On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 05:56:47 -0500, Richard Rauch wrote:

> There's not a whole lot to say about DVDs, as I see it.  One can
> stretch it out by looking at several aspects:
> 
> 1) DVD drives can read CDs and if you put a CD in them they act just
> like CD drives.
> 
> 2) If you put a DVD in them, they should act like a *big* CD.
> 
> 3) I believe that even movie DVDs just use an ISO 9660-like filesystem,
> though to do much of anything with the movie data, you'd not only
> need a movie player---none ships with the base system---but would
> also normally need to unencrypt it.  The decryption software gets
> into some murky legal waters as I understand it, so I wouldn't look
> for the decryption software to ever ship with the base system.
> 
> 4) DVD burners...  Dunno.  I don't have any.  But even CD burners
> have no supporting tools for burning that ship WITH the system.  However,
> check pkgsrc for "cdrecord", "dvdrecord", and "dvd+rw-tools" as some
> reasonable starting point.

From what I have read on the mailing lists it is not that simple. There
are drives that have issues. The hardware compatibility list could say
one of two (maybe three) things:
- most DVDs work
(- most DVDs work RO, some RW)
- brand/type A, B, C, D work

> IMHO, since 3 & 4 have nothing to do with the base system, mentioning
> them in the install documentation would be like mentioning image processing,
> PostScript-to-printer translations, etc.

The USB section mentions digital cameras, although you usually use
packages to handle the photos.

> Maybe items 1 & 2 could be rolled into a paragraph, with 3 & 4 given a
> further (single) sentence: For more DVD drive support, consult the
> package system that NetBSD uses (pkgsrc).
> 
> I think that a whole section on DVD drives would make them appear to
> be more complicated and special than they seem to be.

If they Just Work, great! Say so.

There are both device and bus paragraphs in the "Supported devices" section.
Maybe it could be organised like:

* Mass storage devices
	tape drives (most SCSI, ATAPI, ...)
	USB devices (ZIP drives, digital camaras, ...)
	CD-ROM drives (....)
	DVD drives (+-R,+-W,... )

My point is: explicitly saying DVD is supported is a positive "selling"
point these days.

	rvdp