Dreamcast Optical Storage Medium is shit!

[cube_b3]

I have always hated Dreamcast Cd's or GD's they are and were always crap.

In contrast to PS1

Playstation 1 had a black CD storage medium, the black surface would make them immune to scratches or something (to a strong extent) and no matter how weak your lense was an orignal cd would always boot where as pirate cd's would never boot on a weak lense.

Dreamcast has some crappy cd's called GD-Roms, which are suppose to have about 1.4gb of storage space if that is the case then how come every single commerical dreamcast game was pirated and burned on cd's?

Why is skies of arcadia available on two 700MB cd's? Why isn't it on one 1.4GD rom?

Lastly the damn storage medium is pathetic if dc's lense is weak it would give you hell booting an orignal GD and a pirate cd. I tried running a badly scratched PS1 Tekken 3 on my weakest dreamcast and it ran perfectly even the CGI intro almost played till the end without glitching.

* When I say a weak lense I just mean a lense that is a little old, they do run games but can occasionally hang and not boot pirated games!

It was PS1 orignal cd's that motivated me to buy orignal cd's as they give you so much more value then a pirated rip.

[Ex-Cyber]

PS1 CDs being black just makes scratches harder for humans to see; they can easily get scratched up just like any other CDs.

[cube_b3]

I speak from personal experience I gave the scratched example of Tekken, I remember my ps1 lense was screwed it wouldn't boot up any pirate games but orignal games would boot up as if the system was brand new or something pretty close.

You can talk all you want about storage, but even some Wii games today are only 300mb and they come on a DVD...

Your Point?

I said if you have 1GB of space, how come no game to my knowledge has taken advantage of it? I mean show me a game which has done something that wasn't possible on a 700MB disk.

[Calavera]

Why is skies of arcadia available on two 700MB cd's? Why isn't it on one 1.4GD rom?

I don't understand what you mean, Skies of Arcadia came on two GD-ROMS.

[Christuserloeser]

Reading the info of the Skies of Arcadia scene release reveals that they implemented an on-the-fly decompression routine that allows the actual game data to be stored in a compressed format.

[DCDayDreamer]

You really can't compare the original PS1 optical media to the original DC optical media, they are entirely different entities, one is practically the propriety format (CD), the other is a unique to system format (GD).

As for the PS1 and DC reading CDR's, there's no comparison whatsoever - the PS1 drive motor rotates at a different RPM, the laser operates at a different wavelength, and the tracking mechanism is also different. By default, the PS1 unit is (in theory) weaker than the Dreamcast unit.

Backing up a game and archiving material are also entirely different entities, most will backup a game with cheap to average media, the majority (DC in particular because of the difficulties in backing up) will either download a backup, or just download a game which they do not own. Then there's burning to optical media, most burn as quick as possible (purely because patience isn't a forte with thieves) then whine about the quality somewhere down the line, others burn to create a backup. Archiving on the other hand, requires patience, will require some outlay for materials, and will also require a knowledge of archive storage. There's a few pointers to follow when backing up data, firstly the data to be backed up has to be good, secondly the backup media has to be good, thirdly the process for backing up has to be good. After that, it's up to whoever cares for the backup data, if it's not taken care of (scratched optical media for example), it's inevitably going to cause problems with whatever hardware that tries to read the media. There is plenty of information available for backing up (archiving) data on the web, sadly, there's not that many rippers/hackers/pirates out there that bother to read the info - but then again, they do what they do for their own goal - which is an entirely different goal to true archiving of digital data.

So you've managed to take a great deal of care to backup your optical media - now what?, what about the hardware?, has anyone thought about care of their hardware?, not many, and that I'm sure of. Polls seem to indicate less than 2% of hardware users actually take some time to service their machines (PC/DVD/Audio/Game), when you take into account the amount of hardware users out there, and the use they get out of their machines, less than 2% is not that many. You'd be surprised to see what a good clean and some fresh lubricant can do to machinery of any age.

When it comes to Dreamcast games and the data used by them, there's quite a few DC games that made use of the 1GB storage capacity of the GDROM, a lot of other games also went over the barrier of a standard 700MB CDR, but CDDA and FMV took a lot of that space - hence a lot of ripped games have down sampled audio and video when released (and/or missing CDDA).

