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b00tang · Aug 5, 2002, 12:07 AM

Ok, bought my new G4 Imac 17 in, it should be shipping eventually, thats cool... its got a super drive, how nice, i can burn dvds.... errr, dvd-rw?
I can't figure out apples web page right now... the front page lists the features of the new 17 " imac as:
SuperDrive (CD-RW/DVD-RW)
RW?
if you click on the image it brings you to the imac page, there it says: ...the ferociously fast NVIDIA GeForce4 MX graphics processing unit, the SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW), a huge 80GB hard ...
notice the change? DVD-R instead of RW?
oh i would love a DVD-RW, I use CD-RW constantly and hate having to burn a cd that I know i can never change (im cheap)... could this all be a good dream?

vmarks · Aug 5, 2002, 12:44 AM

It's not really a change-

The superdrive has always supported dvd-r and dvd-rw.

It's only that they've now decided to publicize that fact.

Commodus · Aug 5, 2002, 04:59 PM

vmarks:

If you go to the Tech Specs section of Apple's iMac site, though, the optical drive is only listed as being a DVD-R drive. They're not helping their case much!

If DVD-RW support is there at all, Apple may be shy about pointing it out. I'm more inclined to believe that the Superdrive only supports DVD-R at the moment.

b00tang · Aug 5, 2002, 06:34 PM

thats what i was thinking, it clearly says dvd-r/ cd-rw in many places and the only place that mentions DVD-rw is on that front page... does anyone with a superdrive know if the current ones burn dvdrw?

scottiB · Aug 5, 2002, 06:53 PM

My Dual-800 w/SuperDrive can burn DVD-RWs. I'm sure the iMac can as well.

[edit] The above should have read: I have burned DVD-RWs with my girlfriend's dual-800. When I'm allowed to use it

b00tang · Aug 5, 2002, 08:55 PM

lol, thank you, thats all the clarification I need... now I'm just left to wonder why Apple feels its a bad thing to inclue that extra W after DVD-R in its tech specs... but thats not nearly as important to me as is wether the device will do what I want it to. And let me neardily admit that I only wish my girlfriend was a mac user with a fat machine she could let me use (damn pc users got her before i could)

twieland · Aug 6, 2002, 10:59 AM

Could be because some "iApps" don't support DVD-RW (particularly iDVD). If you use iMovie to create a movie, then try to burn it to a DVD-RW with iDVD, iDVD doesn't recognize the DVD-RW. I have found a workaround for this:

When iDVD asks for a DVD-R, place a blank DVD-R in the drive and close the door. As soon as iDVD starts it's encoding cycle, eject the DVD-R and insert a new blank (or erased) DVD-RW, and iDVD will write to it just fine.

I frequently burn movies in progress to DVD-RW to see how they look on a television before committing to a final burn on DVD-R.

Frumpy · Aug 12, 2002, 02:11 AM

Soooo, this is the only way to get around this little problem? iDVD won't support DVD-RW's yet, but will DVD Studio Pro? And why is it taking Apple so long to apply this feature to iDVD? So i have to trick my Superdrive to burn to a DVD-RW. And it's going to start the encoding process, and still let me eject the DVD while it's doing this? Sorry for all the questions, i just don't want to accidently start burning a DVD-R disc, and then ruin it by ejecting it out of my Mac.

vmarks · Aug 12, 2002, 08:38 AM

I would suspect that this is intentional-

Most set-top-box television DVD players support playing DVD-R media. About half of those that are already out there can handle DVD-RW.

Apple saves themselves a lot of angry support calls simply by not allowing iDVD2 to burn DVD-RW.

(example of angry call for support: "I bought this expensive computer and burned a disc, and my Aunt Mabel put it in her television's DVD player and it isn't working! I bought expensive media and she can't see it! No, I don't want you to tell me to buy her a new player! Why can't I use DVD-RW!? Did I buy a Macintosh or not? ......")

If I had to guess, it's supported with DVD Studio Pro because they expect you to know that sort of thing.