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The Most Compatible DVD Format: DVD-R
jbridges writes "CDR-Info tested eight types of media (two examples of each media type) using five different recorders, then tested compatibility in twenty-seven standalone DVD players and twenty DVD-ROM drives.
They determined that DVD-R is clearly the most compatible DVD recording format on the market. To assess the compatibility level of DVD Formats they created video content on a DVD writer using DVD-R/RW and +R/RW media. These discs were then played back in other DVD players and DVD-ROM drives -over a 1,000 combinations of drive, media and player were tested."
beta
I carve all of my information into stone tablets unearthed not near here.
To date, I have yet to find a computer that these tablets are incompatible with.
Of course, the only thing I *do* with these computers is smash them to bits with my stone tablets when their owners owe my boss money, but you know how it is.
Doesn't this kinda go in the duh category?
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
I would really hate to buy now, and in a while be the guy with that "weird" DVD that lost the market war so long ago.
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Because "DVD-RW" looks cooler than "DVD+RW"
might we finaly have a winner in the format wars?
Last time I checked, Pioneer, one of the companies backing -R/RW, started adding support for DVD +R/RW on their recorders. Also, -R/RW seems to be the cheaper media wherever I check. Sadly to say, but it seems the -R/RW may be on its way out the door.
All I can say is DUH.
All of us who have been mastering DVD's for clients have known this cince 1999.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
who likes to say "dvd plus arr"?? "dvd arr" works much better! and if you say "dvd dash arr", do you also say "cd dash arr" and "cd dash arr double you"? then again no "cd plus arr" exists...
and DVD-R are a bit cheaper than +R too!
As we decided that Sony is good this week, it's nice to see that according to the review, the Sony DVD players play almost all discs well, better than any other manufacturer.
Unfortunately, that's not the creator of the player I just bought...
Given that DVDRW drives are $160 or less, DVDrom drives are $80 or less, DVD players (for the TV) are $100 or less, what does it really matter? All new ones are compatible with anything, so if yours happens not to work go out and buy one that can.
The only problem with that is laptops, but slimline DVD-CDRW combo drives to retrofit to laptops are now under $200 (last time I checked, which was several months ago) and I can't immagine that a DVDRW is that much more.
Even if your drive doesn't work and you don't want to throw it away, it's possible a firmware upgrade will let it read all -R and +R media - worked for my NEC laptop. In fact it seems that some -R[W] and +R[W] writers might be upgradable to multiformat, like the Pioneer DVR 105 (identical hardware to the 106) just as soon as the hackers finish working out what needs changing in the hex image.
Beep beep.
I'm tired of writing the same replies to people who say "I'll wait until they're cheaper and a single format wins." So here, I'll just link-whore myself to my own earlier posts -
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http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=71465&cid=646
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=70097&cid=637
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
I would buy now if I would need one.
In my case, the life for hardware is usually at maximum two years. So in two years I would buy a new burner anyway. I believe that this mess isn't clear until that two years has passed.
And hey, it's under $200 now anyway. The article said something about $300, but the cheapest drives are already under $200.
...but the Sony DRU-500AX burns 4x DVD-R/-RW, DVD+RW/+R... clearly, this is the most compatible burner! :)
"The bad: No Mac support." Opps, nevermind.
My girlfriends sister bought a dvd-player (standalone) with vcd,mp3 etc. abilities....
It could not play cd-r discs...
Ehh...whats the mp3 ability for?
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
It's great somebody finally did this. I'm sure it took a lot of time and effort, but "real life"-tests are the only reliable way to find out how players handle the different formats.
Martin
According to this chart, DVD-RW also seems more compatible than DVD+RW...
If you ask me, the obvious reason DVD-R got more momentum despite "DVD+R" being the theoretically better format on paper, is because right when DVD-RW drives dropped below $400 (i.e. when I purchased my Pioneer DVR-104) is because there was no such thing as DVD+R yet, just DVD+RW.
