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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."
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.
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...
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
...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.
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.
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.
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Yes, we don't have a clear winner... but we do have a clear loser :)
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.
I would want any player I buy to be compatible with Sony and Philips as well as Panasonic for the same reason that I want any memory card reader I buy to be able to read Compact Flash and Secure Digital and Smart Media AND Memory Stick.... Because I can't control what people write things on or with, but I can control whether I can read them or not.
Stop wasting your time trying to kill a format that will not go away and just embrace what is and make sure it won't cost you the ability to watch a DVD because you are stuck on your principles.
Use your $$$ to buy the writer/media you prefer and let that be your vote in the format war, but refusing to push for readers that don't choke on one disc or the other is silly. They're just readers. Panasonic making their readers choke on DVD+R discs is no better than M$ making Netscape choke on content from its website. Be better than that.