Okay, so this isn’t the most earthshaking error you’re likely to find in the New York Times, but still. From today’s Circuits section, in an article about people copying their DVDs to cheap blanks for traveling:
It typically takes four to eight hours to copy a DVD movie onto a hard drive.
Hogwash. It takes about 45 minutes for the average movie. Then another 45-60 minutes to recompress, if necessary. Call it 15 minutes to burn the disc in a 4X DVD-R drive (not the state of the art). I did it myself for an overseas trip this last spring (bite me, Jack Valenti–I’m not trusting part of a $90 Alien box set to Greek baggage handlers).
Did the reporter bother to try it himself? Couldn’t have; a standard DVD-ROM drive in a three-year-old computer wouldn’t take more than an hour to rip a video DVD to a hard drive. One test run would be enough to disabuse “four to eight hours.”
But hey, it’s probably not the most inaccurate thing in today’s Times…
Join the conversation as a VIP Member