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Choosing Between DVD+R and DVD-R?
Pieroxy asks: "Most people like to make the analogy between DVD+/-R and the old VHS/Betamax/V2000 battle. This analogy is not applicable here, because whether you choose DVD+ or DVD-, you burn DVDs that are readable in most existing DVD players. Even if you buy today, the burner based on the technology that will die tomorrow, all your DVD*R will be readable in most DVD players. That said, what other argument than technical superiority can drive your choice? We know the DVD-R compatibility on existing players is better than DVD+R, we know that DVD+R as well as DVD-R have dual layers plans. What else can help me choose between either format? Are prices that different? Reliability? Speed?"
Don't worry, just get a drive (like the Plextor) that does both.
... DAT tapes or lots of CDs. Wait a while until one standard becomes most prevelant.
DVD as a consumer writable storage medium isn't viable as yet in terms of interoperability and long term retainment.
I'm getting this one.
Not too shabby for $112.00 + s/h.
Sony are developing it for retail use, it will be ready in 2 years, mark my words!
--
FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
...according to this excelent review
NEOCA - Custom LED Flashlights
either way...you could burn with iTunes...
::hint hint::
Where's the article????
As someone with a DVD player in the "other" category, I cannot use DVD+ media for video. However 8x write speed on DVD+R is pretty impressive! ( I currently have a 1x burner that burns 'A' discs ) In my case, I was going to buy a Pioneer A06 but will wait for the Plextor to appear. Bottom line: Buy a burner that can use either type, and use different discs depeding on application (i.e. DVD+ for data or for players that can use it, DVD- for video / max compatibility)
Are there differences between the expected longevity of media for the different technologies?
A penis in both your nostrils!
-- The WIPO Avenger
Current pricing for a 25-disc spindle on Future Shop (from the same manufacturer) is $55CDN for DVD+R, and $60CDN for DVD-R. Another manufacturer has -R for $70CDN, so maybe +R is the better deal.
In any event, both should play in modern DVD players so if you can get a Dual Format burner you can just go with the cheaper discs at the time.
Microsoft backs DVD+R take it as you will.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
DVD-RW
The original "standard". Major backers are Apple, NEC, Panasonic, Pioneer, Toshiba. Some incompatibilities exist with the emerging Mount Ranier standard, but there is a *huge* user base.
DVD+RW
Followed shortly after DVD-RW. Major backers are Dell, HP, Philips, Sony, Yamaha. Supposedly less error prone than DVD-RW and also more efficient, so faster drives are a more likely prospect and most pundits I've seen tend to favour this over DVD-RW. Used by Philips in their DVD set-top recorders.
DVD-RAM
The most recent standard. Major backers are Panasonic and, um... but Panasonic does use them in their set-top recorders and the format dominates this market in Japan. Much better support for random access recording (doesn't use a spiral track IIRC) so better for timeshifting, etc. Longest (hypothetical) lifespan of 100 years vs 70, and most supported rewritings (again hypothetical) of 100,000 vs 10,000 times. Most of the gains are due to the fact that a cartridge is often required, although this is starting to be phased out.
Ultimately though, if you want to use these disks in your DVD players, all the features don't matter a damn if your disks won't play, so check compatability first! I've also heard that different brands of media can cause issues with some players too. I'm waiting for now, but I think a DVD+RW/RAM drive would be the way to go at the moment. Finally LG does a drive compatible with all the standards, I'm not aware of any other drives that can do this as yet.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
DVD+ apparently supports VBR (Variable Bit Rate) encoding when recording as video (obviously, computer media files with VBR in them will save just fine when using this as a data medium). DVD- apparently does not. This may be outdated information.
:) Okay, admit it, it's dead. Don't touch it. (and put that stick down, Billy!)
DVD+ is now faster. Plextor has their (I think 708A) drive out, which supports 8X recording on DVD+R _ON 4X MEDIA_. Nobody else is doing this, certainly not on -R.
DVD+ seems to be getting faster, faster than DVD- is.
The media price seems to be at parity, though I've not done extensive checking, just take a peek every now and then at a Best Buy or CompUSA.
