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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."
DVD-R will win, because it has almost 100% compatibility with existing DVD players. DVD+R (from what I understand) is not nearly as compatible. Sort of like CD-R versus CD-RW.
Some people are going to end up being mighty sorry when they blow a thousand dollars on a burner and they don't have any disks available to burn...
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Too easy...
Since the best selling one is in DVD-R, DVD+R will win out, causing those people to have to buy new DVD-Rs if they want to trade DVDs.
"Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
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.
That's what I am wondering, who invented DVD+R and DVD-R in the first place? What are the technological and usuable benefits of either of them?
I think it's more of a side-by-side comparison than roughly say: DVD-R has fair chance becuase the bestseller uses it...
This all happened with CD-Rs.
Remember CD-E? That went away and so will all DVD systems besides two. One for writeable, and one for rewrite.
-twb
Wow, that's not going to be confusing to consumers at all! That's like selling two incompatible fuels, one called "gasoline" and one called "gasaline". Couldn't they have at least picked a better name difference than "DVD+R" and "DVD-R"?
slashdot!=valid HTML
But.. can't you then just turn the disc upside down?
-Matt
With VHS vs BetaMax people had a good reason to try and choose the same format as everyone else so they could view each other's tapes. However, once a DVD-R or DVD+R is recorded it can be read by either kind of drive. So people will simply choose the cheaper one.
As long as both kinds achieve a user base (and I think they already have) media will be available for either. It's not like one of them is going to die.
Do you believe in death after life?
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 one that will win is whichever one I don't buy when I can't hold out any longer.
Whether this will have an enormous impact on whichever is ultimately commonly accepted is another matter.
I should be noted, however, that many of their other choices of things to ship with before anyone else (CD booting, built-in networking, USB) have become pretty much standard for most non apple hardware now.
More interesting is the old guy that overheard us and mumbled in beer speech: "DVD's!! I haven't even heard of CVD's -- I'm sticking with BVD's..." Which was followed by a few unintelligable sentences concerning underwear and conspiracies.
I like the sound of
chmod DVD+R
better than
chmod DVD-R
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Usually, what happens is either:
You have two less frequent variants:
This leads me to think neither DVD-R nor DVD+R will win, and they will be replaced by yet another standard that will force users to upgrade yet again. The manufacturers are obviously OK with this, as this makes more profits for them, at the expense of slowing the initial acceptance of the technology. Consumers aren't complete idiots either, apart from a fringe of early adopters who are used to being shafted anyways, myself included (I own an Apple iMac with a Pioneer DVD-R drive)
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.
-R is more popular than +R for a few more reasons than the fact that +R is more recently available (though this is true).
DVD-R is the only "true" recordable DVD standard, since it was created by the DVD Consortium, the organization that defines what is a DVD and what is NOT a DVD. On the other hand, DVD+R was developed by a coalition of peripheral manufacturers, in direct opposition to the DVD Consortium.
Additionally, DVD-R had a "smoother" rolling out period. If you recall, the first "+" drives were DVD+RW - and in a big "whoopsie!" they suddenly announced that "Oh - that rewritable drive you got? It can't handle the DVD+R disks. Sorry!" They then proceeded to start selling DVD+R(W) drives, the ones that CAN handle recordable media.
Finally, DVD-R has a broader adoption in the home entertainment area, having at least one home entertainment unit come out that uses the DVD-R drives. DVD+R(W) drives were designed specifically for the computer industry, and likely won't be used very soon in home entertainment devices.
Consumers want more choice! Come on, give it to us!
We want DVD=RAM, DVD~RW, DVD±R, and DVD_ROM!
Don't hold back! We want one, two, and three-layer formats! One, two, and three-sided disks!
We want the kind that come in a cartridge but you can remove them, and the kind that come in a cartridge but you can't remove them, and the kind that don't come in a cartridge but you need a caddy!
We crave the thrill, the excitement, and the suspense of putting a DVD in a player and wondering what, if anything will happen!
Oh, and, please, we'd hate to break the law by recording anything you don't think we should record, so put in something to stop us from doing that.
And we'd really like to get valuable discount coupons in the mail, but only on the stuff we like to watch, so it would be helpful if the player sent a list of everything we watch to get sent to the MPAA, the RIAA, and the Department of Homeland Security so that they could form a dossier, I mean profile of our interests.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
$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.
Uh, except the new technologies are not yet available, but there are millions of DVD drives and set-top players already deployed...
You can't fit a whole movie on a home recorded DVD?R anyway. So what exactly is the practical use?
Unless the prices were to suddenly drop on the DVD+R burners or media, it's hard to see DVD-R not winning.
Of note - while they don't quite drive the market, they do make a difference: The Apple SuperDrives are DVD-R. I'm not sure there are any Apple DVD+R offerings.
Also of note - I bought a DVD+R drive early on, not knowing any better. I wish I'd gone with DVD-R or waited for one of the few drives which handle both.
