SDD 8x really that big of a deal?

Chip NoVaMac said:

I know that the new eMac went to SDD 8x and the new PM G5's. I even said in a thread here that the iMac needs that upgrade also. Though I did some thinking and research.

Does the 8x SDD really make a difference? What I mean by that is the media for DVD-R, the best price is for the 4x disks right now. Under a $1 each in 25 to 50 quantities and this is for the 4x disks. The only 8x media I have seen is for the Apple at $2 each.

Now that dual layer drives are coming available, will the 8x DVD-R be an also ran?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what your last sentence means, but 8x is a huge difference over 4x (twice as much!) If you were referring to a price drop in 8x media - it probably will bump the prices down of 4x discs.

8x Disks won't be hard to come by if that's what you mean. One can go out and still get hordes of floppy disks so 8X will be easy to come by once they're being put standard in PCs.

I don't think that it will be much of an issue. Dual Layer DVD's apparently have poor compatibility. Only about 60% of DVD players can read them, and the amount of DVD-ROM's and DVD Writers is even worse. Meanwhile, DVD-R is about 96% compatible, and DVD+R is a little over 87%. If they can make the Dual Layer more compatible (not sure if that is possible) then maybe the old drives will be obsolete sooner, but people who need their DVD's to play on a variety of players (think videographers, etc) will probably stick with single layer drives for the time being.