If I was going to buy a drive now, I'd go for the Plextor 708A, and stick with the + media (it's compatible with both + & - media, both reading & writing).
DVD-RAM isn't dead, it just smells that way.
You may want to hold off until the whole burning dual-layer thing comes to fruition - I'm not sure how soon that'll happen, though I think someone just recently demonstrated it (Philips?).
I'd definitely go for the Plextor drive right now, though - it's even cheaper than the very nice Sony dual format drive, in addition to the 8X burning thing, which the Sony doesn't do.
A combo DVD+/-R(W) drive will only set you back like $120 nowadays, and the price is getting lower all the time. Might as well just go with the combo drive, and you'll bet set to deal with either format.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
Practically all drives now support both, so get one of those!
I was waiting to jump in, not wanting to get the DVD equivalent of a Betamax, but found a Memorex dual-format burner for about $130 after rebate at one of the local Big Box Stores. My officemate gave me $25 for the 16x DVD-ROM it replaced, so my net is just over $100. By the holidays, that will probably be street price for these things, at which point I expect the single-format burners will just go away, making this whole argument as moot as SCO's case.
Though I don't know why so many of the 'both' posts are getting modded down, I don't see why this isn't a good answer.
.
The price on a +/-R type burner isn't that much higher than the just -R or just +R.
I picked the first sony 500 series that did it when they first came out not because of worries over the vhs/beta type war, but because of the cost of media and availability. Yes, some players are going to like some types more than other. Sure, one of them might be the 'winner' in the long run. But for me, I needed lots of data dumps that I didn't want to use tape for. Which means lots of media. I wanted to be sure I could go with the more economical media of the time and it was an intelligent choice. I've had difficulty getting spindles of +R media at times and have no choice but to go with -R media (unless I'm willing to pay 2 bucks a disk in smaller package sizes).
You don't buy a car nowadays without checking out the mile/gallon, no reason the same shouldn't apply to the ongoing cost of our media consuming devices . .
I guess it all comes down to what you really want to use it *for* to help decide which one is better for you . . . Or course, my argument will slowly become invalid as the media manufacturers and retail outlets catch up with the demand of a still newish consumer product line . . .
get the Sony DRU-510. It handles all standards and the firmware is upgradeable to support future standards. It is pricey, but is also the best one available currently. If you pay more than 300 for the external usb2/firewire version, you got screwed.
At the end of october the new DVD+RW drives will get a feature called Mount Rainier. Drives which are fully M.R. compliant will get a brand sticker from Philips called "easy write" or something like that.
It's a technical story but it comes down to, that you can use Mount Rainier rewritable (DVD+MRW) disks as 4.3 Gigabyte harddisks. In other words, you don't need a special burning program to put stuff on the +MRWs, you just drag and drop it to your drive icon.
Copying, deleting, everything behaves like with a floppy disk.
DVD+MRW has extra disk storage reserved for error correction so it is safe to use a DVD like a HD. However, that is also the reason why you can only burn 4.3 GB on it instead of 4.7
The DVD- standard cannot be made compatible with Mount Rainier.
Also, eventually DVD-RW will become more expensive because a disc has to be made unwritable by machine at a certain small area of the disc, you can see the lines with the naked eye. This has to be done with an extra step in the manufacture of the discs and so will increase the price. The movie industy wanted that extra feature to prevent 1:1 copies of movie DVDs.
Using a seperate program to be able to use storage is a bit strange if you think about it.
Hope I made up your mind for you.
- -- Truth addict for life.
+/- RW's offbrands for just over 100 bucks. Pioneers for 130 ish, and the sony's for close to 150.
You will have to buy a new burner to write dual layer media. So either side having dual layer *plans* doesn't matter at all to choosing now.
Since I'm posting anyway...personally I use DVD-R. It's the most compatible if you ever burn a DVD for a friend, it's cheapest, and the drives are cheaper and have been out longer with more generations (grab an old Pioneer, dirt cheap and reliable). So I couldn't care less about technical matters.
Yes, philips has demonstrated dual layer writing, and we should have firmware for consumer quality dual layer writing by christmas. If you pester our OEMs nicely they will admit that the firmware can be flashed into our 8x drives as an upgrade.