DVD+RW media is (was? I don't even know since I don't buy it) expensive and significantly less comptable than DVD-R, so anyone looking to write something that could actually play in their set top dvd player pretty much needed DVD-R. I think the DVR-106's inclusion of +R and +RW is just a matter of making it look more competitive on paper. Thus I end this with a question... for anyone who owns a drive that supports both -r and +r, how frequently do you use one kind of media over another? I wouldn't be surprised if most people that own a -r/+r drive rarely use +r.
Coincidentally, the Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro has an article in today's web edition at
1 45 34-2003Jul19.html
...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A
discussing his recent experiences testing a few consumer DVD recorders. He notes that the current contenders in the non-PC market are DVD-RAM/-R and DVD+RW/+R, while DVD-RW is outside contention "thanks to still-insane prices". He notes that even though DVD-RAM has better features, "The most important factor, however, is compatibility, and here DVD+RW beats DVD-RAM soundly".
So are we going to end up with consumers buying +RW/+R standalone recorders, while computer users line up behind -RW/-R based on comparisons like CDR-Info's? I really thought this coming christmas would bring DVD recording to the masses, but with this standards war continuing, I'm not so sure anymore
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
We generaly mean the media.
A dollar a disc still doesn't cut it for me.
The way it's looked to me the last few months of looking at these things, +R looks like it has the momentum to end up being the defacto standard. I probably wouldn't care so much, but I've been using Apples for the last six months, and OS X refuses to recognize the format, you have to use third party tools like Toast to make the things operable, and of course there's no way to enable iDVD to work with anything other than the burners Apple sells.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I , however , am a poor poor college student. I can not spare 200 Euros as easily as most people. Plus, i don't REALLY need stuff like that (even though i REALLY want it).
And the 2 year limit is relevant. I mean, my main box that i am writing right now is brand new, only 2 years old. and my other box is a 486 which , acting as an X-terminal , is perfectly ok. So, to me 2 years is nothing. To others 2 years i a life time.
(Well 2 years is a lot to me too but i pretend i don't mind
Not to mention that i will have invested time and money in the media (the disks) that in a worst case scenario will be totaly useless once my device breaks and i can neither find support nor buy a new device.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
how cold they justify not including this oh so important format!!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Interesting. I know that the no-name DVD drive (the only identifier it spits out is "DVDROM 10X") in my main system doesn't read DVD-Rs, but I haven't tried any other formats with it yet. I've heard that DVD+R and DVD+RW discs are more reflective, so I'll have to try them out when I get some money to buy discs to test with.
I have suspected that DVD-R is actually the most compatible format, but I'm glad I trusted my instinct to go buy one of the DVD+/-RW drives that are appearing now..
slashdot is where alpha-geeks go to tell the world how amazingly cool they are for knowing about subject x before everyone else did.
It's fucking pathetic, isn't it?
In the future, either both numbers will go UP, or, both numbers will go down (depending on how far in the future...)
Eventually all computer media becomes an obsolete format.
Although my paper tape seems to be holding up rather nicely. Anyone have a working Teletype? It Think it might be some really good ASCII porn!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Most BestBuy and Compusa computers suck bigtime. Buy a computer without the WEAK intel AGP card that can't play any games! DVD + R works buy kind of concerned now about this report.
We have working prototypes of holographic disks that can hdtv but there is no pub about it. DVD don't do much for me since they dont record HDTV. Recordables took way too long to get to market and now they have the new Blue Laser DVD's coming out that can hold an HDTV video. I will say one word of advice .....WAIT or get screwed !
I prefer DVDA.
Sincerely,
Kathleen Malda
I'm not saying that EVERYTHING Apple does is the best god-given technology on the planet, but the day Apple decided on DVD-R sealed the fate of the the recordable DVD media future. It's not always but often Apple leads the way. DVD-R was easy to see.
For example, an easy prediction to make today is that within 2 years, nearly nobody will be producing stand-alone USB/USB2 web cams. Virtually all web cams will be 640x480 30fps firewire web cams.
---gralem
One important point I didn't see in the article was that many old dvd players will only play disks that have a "book type field" of DVD-ROM.
See this link.
