me more headaches than they save me money – so I just buy writeables. They’re pretty cheap now anyway.

    Blank Disk Shop do a good line in cheap disks, and they do a
    sample pack     for you to try several different brands out to see which ones work best for you. Personally I like the Datawrite Yellows, but your mileage may vary, as different drives wok better with different disks.

    Suzy is quite correct about the adapter – assuming you have a SCART socket on the TV.

    Good luck.

    May 1st, 2007 at 5:44 pm
  4. Steve says:

    Hi,

    Like Suzy said, a scart adaptor as in the picture should do the trick for your camcorder.

    Cheers – Steve

    May 1st, 2007 at 5:50 pm
  5. Jason says:

    Greetings, brother.

    For problem 1, you do indeed need to purchase DVD+R discs. I’d send you web sites to my sources, but I’m afraid shops in the USA will not be helpful to you. Sorry. As for speed, the discs can be rated for speeds faster than your drive, and that should not be a problem. The software you use to burn the discs should select the maximum allowed burn speed to match your hardware, and it won’t hurt the disc to be burned at a slower speed.

    For problem 2, the best solution for you will be to try to find an adapter that converts from the wires you pictured to the inputs for your TV. Another option would be to see if you had a VCR lying about. Those typically have input sockets for things like your Mini-DV. Sorry I can’t be more specific.

    Peace,
    Jason

    May 1st, 2007 at 6:08 pm
  6. Richard says:

    Problem 1 – yes you do have the wrong sort of blank DVD’s DVD+ and DVD- are two different standards. Speed wise, don’t worry about it, the 16x is how fast the discs can go, so with a 2.4x drive they will be fine.

    Problem 2 – As somebody has already said, a SCART adapter like this one is the quickest way, as most TV’s have those sockets. Incidentally, make sure you get a switchable one as the wiring of the socket is different for an input SCART and output.

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:27 pm
  7. Vinny says:

    For problem 1, I know that the + and the – are extremely important. You can only record on + DVD’s. I stay away from re-writables. They cost twice as much at least and are less reliable.

    Speed? That’s a new one on me. If you have a faster disk, I thought the disk still worked. I may be wrong, but you won’t know until you get the +/- thing right.

    For problem 2, I’m assuming you have a coax connection (just one connector, threaded, with a little hole in the middle) on your TV. Your camera has S-Video and RCA. You don’t need to connect them all, just RCA OR S-Video.

    Regular cabling will not do it. You need to convert the signal. You have PAL (I’m in the states with NTSC) so I have no idea where to direct you, bu I think you at least know what you need- a converter to get from S-Vid or RCA to Coax.

    An easier (and maybe cheaper) workaround- get a VCR, plug the camera into the input (usually RCA) and plug the VCR into the TV (all of them have coax output). You should be able to watch now. You can also make a MUCH lower quality copy of your original recording.

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:34 pm
  8. Chris says:

    Hello

    1) Yes, you need DVD+R. However, the speed is broadly immaterial. All it means is that you can, if your drive is capable, write on them at speeds up to 16x. If your drive can’t do that, it won’t. If you’ve got a disc that’s rated at 4x, and you try to write at it at 8x, /then/ you’ll have a problem, but if the disc is faster than the drive, you’re fine.

    2) I assume your telly has SCART sockets on it. They look like this: a SCART socket. You can get an adapter that you plug the wires from your camera into that plugs into a SCART socket. Something like this, from Maplin will do you just fine and dandy. You’ll be able to get them from Dixons or anywhere like that – if you’re unsure, just take your cables along and pick the least expensive one that looks like it should work. Don’t worry about getting expensive gold-plated oxygen-free superfancy things; unless your TV cost about the same as a small car, you won’t see a difference.

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:37 pm
  9. Chris says:

    P.S. I bought your book and my girlfriend thinks it’s very funny even though she’s an Irish Presbyterian and isn’t really all that familiar with the Anglican church, but I guess a lot of things are cross cultural and that.

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:39 pm
  10. Ian M says:

    1. Yup. Wrong ones. Get DVD+W, or DVD+RW if you want to rewrite. I think it’ll be fine to write with a slower speed on a faster disk, but not the other way round.

    2. SCART is probably the answer. The other answer is a new TV.

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:41 pm
  11. Chris Clark says:

    Yes wrong type of disc but speed not an issue if your DVD is writing slower than disc…a problem if it is writing faster.

    Most camcorders now output to IEEE firewire. This is a digtal format. This doesn’t plug into a DVD which uses composite video or analogue. What does the camera say it has?

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:44 pm
  12. Phillip Fayers says:

    On problem 1: The speed marked on the DVD media is the maximum at which it will work – there should be no problem in running at a lower speed.

    The + verses – thing doesn’t matter too much in your case (apart, of course, from the fact that you need to buy + disks to record with a + drive). The main thing is that more home DVD players work with – disks than + disks, so if you want to record videos for other people to play on DVD players you may find they don’t work.

    You’re lucky that its a relatively recent DVD drive. The really early ones from some companies would only write on disks they recognised. You see all DVD media (disks) have a manufacturer code and some of the early drives checked the code – if they didn’t recognise it they would refuse to right anything.

    May 1st, 2007 at 9:06 pm
  13. Dave says:

    Just to say a huge thank you for all the replies. Seriously – brilliant. I was so pleased when I came back from being out.

    Sorry that most of the messages were caught in the moderation queue which meant that you couldn’t see other people’s answers. But the replies all seem to match up, so that is marvellous.

    May 1st, 2007 at 10:44 pm
  14. Jill says:

    I know nothing about DVDs but it seems that your problem has been solved.
    I am extremely glad to hear you are feeling a bit better. When I’m blue I check out a great website http://www.cartoonchurch.com Perhaps you’ve heard of it ;-)

    May 2nd, 2007 at 12:02 am
  15. Christopher (not the Chris above) says:

    I do not know how to solve your problem. But I do find this post to be quite amusing.

    May 2nd, 2007 at 12:48 pm
  16. Martin Eyles says:

    The white plug is the left audio channel
    The red plug is the right audio chennel

    If you have something that plays music around, you may find that you can plug these into that instead of the tv, for better sound. (although you don’t have to – they will work in the tv)

    The yellow plug is composite video
    The black plug is s-video

    Either of these can provide the video to your tv (via that adapter). Use whichever looks better (The black s-video will look better if your tv supports it properly (and you set it into the right mode), but worse if it doesn’t)

    May 3rd, 2007 at 12:13 am
  17. Simo says:

    I am catching up with a couple of days blogs, I think most people have answered your problems but no-one seams to have gone into much detail on the cable issue. The scart adapter as mentioned will plug into most tv’s or videos and you can get from maplin fairly cheaply, as mentioned get a switchable one. The other option should be firewire, if you have a mini dv camera you will almost definitely have a firewire port (ieee as mentioned above) with this you can plug into your computer (you may need another adapter if it doesn’t have firewire built in but any computer from the last 4 years or so should have) this will then give you the option to edit your video and then burn to the newly purchased correct dvd’s!

    May 3rd, 2007 at 11:14 am