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
We have a MacG4 with a SuperDrive in it, but now we are looking for a DVD player that will allow us to view a test disc. We use DVD-R General discs because they are cheap and allow us multiple tries without toasting a $25 disc and then find an error. We're thinking of going to DVD-RW because after a several burns, they are cheaper. We are also not opposed to going to +R or +RW if the cost/benefit is there.
In the Aug 2002 issue of DV Magazine, they review the different formats (DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW but not DVD+R). They look at compatiblity w/players, disc failure rate by disc manufacturer, and other factors. It offers a good read and lots of info if you are interested. They even list players that can accept all of the formats. It has helped us make a decision on a player (Apex makes a nice model).
An interesting fact about the "+" standard is that it is incompatable with the current dual AMD boards (MP and MPX chipset). This is a problem that I found out from selling a computer configured with both a ASUS a7m266-d and a DVD+R+RW. When the problem showed up we tryed changing motherboards, then brand of motherboard, and finally brands of DVD+ drive.
HP and Sony both blame AMD. AMD says that the problem lies in a data protocol required for the dual chips that the "+" standard interfers with.
The "-" is fully compatable and works perfect. So my vote goes to the "-" standard because of compatablity and I don't trust Sony and HP. (especially since we saw a bunch of issues with packet writing and the Sony CDRW drive)
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"?
I think... I mean, do what you want, hey, to each his own, right?
/sec, reading off a RAID array onto tape.
;p
Personally, if I was backing up data, I'd use a tape drive. Especially if we're talking about 500 gigs. Unless I'm thinking of something wrong, recordable DVD is around 5 GB, right? So, you're talking about 100 discs.
That's not exactly chump change.
You can get a Quantum 40/80 DLT drive for nearly exactly $1000. Just check www.pricewatch.com for more details. The 40/80 is compressed/uncompressed, so assuming your data compresses even much worse than average, you can squeeze in 50 GB/tape. So, 10 tapes. And it writes very quickly - I've easily gotten 30 MB (not Mbit)
As for easier to find files/directories, any decent backup progam will just ask you what you want to restore, and then tell you to put in tape #X. DVD-/+R isn't exactly something that won't crap out any more or less than anything else - if anything, they're really prone to scratching. Once the tape is out of the drive, it's a fully encased hockey puck.
I wouldn't play with it, but I mean, you could.
The -R and -RAM formats own the consumer video recorder market. The -RAM format has the key advantage of very fast random access time, so fast that you can record and play-back from the same disk simultaneously in real time.
The -R format is currently the most compatible with existing players. Truthfully though, worrying about which format will work with existing and older players is irrelevant. It would be like worrying about CD-R because older players won't work with it. If you need to read the disks, get a player that will do so. I'd be willing to make a bet that withing a year's time there won't be a player sold that won't read both -R and +R and quite a few that will read -RAM (especially from Panasonic).
The only area where there is any room for competition will be in the computer arena, but even then there will be no clear victor for a very long time. With +R drives and media being much more expensive than -R, I think that -R has a bright future here as well.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
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"?
However, DVD+R is just as compatible with DVD-R, i.e. with nearly 100% of players.
Both rewritable formats suffer from lower compatibility because older players are confused by the media's lower reflectivity into thinking it's a dual layer disc.
However, both write-once formats use a normal-reflectivity media, and both are more or less equally compatible. In fact, DVD+R has the theoretical edge due to its lossless linking method of writing, which is more like printed DVD-Video discs.
The answer is simply, don't buy a 1st-gen DVD+RW drive since they couldn't write DVD+R discs. However, the 2nd-gen drives (HP 200i, Ricoh 5125 etc) do burn write-once DVD+R discs, and are at least as compatible as DVD-R as this list shows.
I'm getting very tired of all the misinformation and FUD floating about this issue, and I'm starting to wonder who's behind it all...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
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"?
But.. can't you then just turn the disc upside down?
No, you use a technique known as double recording. Put two "-" discs in the "+" recorder simultaneously. The two discs will cancel each other out to the "+" format and work as expected.
As a side bonus, you get two copies of whatever you wanted to write to the disc.
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.
I have an external firewire version of the Pioneer A04 drive, and I'm reasonably satisfied with its reliability and performance.
However, it's pretty difficult finding compatible media that it can use without making a fuss. The blank DVD-R discs sold from the website firewiredirect.com works like a charm and the drive burns them at full speed and the discs can be read in near anything else.
Other brands of DVD-R discs don't work near as well, and sometimes take twice as long to burn. Nero reports zero buffer allocation for seconds at a time when I'm not using the 'good' brand,
and occasionally those discs don't read in any other drive than the A04.
My point, in short, is to be sure you find a supplier of 'good' media for your DVD burner and buy a few samples of different kinds to determine which works best for you. The different brands have different shades of purple colors, the more reddish purple kind works best for my drive.
A Question for the DVD techies here: Why can't we record using the exact same method of recording used for commercial movies?
Is this a deliverate messure by the DVD patent holders? How do the movie studios record (or test) movies? Can we get one of those drives? how much do they cost and who makes them???