My old Toshiba SD2100 is that way. So it wouldn't play DVD+R disks that I made on my Memorex 4X DVD+RW burner (actually a rebranded NEC) until I reflashed the NEC firmware with HP firmware (written for HP by NEC). The HP firmware causes DVD+R disks to be written with a DVD-ROM bitsetting (for maximum compatibility). Those DVD+RW drives that default to a DVD+R bitsetting cause problems with old home DVD players. For what it's worth, I bought a DVD+RW only because that's what I have to use at work and I wanted to avoid compatibility issues.
Ed.
stop these freaking tests on WINDOWS!
All those tests written up for windows are utterly useless for Linux people.
Please, someone show us where these drives are tested under Linux!!!
Damn!
There's a possiblity that DVDs will replace CDs as the de facto medium (see videogame industry).
Somebody at Best Buy reassured me that it's not likely that SACD and DVD Audio will replace Compact Disc Digital Audio in the near future. Feel free to contradict this once you see a car stereo that plays DVD Audio or a Sony Discman SACD player.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Oooh, face! LoL.
: )
I just think it would be nice if they provided information on which of players had problems reading the different discs.
Question everything.
If that's the case, what kind of archival life can we expect out of the other brands? 4.7 gigs is a lot of data to go missing if a disk goes bad. I've read that burned DVD's are more fragile than CD's and just bending them while taking them out of the case can ruin a disk.
Are we going to have to re-burn all our data every 10.. 5.. 2 .. years because the marketplace has voted for crap/cheap media?
yeah i was looking for beta vcrs in walmart couldnt find a god damned one. asked the clerk where the hell are your beta vcrs? clerk told me that there were all sold out. and that a new shippment would be arriving shortly. as usual walmart has the answers to my problems.
Whats the point of a cure for cancer or aids? Most people who need it and dont have the money wont be able to afford it.
It has all to do with marketing.
DVD-R/W is the best format to use with other DVD-players and DVD-ROM, and has the cheapest media.
The companies behind DVD+R/W has done better marketing, and have got bigger companies with them, like Microsoft.
And we shall not forget that most people are stupid when it comes to technology (!). This is exactly the same that happend when "we" choose VHS instead of Beta.
Just look at the history of Microsoft. They was allways a step behind on everything but marketing. People saw only posters and commercial with Microsoft products, and became "brainwashed". Of course Microsoft isn't the only alternative, nor the best alternative.
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Fatrix
I dare you to go back in time to last night and tell that to me when I was trieing to get my matshita dvd-ram to burn a dvd-r in linux
forget it.
But just because Apple focuses on one standard or releases a superior product DOESNT mean that it will become the standard for that reason only.
PS there were 30fps 640x480 FW webcams before iSight as well.
Considering DVD+R/+RW touts itself as being "the most compatible format." This is mentioned all over their website, especially in the FAQ. They claim a 95% compatibility rate with all DVD players and drives. Who wants to be the bad guy and tell them they're wrong?
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Watch that blood sugar level tubbs!
The most famous home movie ever filmed (Zapruder) was 8mm B&W, so... so... so... THERE!
ObHa: Ha!
--- Ban humanity.
Not to mention the fact that neither the numbers in the article or at dvdrhelp.com are particularly decisive as to format. 85-90% vs 90-95% compatibility is probably not the most important factor in the -R/+R decision, and the -RW/+RW compatibility data is inconclusive. I found the media cost data in the article more interesting: that's a major factor in my purchasing decision right now.
When marking your results, don't use "OK" and "NO" as the indicators.
They're virtually impossible to tell apart in rapid scanning.
Use "PASS" (not "PASSED") and "FAILED". The length differences alone will provide ample visual cuing to reviewers.
This is even harder to judge simply because I know for a fact, some of the companies used to prevent their players from playing opposite formats. i'm not sure if this is still in practice, but you can probably find some reference to it on the internet if you look.
Sure this plays in the grand scheme of how compatible it is, but the remains on whether or not it's artificial or not. While i can't comment specifically on the pioneer/panasonic cases, they do see somewhat strange that they have issues playing them back.
it's hard to really make this claim, especially since they didn't use the same media manufacturer, or a wider variety of media. and the number of burners was also quite limited.
also worth noting is that at least for the stand-alone recorders there are generally other methods you can burn in, to increase compatibility.
