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This topic comprises 9 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
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Topic: do you prefer DTS or Dolby ?
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David Stambaugh
Film God
Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002
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posted 02-24-2002 08:35 PM
Let me clarify a couple things.  The Costco hard drives I referred to for $120 were in fact Maxtor 7200 RPM. I am not slamming Maxtor or any other particular brand. But in general, mass-marketed IDE hard drives are designed and manufactured to meet a very competitive market price point. I've been doing some contract work for a local startup software company, whose employees all have new Dell systems within the last 6 months. In that 6 months, they have had 4 IDE hard drives fail (Maxtor and Seagate). The failed drives ran perfectly fine for a couple months, then abruptly failed. I would categorize this as "infant mortality". In other words, if the drive gets past the 3-4 month period, it will probably last indefinitely. But if there is any weak or marginal component in it, expect to see the drive fail within a few months. This infant mortality syndrome isn't limited to IDE drives either. SCSI drives are far more expensive than IDE, and what that money is supposed to be buying is better performance, engineering, and quality control. Where I used to work, we had 8 file servers with high-performance RAID-5 SCSI hard drive systems. The number of drives in each RAID array varied from a low of 3 to a high of 12, and they were running NT and NetWare. Individual drive capacity ranged from 4GB to 36GB (all drives in a given array are identical in size). Several popular SCSI drive manufacturers were represented: Quantum, IBM, and Seagate for the most part. Servers were HP, Dell, and Compaq. Every single time I set up a new server for them, I would run it in "pilot mode" for a couple weeks before putting it on line. More often than not, at least 1 drive would fail during that test period. When the server went "live", it would typically lose 1 or more drives in the first few months (never all at once; spread out over weeks). Infant mortality at work again. At that point, things would usually settle down and there would be no more problems. So what I'm saying is that in my experience, when hard drive reliability is viewed via a fairly large sample, they tend to be the most likely thing to fail in any computer system. It's true that if you buy yourself 1 drive, the odds are it will probably work fine and last a long time. Buy and install 50 of them, and your chances of running into problems are much greater. ------------------
- dave
Look at this! His chin strap has been cut!
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John Hawkinson
Film God
Posts: 2273
From: Cambridge, MA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 02-24-2002 10:10 PM
Hard drives -- eww. There's a lot to be said to having a component that you can throw in the rack and expect it to run fine for 20 years. You're just not going to get that with a hard drive.I suppose it's OK if they're designed to be field replaceable (perhaps SCA drives removable from the front panel, with no code on them that the box needs to boot...) Bobby, you responded to me with quote:
As to DTS CDs becoming obsolete, there's little danger of that. The same time code applied to 35mm prints right now could be used to drive multiple formats. Only the media itself and type of hardware used for playback changes
, and that's exactly what I'm afraid of. A situation where I'll still have my DTS 6D in 5 years, but all new DTS prints show up with a DVD and not a CDROM, and I get screwed...--jhawk
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Ron Lacheur
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 650
From: British Columbia, Canada
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 02-25-2002 04:31 AM
I've found Maxtor to be among the best of the hard drive companies but I'm not sure of the recent quality of Maxtor, since they have purchased Quantum.As for Western Digital, avoid them like the plague. IBM, first experience with them, 2 weeks after installation, it failed. It's replacement hasn't failed so I guess it was just a bad apple.
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Mike Williams
Master Film Handler
Posts: 255
From: Knoxville, TN
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 02-25-2002 05:19 PM
Here is an idea.. just eliminate (or make optional) any drives. We already know that the DTS unit is essentially a PC. If DTS came out with a network card upgrade, sound tracks could be downloaded to a central theater server and played back thru a LAN. Most of the larger chain theaters already have some sort of high speed frame-relay network so transferring 2 or 3 650 meg discs shouldn't take THAT long. Theaters not set up that way could pull the newest soundtracks via a DSL or other alternative means...(dial-up?)If DTS were to implement that, it would fix a lot of headaches: (1) Auditoriums that only have DTS installed don't lose digital sound if the discs are not shipped or lost. (2) All Trailers will ALWAYS be digital. (provided they have a time-code) (3) Distribution/production costs are lowered. (No more overnighting discs to the theater that were damaged/lost) Besides, DTS could sell the upgrade kit and make a bundle.
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