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Which DVD Recordable Format Will Win?
kila_m writes: "Their is a format war going on between two recordable formats 'DVD-R' and 'DVD+R.' Both formats do virtually the same thing i.e. are readable in most DVD-ROM drives - but a '-' disk is not recordable in a '+' drive and vice-versa. We have a
review of the Pioneer DVR-A04 - the worlds best-selling DVD writer and based on the '-' format. I would like get an view of what recordable format Slashdot readers prefer or think is going to win."
I have the one-earlier model. The A03. I use it for two things: 1) to burn videos that play on my set top DVD player, and 2) to burn 4450 megs of whatever per platter.
What more can you ask for?? The A03 or A04 is THE machine to buy. If your interest is item #1 or item #2 mentioned above, go for it.
I just recently (a week ago) bought a Pioneer DVR-104, which is the OEM model of the DVR-A04. They are _exactly_ the same drive, but the pricing can vary from as little as $20 to as much as $100 depending on where you look. The only difference is the box and software, which if you're a Linux user isn't going to do you any good anyway.
/dev/hdx device with mknod (mknod hda b 3 0 worked for me).
/dev/hdx and the /dev/srx devices at the same time is because you need to run hdparm -d 0 -r 0 /dev/hdx. This will turn off Read Only and DMA. I know it seems weird that you'd want to turn off DMA, but if I don't I can't burn DVDs, CDRs burn just fine however. Of course the /dev/srx device is so the burner software can actually burn to the CD.
Also, for those of you that are using devfs with this drive. If you get funky errors whenever you try to burn a DVD, sputtering about Hardware Errors, Illegal Requests, and/or Invalid whatevers. You will need to manually create the
The reason for needing both the
I might add that all of this is with the 2.4.19 kenel, so those of you still using the 2.2.x kernel might not run into this. Once I got the hdparm thing set, everything ran nicely. Hopefully these tips will save you some grief, as I spent a couple days digging through google, and was luckily given the hdparm tip from a fellow I emailed off a mailing list I found who had described the same issue.
Another small caveat, if I try to pipe mkisofs output into dvdrecord, the burn will fail. If I make the iso file first, and then call dvdrecord, the burn is successful. Once again, I don't know if this is something specific to my setup, so it's just an fyi.
After those issues were cleared up, though, the drive seems to do perform very well. I've been busy clearing off disk space all day long.
RFC2119
The DVD consortium, the bunch that came up with the DVD standards (DVD video, audio, RAM) also came up with DVD-R and RW. Sony, HP, et all, came up with DVD+R and RW.
"Luncheon meats make the sawdust in your stomach explode."
I don't know too much about how the different standards work with either other, but I'm assuming a DVD+RW drive would work with DVD+R, and a DVD-RW drive would work with DVD-R, and that there's no cross-compatibility between the + and the - drives. If I'm wrong, I apologize, but if I'm right, then I assume that the + technologies will win out, only because that's what Microsoft says will happen. If you look at this page on Microsoft's site, it basically says they're backing DVD+RW because it's the easiest for Windows to work with, and for the users to work with because it supports "Mt. Rainier" burning. (easy Drag&Drop burning, from what I can tell). If that's the one Microsoft is backing for built-in Windows support, I'm sure you can guess which one will eventually win. Plus, the + technologies seem to have more companies behind them, though the - tech seems to have more of an installed base. *shrug*
I believe the + will win, but not knowing is what has prevented me from buying any so far.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
$14-$15 for a blank DVD?
Where are you buying them from?
Even Apple sells them for $5 a disk, and Meritline sells cheap bulk packs of DVD-R disks for less than $1 a disk.
DVD+RW has much lower compatibility than DVD-R or DVD+R - as does DVD-RW. Both rewritable formats use a recording surface with a lower reflectivity than the write-once formats, confusing some older DVD players into thinking the disc is dual layer instead of single.
Earlier DVD+RW drives were dismissed as less compatible solely because they were unable to burn write-once discs, unlike the competing DVD-R/RW drives. Second generation drives such as the HP dvd200i will happily burn write-once and rewritable media, same as the DVD-R/RW drives.
The reality is, although DVD+R/RW has a theoretical edge in compatibility due to its lossless linking feature, both formats are actually very similar in results. Just be sure not to get the older drives that can't do DVD+R.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Sure you can. Maybe not the movie, multiple soundtracks AND featurettes, trailers, interviews etc, all at the original quality, but just the movie is no trouble.