Firmware versions were also not mentioned. other sites have indicated that this has an effect for both formats.
grain of salt.
On matrix testing like this they come up with the same facts. - work better than +. Saw a review in DV that basically stated the same thing a few years back.
Yes you can buy a new player but look at the millions of plays out there now. You can junk all of them.
They only used two -R/RW recorders, two +R/RW recorders, and one that can do all of them.
...what most people actually working with the formats already knew. I've helped film students for 5 years now. If they asked what they should use to send DVDs off to master I'd say whatever is cheaper. When asking how they should burn DVDs so they could be read by DVD players, I'd say to use DVD-R. Turns out DVD-R is cheaper as well.
Doesn't take a genius to figure out who the clear winner has been for quite some time now.
Give it a year or so DVD+RW will eventually take over, just look at most popular pc's coming out to market from Dell ,Hp and Gateway all the models that have DVD writers are DVD+RW. It wont be long before there will be more DVD+RW's than DVD-RW's in the market. This will make media manufactures lower media prices and DVD player manufactures make more compatible units.
If I'm not mistaken, standalone recorders (usually with hard-drives) might also be a factor. The Panasonic series of standalone DVD recorders are DVD-R/DVD-RAM; the combination of such players, especially with the attraction of recording to a hard drive first and then editing and burning to DVD-R media might encourage the consumer to vote with his wallet for the DVD-R as the de facto standard.
The make of DVD burner in our PCs might be a moot point since what many folks are looking for is a replacement to the aging VCR, not something to burn data.
Friends help you move... Real friends help you move bodies...
Sheesh. You people are so frickin' lazy...
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
What DVD-/+R format is best for "backup copies" of Xbox games? I think some of the games are just plain CD-R...
I do all my DVD burning in Linux (in fact I have never burned a disc in Windows), and I cannot see how the system OS matters at all for compatibility testing.
The mmc optical writing command set has been standardized since forever. A drive running in a Linux system sees the exact same data coming down the wire as the same drive running in Windows. From personal experience I can attest that my own observations match up exactly with the results from cdrinfo: DVD-R works most widely, followed by DVD-RW and DVD+R, with DVD+RW last.
Loser.
Until they stop all this DVD-DON/KEY+DOO-DOO and pick one format (or pick more than one, but agree and commit to those formats), I'm not buying any of these devices. Even if I buy a drive that is capable of all formats, each piece of media will still be in only one format. If I back up my files on DVD-R and that gets abandoned after DVD+R becomes the standard, the DVD-Rs will essentially become coasters if my all-capable drive breaks and I can't find a replacement that can do DVD-R.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
The first is that if you take a weighted average by player market share instead of just a straight numerical average then the numbers lean much more heavily in favor of DVD-R. In fact under such a weighted average I would expect even DVD-RW to beat out DVD+R.
The second flaw is that averaging across disc brands is completely irrelevant for most users' actual usage patterns. Most users do not choose a random disc brand for each burned disc that they make. On the contrary, most users (those that distribute discs, anyway) pick a single brand and stick with it for some period of time.
The question therefore should be "Which disc brand has the highest compatibility?" instead of "Which format has the highest compatibility averaged across all disc brands". And here DVD-R wins out as well: a top DVD-R disc brand (such as the Pioneer 4x media) has almost universal compatibility, which no single brand of DVD+R disc can match.
Am happy with my new Optorite DD0203 $176.98 , 4 X dvd+/-R, 2.4 x dvd+RW, 2 x dvd-RW, 16 x dvd reading, 24 x 10 x 40 as CD burner.
8MB buffer.
featuring HD burning (discussed previously on Slashdot), which can burn 1.4 GB data onto a normal CD-R.
According to specifications, this one BEATs SONY dual format dvd burner.WebExpress
First point - All DVDs contain a field which identifies to the player the type of media. This field is called the "booktype". There are a handful of players which will refuse to play a disc if it is not tagged with one of the "acceptable" booktypes, even though the player would physically be able to play it. From the various searching around I've done, it appears that from a physical point of view, there should be very few players that can play a -R disc that can't play a +R disc (e.g., they both have very similar reflectivities, etc.).