[Quzar]

I agree with everything said in this. Your problem is piracy not the Dreamcast.

Also, STOP SENDING ME SPAM.

[cube_b3]

My problem isn't piracy, the problem is lack of quality in the orignal cd's.

I own over a 100 Dreamcast GD's, my problem is the inevitable dying of the lense, PS1 would boot an orignal cd regardless of the consoles age and the superficial scratches on the disk.

I am sure this would've been a bigger problem had the dc lived beyond 2 years.

P.S. you didn't find those "2" mails intresting?

[cube_b3]

You really can't compare ....

I missed your post by mistake very insightful.

The Dreamcast GD-Roms may have been burnt/pressed properly with appropriate storage techniques hence they work better by offering quicker load times and such.

The whole point of this thread perhaps is that when running an Orignal CD on Playstation is as rewarding as running catridges no matter how old your system gets or the cartridge all you have to do is protect them from carbon and they will work properly (even 20 years down the lines) on the other DC, PS2, X-Box there storage mediums are pretty standard.

Am I the only one whose noticed this?

It is a well emphasized fact that I used to be only consume pirate goods, after all they are legally sold, buying orignal merchandise is hard and sold at double the price of it's domestic country and there is no concept of price drop as the retailer has purchased the disk for X amount of money and will want a profit even if they sell it 10 years down the line.

There is a brand new saturn in a small local video game store (in a rural town up north), the retailer bought it back in the day for 6000Rs, I visit the town every yeah and offer him 15,000 bucks he rejects, it has been 4 years of negotiation and he hasn't gone below 3000Rs, he has had it stocked since 96.

Anyway I think I am gettin off topic the point is I realized piracy is wrong once Sega went bankrupt (I still had a ps1 till then) and the other reason for stopping priated games was that my PS1 lense would get weak after playing pirated games and it wouldn't boot them however it would never refuse to boot an orignal disk no matter how old or scratched it was, I am just disappointed that the high quality orignal cd's ended with playstation the black surfaced disk should've been used for DC GD's, PS2 DVDs and so on.

Seriously if there is a person who understands optical medium maybe they can share some insight?

[Christuserloeser]

The Dreamcast's laser can be fixed by re-adjusting it, which takes only a few minutes.

[Jaded JAaron77]

To be fair, my old ps1 was fixed by running it upside down, which is even quicker....

when my DC started having trouble running some discs I ran it on its side

[cube_b3]

All consoles work better standing vertically.
When my PS1 stopped booting games I would make it stand on it's side and it cranked out another year of gameplay, without buying a new lense.

The Same works for Dreamcast, we assumed the ps2 was meant to stand vertically because it's lense was already weak.

[Quzar]

All consoles work better standing vertically.
When my PS1 stopped booting games I would make it stand on it's side and it cranked out another year of gameplay, without buying a new lense.

The Same works for Dreamcast, we assumed the ps2 was meant to stand vertically because it's lense was already weak.

Actually, standing CD based console vertically that wasn't built for it is a good way to ensure the CD mechanism will die quickly. The motor that spins the disc is designed to do so uniformly, and not with extra stress. What this helps usually is to 'unstick' the sled mechanism, by moving the stress away from where it normally is.

[|darc|]

Bilal, you have no idea what the hell you're talking about at all.

[cube_b3]

Yes, I have no technical no how.

However I am quoting my experiences shared by others, a friend of mine suggested me the vertical stand technique and it worked.

[not just souLLy now]

Bilal is the most successful troll this board has ever known.

[Maturion]

Please souLLy and Hasney don't turn the whole discussion into a joke.

[|darc|]

Please souLLy and Hasney don't turn the whole discussion into a joke.

When wasn't it a joke?

[Sarcastic Steve]

THIS IS THE GREATEST, MOST INFORMATIVE THREAD IN THE HISTORY OF MAN!!!!!

MY PENIS IS CRYING TEARS AT THIS THREAD!!!!!

[nymus]

The "Technical Information" section of the "GD-ROM" entry in Wikipedia seems to support the OP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GD-ROM