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Saturn VCD Cards

Jaded God - Jun 18, 2003

		Jaded God	Jun 18, 2003
		Does playing vcds on your saturn with a vcd card strain your laser a lot? I would imagine it would...

		Dyne	Jun 18, 2003
		since it was an official attachment i wouldnt think it would be all that bad for the system. then again you never know.

		gameboy900	Jun 18, 2003
		Not anymore than if you just played an audio cd in it.

		Jaded God	Jun 18, 2003
		yea but more than a game right? I don't play audio cds in it.

		mal	Jun 18, 2003
		In terms of the laser itself, an audio CD might wear more because it's constantly reading. But remember some games do constantly read audio and data when you're playing them too. In terms of the mechanics of the CD drive I should imagine that audio CDs would be 'kinder' to the drive because they are linear; there's no jumping back and forth on the disc seeking data. Don't know about VCDs as I've barely used them, but I'd imagine they're the same.

		Jaded God	Jun 18, 2003
		Just wondering... I have a dvd player that I use for vcds but I was wanting to grab a vcd card to take my saturn on road trips

		Butane Bob	Jun 19, 2003
		Watch out with saturn vcd cards because your laser needs to be in very good condition otherwise the audio and video will go out of sync. I have tried my card on both my saturns whos lasers are fine on games and audio cd's but sure enough - they are not strong enough to read the vcd's. After about 20-30 mins they go out of sync. I isnt a problem with the discs either as i have tried them on other players and they are fine. Just a thought...

		Jaded God	Jun 19, 2003
		yea I know exactly what you mean Bob

		IBarracudaI	Jun 19, 2003
		humm, probably those vcd's have an high bitrate.. saturn can only read about 300KB/s if the stream is higher, skipping will occur <_< Does that happen with many vcd's or just with some?

		Curtis	Jun 19, 2003
		Technically, to call it a "VCD" the bitrate must never be higher than 1150kbits (at least i think thats the magic number - always forget that one...). Anything higher and it's put under the blanket term "XVCD". 8 bits to the byte, so thats ~143kbytes a second, which is approximately half what the Saturn CD drive is technically capable of. Yes, that's the same bitrate as an audio CD.

		IBarracudaI	Jun 19, 2003
		yup i knew that, that's why I asked him, if it happened _everytime_ or just with some vcds