Copying your favourite discs to watch on HD ready units in your home
You may have made your own amateur film production that you want to copy and send to friends and family for them to see or you may be in the business of making promotional discs or training material and need a large number of copies for commercial purposes. Either way you can find a decent service right here on the internet. If you have lots of friends in far flung places that miss UK television then you might be thinking of investing in a DVD HDD recorder so that you can capture their favourite programmes and edit them as needed. These machines have that advantage over other recorders as well as being able to store a large amount of files which you can then either burn to disc or delete if you do not want to watch them again. Once you have finished editing them you can then get a firm to make multiple copies if you have a lot of friends and send them off for them to enjoy. If you are looking at several new pieces of equipment then making sure they have an HDMI interface is important if you are going to be using hi-def material. You will need to check with the company that you use to duplicate your discs as to whether they can manage high definition films before you go ahead and place your order. The advantage of this format is a clearer picture that does justice to the material that you are distributing.
DIY
You could of course choose to do the duplicating yourself if you youre your own equipment at home such as a multimedia laptop that can burn video to disc. This is fine for smaller quantities or when time is not of the essence but if you want a fair number of copies made then you might find that your computer simply takes too long to make it worthwhile using. Almost all modern computers have the capability to burn files to either CD or DVD but the higher end ones tend to have better disc drives so are a better choice if you are going to be doing a lot of this. An HD TV is ideal to check the quality of the resulting discs before sending them out and with many models to choose from, need not cost you a fortune to buy. Some companies will be happy to duplicate small quantities for you whereas others may only be interested in larger orders. You can check out the type of services available with a quick search online. If you are going to be checking the quality of the discs before sending them out then you will probably want a DVD player to link up to your TV, rather than sit hunched over a mobile computer. With these again there is a wide range on the market and the kind of price you can expect to pay will depend on the features and capabilities that you require the machine to have.
A professional finish
If you are going to be selling the copies that you need making then you will most likely need to choose a replication service rather than a duplication one. The difference is that with replication a glass master is made and discs can be played on a netbook or any type of machine that has the capability of playing DVDs. The glass master is pressed onto blank discs to give a professional finish. The finish of home entertainment units is important to some people as well as what they can actually do. They want something that looks really good in their living room as well as a machine that does everything they need it to. While one person may only be interested in the actual specifications of the machine that they are looking to buy, such as the resolution of an LCD TV, others will be as interested in the material used to surround the screen and the shape of the unit itself. In the same way, if you want your disc to be a commercial success then it will not only need to be good to watch but look the business as well. People are attracted to things that look good. It does not matter how great the material on the disc is if the finish is bad nobody will want to buy it. A flat screen television that would look more at home in a factory is most likely going to be a flop on the sales floor.
Getting the picture
The other option with replication is that you can have your own custom graphics or pretty much any image you like on the discs that are made for you, so that they stand out from the crowd. If you are producing the video yourself then you will need the right equipment with which to capture whatever the subject matter is, like a digital camcorder. As you can buy models that can store several hours of film on and have fairly long lasting batteries, they are ideal for when you are starting out. You can buy accessories such as a tripod to make sure that your footage is steady, although many units will have some form of anti-shake feature built into them to help with this too. If you are placing a very large replication order then this will more than offset the initially higher cost of producing the glass master. HD ready televisions will be needed to view them on if they are produced in high definition. You will probably also be able to negotiate a good discount if you are ordering in quantity which all helps when it comes to turning a profit. Your potential customers could end up watching your discs on a variety of different types of machine so as mentioned above, this is another advantage of replication compatibility. With duplication, the disc may play fine on a standard disc player but a laptop notebook might refuse to do anything with it which will annoy the buyer.
