How many episodes fit on a disc (1 Viewer)

[MichaelFA]

I have 2 general questions:

#1) How many episodes (or hours) fit on one disc without the quality of the sound or picture being hindered?

#2) As technology gets better, will they eventually be able to fit more content on a single disc as opposed to what they can currently fit?

 

[Christ Reynolds]

i think you will have to tell us which episodes you are talking about. otherwise, how do we know how long each one lasts?

CJ

 

[MichaelFA]

22-25 minute episodes (comedies) and 45-50 minute episodes (dramas)

 

[Gord Lacey]

Figure 2 hours per layer. With DVD-9 (single side, dual layer) being the most common, a single disc would fit roughly 4 hours of material.

For an hour-long series (42-46 mins/episode) most companies go with 4 episodes per disc. Sometime you'll find other configurations, like MI-5 which packaged a lot of bonus material on each disc, resulting in 2 episodes per disc, or something like Dawson's Creek Season 2 which sacrificed picture quality and jammed 6 episodes on a disc.

For a half hour show (22-25 mins) you'll usually find 6-8 episodes on a disc. Once again, Columbia TriStar crammed 11 episodes of "Mad About You" on a disc and the result was poor quality.

I don't think we'll see MPEG 2 compression techniques improve much more than they already have, so I doubt we'll see many more episodes on a disc.

Gord