Most DVD writers have the ability to let you force the writing of a certain booktype field. Many of the players in the test which failed to read +R discs are likely to have done so because their firmware refused to play based on the booktype field. Setting the booktype of a +R disk to DVD-ROM or DVD-R would probably narrow the compatability gap significantly.
An excellent technical discussion of this and other issues appears on this page, near the bottom of the page.
Second point - DVD+R/RW is becoming more popular because, outside of just compatability, there are some other subtle (or not-so-subtle, depending on your application) technical advantages. The biggest one is the ability to do fine resolution (a few bit-times) lossless linking in all recording modes.
Again, the above page has an excellent technical discussion of this near the bottom (section labeled "What does the + in DVD+R/RW stand for").
The bottom line is that due to the way lossless linking is performed in DVD-R in DAO mode (the most video-compatible mode), compatibility is dependent on linking data being "corrected away" by the ECC, whereas in +R/RW, the links are physically so small that a +R sector with a link is logically indistinguishable from a DVD-ROM sector.
The primary importance of all this is that it allows real-time low-bitrate MPEG data, say from a capture card or from the internet (which will inherently cause buffer underruns due to it's low bitrate), to be directly written to DVD with compatability as high as if the data were first all written to a file and then written to DVD at once. Companies like Dell, etc., must feel that this will become a big consumer advantage because of the large amount of disk space and added inconvenience required to first store the MPEG in files and then write them to DVD.
There are also some other subtle techincal advantages which can be seen from the above document.
So, for consumers who want to do things like capture video from their camcorders and copy it to DVD in a simple manner, +R may be the best choice as long as their player is compatable (which it likely is since the compatibility gap isn't that big), whereas for someone who is producing DVDs which are to be distributed to many people with no knowlege of which player they have, -R may be better, although they could always increase compatability of +R by using the booktype field.
It saves the repeat visits to the store returning devices that will only do 1/2 of what they lead you to believe they do.
What discs are people getting layer rot on?
I've been in DVD for 5 years now, with over 400 discs that have passed through my hands, and I've never had a rotted DVD in my collection.
I'm wary of people claiming rot on DVD's, having never seen it myself. I've still got 6 of the first 10 DVD's I ever bought, and they all look fine.
"unless you're one of those mythical Mac users who buys the Mac for its looks instead of what you can do with it."
So you're saying the entire Mac population is mythical?
If they develop another format, how are they going to call it ?
Provably DVD*R
or DVD^R
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Probably no point backing up "Home Alone 2."
I wouldn't go that far. Future generations will want to know exactly how information was extracted from Camp X-Ray prisoners so effectively.
I'm betting that they'll be a big demand for copies of that disc in history faculties and military academies in the not too distant future.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
What?!?
First off, there is no such thing as 2x DVD-R discs, though there is a 4x specification. Do any of you ever bother to check the DVD FOrum page before posting?
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
This Is Because DVD-R/RW is dying.
i saw five people buying DVD+R/RW media this week. this is unequivocable data that shows DVD-R/RW is on it's way out. alan greenspan was once questioned about DVD-R/RW. he accidentally farted at the time, which can only be construed as a negative opinion. if you lay out all the DVD-R/RW discs sold since it's inception, it only covers half the area of Rhode Island. shortcomings like these are why nobody uses DVD-R/RW anymore.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
It's also worth noting that DVD+RW discs are identical to pressed DVD-ROMs when it comes to reflectivities. The only hanging point is when drives don't comprehend the DVD+RW media identifier. Something that can be corrected on most drives by a program called DVD bitsetter (http://www.dvdplusrw.org/files/dvdbitsetter2113.z ip)
-- Terry
Thank you!
I wondered when somebody would mention the technical advantages of DVD+R and DVD+RW. There are good reasons why Philips and partners have taken a different route.
Mount rainier support could - when implemented correctly (grumble grumble, stupid writer programs cannot get _anything_ right) revolutionize the PC world. Finaly a large size format that you can burn easily and take to friends, modify and take back.
