With my move into HD video capture I am needing to have the capability of writing very large amounts of data to disc. What would you recommend? I have heard that Toshiba has an external (desktop) burner for HD DVD does anyone have another unit that you would recommend. Thanks in advance for your guidance on this.
No, not yet. I'll just be patient and wait another year until they settled on one single standard.
Or check what Apple recommends for their machines. Usually they have a good nose for winning technology like years ago with FireWire and now FireWire 800.
Considering how long it took to get lesser expensive DVDs that didn't degrade in a year or two, I think I would be waiting a good long time. If you really don't want to wait, last I heard HD DVD was the officially supported format from the DVD consortium.
Which would mean Sony loses round two (round one being VHS vs Beta). I've been sitting this one out waiting to see which format wins--along with many others. No telling yet since you have the two major game machines on competing formats (XBox on HD DVD, PS3 on BluRay) and seemingly half of the studios on each side. Personally, I expect this to go on for a while.
Bluray is now the single standard for HD videodisc recording. HD DVD is disappearing rapidly. For that reason, the equipment and discs fo HD DVD are very cheap right now. I understand that technically there is no big advantage for either format. But Bluray has become the standard and HD DVD will become incompatible with everything pretty soon.