Rating: 
Summary: DVD Demystified Maybe two years ago
Review: The search continues for a truly up-to-date review on the technology relevant to DVD players. Whether for home audio/video use or for computer DVD drives and burners, this book is out of date by almost two years due to the fast pace
of DVD drive technology. High time for the Third Edition.
Rating: 
Summary: Read this book if you want to know about DVD!
Review: There are lots of books that purport to be a full and complete reference about something, but Jim delivers the goods about DVD in this edition. An invaluable reference book for anyone seeking in-depth knowledge about this very technical subject, it does not seek to be a Schwann Guide for DVD titles, nor a review of DVD players. Instead, this book covers the whys and wherefores of DVD - how the format began, its roots, its basics, chapter after chapter of notes on its capabilities, its possibilities, and most importantly, its future!
Taken in conjunction with the included DVD disc (which demonstrates practically EVERY feature possible with DVD), and the DVD FAQ website ... (which further demonstrates the Web-DVD capabilities of the disc, and provides a forum for continuing updates on DVD Technology in between editions)), these materials constitute a VERY thorough, and more importantly, VERY ACCURATE review of a very technical optical disc format.
If you are a DVD professional, or want to be one, this book should be on your bookshelf.
Rating: 
Summary: Missing Details
Review: This book has a good history and digital video section. The book should be called Digital Video Demystified, it is lacking the disc part of the DVD. He does cover the digital video and authoring parts of the process, but only a little bit of the ROM process. He barely touches on disc production or play mode. This book does not give all the details of the DVD format. It is a good book for anyone that is in authoring or cares to know how Digital Video is made, but after that he is missing it.
Rating: 
Summary: Superior, but now dated
Review: This book is excellent...a magnum opus. The connections between CD and DVD are fully incorporated. There are interesting, accurate, and detailed explanations of the development history of DVD. In addition, the figures and tables are *exceptionally* well-done and helpful in understanding the myriad subtleties of this medium. It has one of the best discussions of various video/movie aspect ratios, complete with excellent figures, that I have seen. It goes far beyond being a book only about DVD.Most strongly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Not all There
Review: This book is not all there. He misses many points about DVD and makes many mistakes. His mistakes range from why a CD-R can't play in a DVD player to the effects of Jitter. He does explain the pre-production process well, but misses on the production process. There is also more to testing a disc then watching the video and audio. If a disc is of poor quality from the manufacturing process it can cause play problems that he is not even aware of nor states in his book. By the way he has written this book you can tell what information he has and what he doesn't.
Rating:
Summary: Not all There
Review: This book is not all there. He misses many points about DVD and makes many mistakes. His mistakes range from why a CD-R can't play in a DVD player to the effects of Jitter. He does explain the pre-production process well, but misses on the production process. There is also more to testing a disc then watching the video and audio. If a disc is of poor quality from the manufacturing process it can cause play problems that he is not even aware of nor states in his book. By the way he has written this book you can tell what information he has and what he doesn't.
Rating:
Summary: well written comprehensive, detailed
Review: This book is well written, well edited, comprehensive, and as full of details as it can be without being a copy of the specifications. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: well written comprehensive, detailed
Review: This book is well written, well edited, comprehensive, and as full of details as it can be without being a copy of the specifications. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Praise for the Wicked
Review: To be honest this demystified series is basically your DVD reference book and I look forward to the next addition as it contains everything you could want to know about how DVD works, its history, types, functions, authoring, etc. It is all here.
However, there are certainly some cons about DVD that the book does not cover and it would be good if the new addition has some "anti-dvd" information like the fact that Laserdisc was better quality, even though it was bigger and more expensive, that the pioneering DVD developers never worked out a way to actually get more than 10G of data onto a DVD9 disc and why the domestic market was only given the option of DVD5, the 4.7G market (although this has changed) meaning that films go through a compression process that is okay for 90 minute movies but the 3 hour adventures must be spread out over 2 discs or compressed.
Also we have DVD being easier to scratch with the rental market binning new releases sometimes the next day (oh why oh why didn't DVD-R just use the cartridge that was created for DVD-RAM!!!!!!... Stupid, stupid, stupid!). Also DVD-R and +R don't even have a good disc specification standard to adhere too, with something around 25% or higher being defective off the production line, with DVD burner media incompatibility still a major issue, and the PS2 not playing some discs (okay so we can blame software makers for a lot of it, but where is the standard???) even though everything is up to date with the latest firmware and drivers. DVD-R, DVD+R are very faulty media. I also discovered that process to make a DVD-R and DVD+R is nothing like making a CD which can be done pretty well these days (99% accuracy and above) while DVD just uses a gel to splat do discs together like a cookie. That the gel splatting process itself is totally neanderthal but some companies that sell the really expensive discs have got about 75% right.
DVD beats the pants of tape, but it does have its problems. To be honest it will be around till the end of our lives, but I hope someone just builds a new media that basically bounces off walls and doesn't require compression, fast. I have no doubt this will probably belong to the realm of broadband wi-fi master servers that contain all our data but anyway great book except for the missing above.
Rating:
Summary: Great Technical Guide!
Review: Whether you want to author DVD's yourself or have someone else
author them for you, it helps to understand the technical details
of how DVDs work and what can be done on them. This book gets
right down to the nitty gritty and explains all the details
thoroughly...even explaining the flaws and inconsistencies in the
standard. A must have for any producer of DVDs!
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