When you insert a new blank BD-R media (Blue Ray -R) media into a Blue Ray writer on a Windows Vista SP2 computer and attempt to “Open” it in Windows Explorer, the unformatted media will need to be formatted in order to become useable by Windows Vista SP2. The formatting option “Live File System” is selected by default but is not supported in Windows Vista and you get a screen prompt saying “The file system is incompatible with this disk.”

Consider the following scenario:

• On a computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, you try to burn some content to a recordable Blu-ray disc.
• The Blu-ray disc is an empty dual-layer Blu-ray disc that has approximately 50 gigabytes (GB) of free space.
• The content that you try to burn exceeds half of the free space on the disc. For example, you try to burn 27GBs of content to the Blu-ray disc.

In this scenario, the operation fails and you receive the following error message:

There was a problem burning this disc
The disc does not have enough free space for all of the files you selected.

This problem can occur with any DVD or CD burning applications that use Image Mastering File System Imaging API v2 (IMAPI2FS). However, the actual symptoms may differ.

SP2 Beta will be available to some on Oct 29th. It includes Windows Search 4, Bluetooth 2.1 support, Blu-Ray support, Windows Connect Now, and support for exFAT file system. Keep reading →

Consider the following scenario:

• You have a write-protected Blu-ray Disc Rewritable (BD-RE) disc or a write-protected DVD-RAM disc.
• You disable the write-protection feature on the disc.
• You insert the disc into a compatible drive on a Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1)-based computer.

In this scenario, the disc is recognized as writable media. However, when you try to write to the disc, the operation fails, and you are prompted to insert writable media.

This problem occurs with all Universal Disk Format (UDF) file systems, such as UDF 1.5, UDF 2.0, and UDF 2.01.

Note: The write-protection feature is typically controlled by the notch on the DVD-RAM cartridge or by third-party write-protection tools.

Ed Bott talks about how he setup a machine to playback HD video on a Vista PC, and notes that Vista’s DRM doesn’t come into play. Keep reading →

• Blu-ray, HD DVD, and Vista
  It’s not easy jumping into the HD media arena.
  (tags: Blu-ray HD-DVD )

It’s not easy jumping into the HD media arena. Keep reading →

The information in this article applies to the following configuration(s):

• Blue Ray, HD DVD material
• Catalyst Display Driver 7.1 and higher
• Radeonâ„¢ X1950 series
• Windows Vista 32-bit Edition
• Windows Vista 64-bit Edition
• Windows XP Professional
• Windows XP Home Edition
• Windows XP Media Center Edition
• Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

Symptoms:
The resolution 1920×1080/24p which is required to playback Blue-Ray material on LCD TV sets is not available in Catalyst Contol Center.

Vista’s built in CD/DVD burning software works for creating data disks, but doesn’t offer the ability to use a disc image file to burn a disc. If you need to burn an image file, you’ll need a third-party application to do it, and thankfully, their are many to choose from. I use ImgBurn, which is not only free, but supports a ton of image types, and works great in Vista. ImgBurn not only handles CD’s and DVD’s, but is already capable of doing HD DVD and Blue-ray discs as well. The download is only 1.5MB, and once install, isn’t much larger than that, so it’s very resource friendly. It even supports command line switches, so it could be run from a batch file. Keep reading →

When you click the Autoplay Control Panel item on a computer that is running Windows Vista, media technologies are listed that are not installed. For example, HD DVD movie and Blu-ray Disc movie are listed even though the hardware devices that are required to support these technologies have never been installed.