Maybe the DVD-R is slightly more compatible and more cheap, but are we going to make the VHS mistake all over again? With the next protocol already?
Cmon guys, vote for the better one of the two!
I'm pretty much out of the DVD-RAM/DVD-RW/DVD+RW loop, but I do know that there are many existing firms that use DVD-RAM as part of their backup strategy. Because they don't distribute the discs they burn (it's a private backup) the compatibility issue isn't much a problem.
Plus there are still a fair number of "early adopter" folks and firms that have an existing investment in DVD-RAM drives and media.
Maybe the DVD-R is slightly more compatible and more cheap, but are we going to make the VHS mistake all over again? With the next protocol already?
I can't help but feel that your comparison of the DVD format situation is a bit backward.
DVD-R is the VHS in the situation yes? DVD+R is the Beta right? Well which won that one? VHS won, not because it was better, it clearly wasn't, but because it was cheaper and more compatible. Beta was better, but more expensive and quite proprietary.
I keep hearing from people saying that the + format is winning, but I havn't seen any proof of that. People keep saying "The minus format is going at bargain bin prices because it's being phased out," but that falls flat on it's face quite quickly. The DVD-R format was created by the official DVD forum, they're not going to back off easily. On top of that, things get cheaper when they're sold in great quantity...so it seems to me that the "bargain bin" prices are due to the format being the acutal popular choice.
One cannot assume that just because 80% of the DVD writers going out the door at one particular store (or even chain) that THAT is the winning format. If you go to Best Buy, that's almost all they carry so that's what sells. If you go to the local computer enthusiast shops -R outsells +R quite handily. Well guess who's buying and using the DVD writers, Joe Sixpack or Joe Techie. Seems to me that the format war is far from over no matter what anyone says.
Taking a look at their site, it looks like they are performing cpr on it by publishing the article.
The rest of their site, in internet time, looks like it was created in the stone age.
Not meant to be a troll. Really look at the other articles on the site. A lot of the info is really outdated, and when placed in context of today's or even months old information, is just plain wrong.
The article itself is informative. And useful if you are in the market for the specific hardware. But everything surrounding it shows that a lot of work needs to be done on the site. Other sites are not even close to being in as bad a shape as this site. It looks like the authors forgot about it for about three or four years, and then decided to add a few new articles.
Good article. The rest of the site is in desperate need of rehabilitation.
Check the press release here.
As I've said in previous comments, this is pretty much the best media out there, along with Verbatim (Data Life), TDK and Taiyo Yuden.
Actually, VHS won the consumer war not because it was more compatible with anything (there was really nothing to be compatible with, other than Beta, which it obviously wasn't compatible with). It won the war because it was more convenient for consumers - it was more convenient because VHS could record two hours in SP mode (a length long enough to cover most movies), when at the time, Beta could not.
DVD+R/RW has some subtle technical advantages that may turn out to give it a similar edge for consumers, like the ability to directly record variable bitrate MPEG in real time in a mode that is still highly video compatible. It's still a gamble for Phillips et al - nobody really knows whether this will end up being a big consumer advantage, but folks like Dell apparently think so, potentially enough of an advantage to overcome the slight compatibility gap. In addition, that compatibility gap is only going to get narrower (actually, better for both formats), because virtually all players being made now can play anything, and what gap exists is largely solvable with the booktype field
Still, If I were producing DVDs for distribution to many people, and I didn't want to worry about setting booktypes, it makes sense to choose DVD-R/RW at the current time. This may change though in another few years when almost everyone has replaced their really old players and the compatibility gap has narrowed to statistical insignificance.
DVD-R is the only format that the DVD-Forum endorses. I don't see a hint of +R or +RW anywhere in there. Just because Sony, Microsoft, or any number of other manufacturers are endorsing +R/+RW means nothing. Just because there are more drives in the store being purchased as +R/+RW means nothing. One could easily make the same argument for the +R/+RW only camp in introducing -R/-RW compatibility in their products. Besides that, +R/+RW media is both more expensive and newer. The -R/-RW media has been around a while, and this is why you see it for cheaper.
