Watching Woodworks TV with David Marks

[Barry O'Mahony]

Unfortunately, a couple of weeks ago, MSN had a story regarding the short life expectancy of burned discs. Basically, it said that tape would last longer than discs. I was very bummed...

Don't be too bummed. Tape doesn't last forever either. This is a largely-unappreciated problem with information storage these days. While we can still read written material that was produced in the 12th century, we may be unable to read stuff produced ten years ago. First there's the format question: I came across some 8" floppy discs recently, b ut I have nothing capable of reading them. And as you note, the media degrades. The only effective way to handle it is to have a regular program of transferring content to fresh media.

BTW, if you prefer tape for archiving, you could copy the DVD content to digital video tape.

[Ole Anderson]

I have been recording DM with my Comcast Motorola DVR. I then burn them onto DVD with a Panasonic set top unit. Very fustruating that you can't go digital-digital, you have to pick up the composite or component output from the DVR into the same input on the DVD recorder. There are all sorts of digital connectors on the DVR that are not hooked up to anything. I was hoping to go Firewire-Firewire, but no can do. It all gets back to otherwise giving us the ability to make a perfect copy which could be used for distribution.

I have the ability, but not the time or inclination, to rip them to my hard drive and edit out the commercials and burn an edited copy.