CDBurn is set to gain DVD writing abilities, according to developer Steffen Huber in an announcement today. The popular CD burning application should be updated in time for a DVD writing release at the May Wakefield 2005 show, although the new features will be showcased first today at A.U.T.O., a smaller event held in Germany.Steffen says he has CDBurn working with LG and AOpen DVD writer drives, adding that the results are "promising", however, "reading the resulting DVDs on the Iyonix is not, but I hope this can be rectified."
It's hoped that CDBurn will support DVD+RW, DVD+R and DVD-R in this order. Each of these represents a DVD disc medium type, with 90% of DVD readers supporting both '+' and '-' types. A singled sided DVD can store 4.7GB of data, opening up a whole new world of backup opportunities to RISC OS. The CDBurn news comes as plans for the successor to DVDs and CDs, so-called Blu-ray Discs, are being considered by computer and media industries.
Calling for beta testers to test drive the new DVD capabilities, Steffen also told CDBurn users earlier this morning: "I have decided that, once the DVD-enabled version is out, this will be the end of the development of the CD-only CDBurn. This has mainly administrative reasons - I need to keep my overheads down, and I don't want to have to keep two code bases in sync.
"The only 'development' for the old CDBurn will be bug fixes and, if reasonably simple to implement, support for new devices if this becomes necessary. So everyone who decides not to upgrade will still be able to use CDBurn in a sensible manner."
An upgrade to the DVD writing version of CDBurn is likely to cost no more than 30 quid, says Steffen. There are as yet no further details on the DVD capable CDBurn, such as the writing speed of the application and layer support. The CDBurn author formed his own company, Hubersn Software, after taking CDBurn back from its publisher, WSS, in May 2004.
Links
Hubersn Software website
Background info on DVDs