You want maximum compatibility, stick with -R. The nice folks in the story proved it. You don't know if someone will try to play the DVD you write on an older player. It'd suck for someone to get caught not being able to read what they have.
Note: How the parent got modded up this high is beyond my level of understanding.
The argument makes a lot of sense for a set top player that replaces a vcr to use DVD+RW, but who cares about disc space on a PC. The whole point of the PC is to be able to edit the video. And hdd's are cheap.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Panasonic isn't making their readers choke on DVD+R, it's DVD+R thats choking their readers.
The real standard here is DVD-R, Sony introduced +R to speed things up a little, but in the process became less compatible and thus they needed to change the marking a bit so they don't get in trouble.
"Its a lifestyle, not a computer"
No. I just bought my first powerbook after nearly twenty years of PCs. I didn't buy this as a lifestyle choice; turns out it's a really fucking good computer.
CDRInfo test looks taunted - they say nothing about "booktype" field value handling in recorders (aka bitsetting). A lot of old firmware knows nothing about "+R" or "+RW" and DVD booktype should be set to "DVD-ROM" for that players because it don't play unknown disk type values.
Newest recorder software has some option named something like "compatibility" which can be used to set booktype to "DVD-ROM" value.
I am not surprised the CDRInfo results, however + is more compatible... if you know how use this !
It's a shame they didn't include a Playstation 2 as a test machine for playback -- I'd love to know what a good drive is to burn a, say, interactive DVD of my digital photo collection, for use on my PS2
Keep your dick in your pants - PSX will be an all-new console. Will be sweet.
And just because the DVD-Forum endorses the - format doesn't mean that much either. The DVD-Forum is just another arbitrary organization of companies. (The + format is supported by the DVD+RW Alliance. Who says one is any more official than the other?)
Sony didn't cripple the particular drive you're referencing. It in fact burned -R at 4x but +R at 2x. However, a firmware update has been released to record everything at 4x. 510?
Perhaps you're confusing it with the +RW/-RW which is +2.4x and -2.0x ? this is simply because -RW doesn't work any faster yet.
Also Sony didn't invent +, they did less than half the work on it and they're in both camps and don't care which is the success. Philips on the other hand has much more to lose.
and actually it's not really incompatible and any more proprietary than -R/-RW. it's actually technically superior and can actually be just as if not more compatible. It depends upon how you have the compatibility bits set.
For something that's going to die a slow death it's done a pretty amazing job at capturing more than 30% of the market in the last 2 years.
The DVD Forum published the specifications for DVD in the first place. You can't get more official than that.
Recently some of us have observed that
CD-R quality has gone down the drain. Too
often I buy disks that fail really soon.
The real question for me is: which of
the two formats is most reliable in the
long term? Will I be able to read my disks
5 years from now? Which is most reliable,
DVD-/+R or CD-R?
Capacity and speed is nice but I don't
tolerate data loss very well...
P.
In the case of CD and DVD, the industry decided to standardize on Philips and Sony. As a result, they won.
But in every case where Sony or Philips have decided to go against the industry with their own standard, they failed.
Sony: Beta
Philips: DCC. The only reason Sony won with MD was because they were going against a company with as bad a track record as they do as far as format wars.
Sony: Memory Stick. It's still alive, but SD/MMC is going to wipe it off the face of the earth in due time. Everyone is behind SD these days - It's standardized and it's smaller.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
" I picked up a Pioneer A05 (rebranded) for about $150 after a rebate. Just couldn't pass up that offer. It's now using an unofficial firmware to remove the 2x CSS read mode so I can rip my own DVDs (for backup[1]) at 7-8x. My only beef with DVD-R is that there's no official standard for 4x media, which makes it somewhat hard to come by and fairly expensive. You can find really good deals on branded 2x discs, though, which sort of makes up for it. If the 4x discs come down in price, great, I'll start buying those, but otherwise, for the price I paid, I'm not complaining."
4x media IS standardized by the DVD Forum. Which is why the Pioneer 105 does not need any media table maintenance in order to burn ANY 4x disc on the market. 4x media isn't that expensive these days, and seems to be dropping around 20 cents every 2 months, while good 1x media (Ritek G03) is actually slowly rising in price. (2 months ago, a 25 pack of Ritek G04 4x media was $2/disc, and G03 was $1.20/disc. Now they're $1.80 and $1.30 respectively).
