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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."
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.
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.
...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.
According to this chart, DVD-RW also seems more compatible than DVD+RW...
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.
Ummm, not all of have been mastering DVDs since 1999. I've posed this question in comments several times on Slashdot and have gotten a variety of answers.
;)
+R/RW proponents seem to think that +RW is more compatible than -R/-RW, and that it will be the standard that wins. OTOH, CDRINFO seems to be saying that *both* formats seem to have wide backing in the industry, and that the -R and -RW formats are more compatible than their + counterparts. The media for both are widely available cheaply, but -R/-RW being slightly cheaper than +R/RW
The article also points out that there seems to be a group of +R/+RW fanboys out there. Whether these guys are really zealots, or it's just astroturfing from Phillips, one can only guess.
CDRinfo has been fair and objective, and their methods seem fairly scientific. I applaud them, and say "It's about frickin' time!"
My journal has hot
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There are other advantages, such as being able to put them in a binder for higher portability. It also depends upon the size of your DVD collection. For smaller collections, the cost isn't nearly as high as you might think.
Finally, once you start the initial backup, it's under two bucks to make a backup for each DVD you purchase. I don't think that's horribly expensive, particularly when discs go out of production all the time.
Just a matter of preference and priorities, some people might not want to pay that extra, and that's ok.
Sheesh. You people are so frickin' lazy...
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
"My only beef with DVD-R is that there's no official standard for 4x media"
Actually there is. the DVD-R v2.0 specification specifies 4x write speed in both the drive, and the media.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
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'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
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.