Phillips 610 firmware + Disc info + vob files

Brought the phillips dvdr610 late last year and it has caused me all sorts of grief. I wont go into details as they are common knowledge on this forum.
By chance I found this forum yesterday morning and found out I could update the software on the 610. (I didn't know).
So off I went to www.phillips.co.uk and downloaded the latest firmware.
Installed it and so far everything seems to be ok. The machine is now sitting very quietly on my tv. Not starting up every 20 mins or so.
So Thanks for that.

Could someone please tell me what the life expectancy is for a dvd r/w disk.
I understand good branded discs will last longer than cheap bootfare ones.
I record sport at 2+x speed and everything else 4x.
I do have a tendancy of not filling a disc up. Record a prog then erase etc.
Also could someone adice on what discs are the best for the phillips dvdr610.

Also is it possible to convert vob files to avi/mpeg on my pc.

Thank you all for your help...............

[musukebba]

It depends on what you mean by life expectancy. There has been plenty of discussion here recently about archiving on write-once media such as +R, so if you do a search you should pick it up.

As for rewriteable media such as +RW, the oft-quoted mean number of rewrites possible is about 1000. Note that if you are in the habit of erasing before re-recording then that reliability immediately halves. Any writing to the disc counts, even changing the letters in the title.

You should always use the best possible discs, whether +R or +RW. If you want to buy by brand then Verbatim or TDK are probably the best. If you buy by media code then MCC, Ricoh. Whatever the speed of the discs you buy, the 610 will only record at 1x so you might pick up slower speed (good quality) discs much cheaper.

Use DVD Decrypter (freeware) in IFO mode (with no file splitting) to rip your recorded titles to the PC. Change the .vob file extension to .mpg and you can edit and reauthor. Note that .avi is just a container for different video compression standards. Use FairUse or Gordian Knot to convert to XviD/DivX if you really want.