The bitrate for DVD-compliant MPEG2 video is between 2 Mb/s and 8 Mb/s, but most pre-recorded movies vary around 3-5 Mb/s. That gives you between 119 and 199 minutes - more than enough for most movies.
Alternatively, you can encode your movies in a tighter format like DivX. I've seen remarkably good quality from a 90 minute movie squeezed onto a single CD, let alone a DVD. You can fit 6 of those movies onto a single DVD, and play them back on your computer any time.
I personally use mine for recording TV shows that I can't find on DVD yet, like Family Guy. I can fit 6 episodes in standard MPEG2 format, and the quality is as good as I recorded it at.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
So? DVD+R is the officially supported standard of the DVD Alliance. They use a different logo, but IMHO the DVD Alliance members (HP, Phillips, Ricoh, Sony, Mitsubishi, Dell, Thomson, Yamaha, Verbatim etc) have at least as much industry clout. Certainly the approval of the DVD Forum means nothing as far as compatibility goes, or they wouldn't be putting the "offical" DVD logo on DVD-RAM drives (try reading a DVD-RAM disc [or cartrige!] in your home player sometime).
I just ordered a DVR-A04 for $299 I've seen the OEM for $249.
I've seen DVD+R discs for $3 from Meritline, and the Ricoh 5125A DVD+R/RW drive for $284 from Elegantshopping.com.
DVD-R discs are cheaper, true, since they have a year or two head start in scale, but the + discs have been dropping extremely fast considering they've only been on the market since April. Same with the drives. They are rapidly reaching price parity.
I myself paid more than that for my HP dvd200i 4 months ago (though it was the same price as the DVR-A04 at the place I bought it), and I've been very happy with it too. I would have been willing to pay a premium, since the 200i burned discs faster (more than twice as fast, in the case of rewritable discs) and it allows me to append video without having to reformat & rewrite the lot. There are other advantages too.
The reality is, DVD-R got there first and has had time to build a good-sized market base, but DVD+R is a better standard - equally compatible yet more flexible - and has been rapidly catching up in terms of price. I put my money on DVD+R and haven't regretted it since.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
There are essentially four different formats here, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R and DVD+RW. The RW formats are both less compatible than is the R formats. This is the same as with CD formats. The R formats both offer high compatibility again parallell to the CD formats.
As to which is better + or -, technically the + format has a slight edge. Also, if you want to use the drive as a data storage device not only a movie storage device, then the + format has a clear advantage. The DVD forum wants you to use DVD-RAM for data storage (far superior to both the others for this purpose) but this is not compatible with anything.
I agree that tape is far better for long term storage, but 100 DVD-R or even DVD-RW discs can be purchased for under $100. A single DLT 40/80 tape will set you back $48. So DVD is by far the cheaper solution.
Neither standard will write to the other's media, of course. However, both standards will happily read each other's media.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
DVD+RW and DVD+R are formats that were never supposed to be supported in consumer players.
Gasically this is a beta vs vhs thing were the proponents of dvd+r and dvd+rw don't want to pay the licensing fees to the dvd-r guys.
DVD-R is the most compatible format.
DVD-RAM is the best for rewrites and so on. Completely outstrips dvd+rw for performance and longevity and has in fact been around for ages in jukeboxes etc.
DVD+RW drives were in fact designed for the entertainment industry. i guess you've missed the DVD+RW digital VCRs from Philips? there's a digital camera coming soon from Sony that also uses +RW and the 3"/8cm discs.
if you'll notice, many of the companies behind DVD+RW are part of the consortium. they helped contribute to the DVD standard (ala PHilips and Sony), they just left and formed their own alliance for this.
it's also worth noting that +RW was adopted by Microsoft and will be supported in future OSes/ OS updates.
while i'm not 100% positive, but i think that DVD+RW also supports portions of the Mount Ranier Standard (a standard for CDRW) so the drives handle errors and bad sectors instead of the software. there's also a few extra things that help the discs act more like floppies than CDRs which is why Microsot wants to support it .
they don't burn 'em, they stamp em. iirc the have a machine which presses the image onto the disk and that's that.
Red-laser DVD-9 capable DVD writer is highly unlikely to appear, ever. This is due the way how writable DVD discs "cheat" stand-alone DVD players to think that they're "real" DVD discs and that limits the writing capabilities down to single layer.
:-)
And using IFOEdit isn't that bad afterall
Blue-laser discs will be the next step, probably the prices will settle down to human levels by end of 2004 and by then, DVD-/+R(W) will become a new CD-R -- you buy the drive if you need an optical drive in your machine, but can't afford to buy the latest and coolest (blu-ray)..