2x media, on the other hand, is NOT standardized. It's a "manufacturer certified overclock", which means that unless your 2x media (which is really 1x media that has been tested to burn at 2x by Pioneer) is in the 105's media table or you're using 2x4all hacked firmware, you're not going to burn at 2x. (Example: Samsung BeAll "2x" media.)
Interestingly enough, the only 4x burner that has any trouble with not burning all 4x discs at 4x is the Sony dual-format burner. From all I've heard, that burner has so many firmware bugs that it's not all it's made out to be by the +R fanboys. One of the top 5 most recurring topics on the www.firmware-flash.com forums is "What media actually burns at 4x in the DRU-500?"
And don't get me started on +R only drives. The Philips DVD+R drive sold as an option on recent Dell laptops has trouble burning discs recognizable in any other drive. Yup, that's not a noname drive, but one made by Philips. I think it's sad when the creator of a disc format can't even make a drive that burns readable discs.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
That in some European countries, Philips is pushing for DVD-R media to be taxed at double the rate of DVD+R.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I've heard mixed things about Princo 4x.
They're at it again with their shoddy quality control. Some batches are amazing, other times people who rave about them get a 50% coaster rate on their second batch of discs.
Ritek G03 and G04 seem to be the current "golden standards" as far as affordable media go. No one has had problems with G03 (1x, usually burnable at 2x reliably) or G04 (4x). I ONLY use Ritek -R media in my drive.
I currently use Sony RWs. Going to try Riteks soon. Stay away from Optodisc. I ordered a batch of Opto RWs, every one of them refused to read reliably in my laptop's DVD drive, and half of them had visible surface flaws. Fortunately, Rima has an excellent service department and gave me no hassles about exchanging the Optos for G03 -Rs.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
in the foot.
Dell is most likely wishing that they did not use a Philips single-format drive to provide a DVD recording option on their latest laptops.
There are a large number of threads on Dell's support forums with people who are having problems burning discs with that POS drive that are readable in any other machine. (PC or standalone).
That drive is really going to hurt Dell's reputation...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Ask him to spell 'irrigate'.
Aye
Arrr
Arrr
Aye....
Even if you buy the DVD that is going too loose the market, what's the big deal? You still burn DVDs right?
It's not like all your DVD-/+R are going to be dead like your V2000 Tapes were right? You can still read them in most players out there....
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Guess what, DVD-R's are designed to be used with set-top players. +R's are not. Guess which one I use on a daily basis.
Until there's a really reliable GPL or BSD-licensed burn program for GNU/Linux, I'm going to stick with CDR's. Does anybody know of any? cdrecord-prodvd by the same author of cdrecord (plain) isn't free (as in speech)! The various cdrecord DVD-writing hacks (patches) appear to fail at many of the less famous (though far cheaper) Taiwan brands.
Maybe the community can collectively buy a license from the author of cdrecord to free the DVD writing code (a la blender).
Heard about the Newton? But of course that's one of the rare exception ;-). Seriously, firewire won't make because it's already old technlogy (superior probably, but old nevertheless).
Apple only succeeds in setting the standard if the PC Clonemakers adopt it early on: USB was appearing in PC mobos shortly after Apple decided to include it in their systems. Ditto Apple's original translucent iMac casing. Firewire is already five years old and only a few higher-priced Taiwanese mobo have it as a feature, while practically all mobo on the market today have USB (even USB 2). Firewire is dead.
Either the standard or the intruders' format is going to lose, and not long afterward half of the early adopters are going to have to replace their drives for lack of blank media. When's the last time you saw a 5.25 in disk?
Do I reply to AC?????
Blank media is going to be available for at least a couple of years which is more than the lifetime of these kind of drives anyways...
Granted I still have my first 4x CD burner, but I don't use it to burn anymore!
After two years the drive is so technically obsolete that you have to buy a new one anyways.
Write boring code, not shiny code!