;)
(The 4x drive cannot, due to lack of laser power)
The hardware also supports -R burning, but due to political and licensing bullcrap you won't be seeing that for a while, though all japanese companies are pestering for it, so you might get it after all.
And finally, 8x on 4x media? We're currently working up to 12x on it. But not reliably - and you have to be careful what media you buy. The problem, of course, is that there's almost no 8x media out there yet.
Also, DVD-R dual layer writing has been announced by (I think panasonic?) as well. But don't trust them, they're scum
Posting AC for, um, obvious reasons.
Mount ranier is a disk defect management system, similar to lba remapping used on hard-drives. It is indeed a useful thing.
There is the potential for impending failure analysis and remapping in advance - but no drive will be doing that for a while.
The 'consumer' feature of this is the ability to packet-write more reliably - but directCd or similar give you that. It's really only of interest to people who want to write to scratched media more easily, and it doesn't help with data recovery from scratched media.
The tech will be getting really shown off at the 'microsoft plugfest' sometime next year - but won't be going into the OS until longhorn which means 2006 now? With this slippage, no one really knows when MRW is coming out. I guess it might go into a service pack. Personally, I'd not bother waiting for it. And finally, as I talked about above - it's just a firmware upgrade. And this one can go into 4x writers.
Oh, and whilst it is true that -R is incapable of MRW as it stands, it is certainly capable of something similar which does exactly the same thing for the customer and which AFAIK hasn't been given a name yet.
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Format (+/-) doesn't matter unless you are concerned about read compatibility. If it's just for your own use, then you can get away with anything. Right now, pricing for each type of media seems to have finally gotten to be about equal, so price really should not be a factor any longer. But watch out for older recorders being liquidated at a too good to be true price, these will typically only suport one format, they won't write both. If you are using just for DVD-ROM, data storage, then either should be fine, as both media can be read reliably in most DVD-ROM drives. If you are interested in created DVD video, then the -R media is drastically more compatible with a variety of DVD Video players. Note: we're not talking about Divx movies on CD-ROM/DVD-ROM here, we're talking about video recorded in the same format as a commercial DVD video disc you would get from Circuit City (er, ack! oh, nevermind - that's another story alltogether). I experienced this firsthand as I have both media and have tested videos on DVD on a wide variety of DVD players. I have yet to come across a player that will not read a DVD-R disc at all. The worst I have found is my 1st generation Pioneer Laserdisc/DVD Combo player, it recognizes and plays the DVD-R media just fine, but on occasion seems to get confused and stops playing when using FF. Even a cheapie $50 Apex DVD player purchased just one year ago plays all my DVD-R video's like a champ. But both the above players do not recognize DVD+R media at all. With my +R discs, the people I've given them to in order to have them test in their players, about 20% of them have problems viewing, while no problems reported at all with the video I have done on -R media.
Obviously I should have waited a couple months to buy mine, the Sony in particular I couldn't find anywhere near that price when I was looking.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
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There are still plenty out there that won't. My cheap-o apex seems to be able to play anything. The sony I have in the bedroom plays *most* everything (it doesn't like -rw and a few brands of -r) but a few it seems to play the data faster (its really weird, its like watching it with sound at 10% faster than normal) and my first gen ancient sony only seems to like cd rw and +r's.
It sounds like you are more focused on the video side of dvd burning, I think your best bet is going to be browse on over to http://www.dvdrhelp.com/ where they have lots of good info on various players and which media types and brands work with them in both dvd and vcd type formats. If you have an idea of what type of players your friends and family have, you can get a better guage of which format might be better to go with if you do want to just stick with one. (but why! I want both mustard *and* ketchup with my hotdog even though both are good and non-cancelling condiments in their own right).
The dvdrhelp site is very good for software information used for the dvd/vcd creation process too. Definitely worth perusing.
Quoted from dvdplusrw.org:
Most DVD players will read a DVD+RW or DVD+R disc without any problems, however a small minority of them report a disc error when a disc is loaded that is not marked as a "DVD-ROM" disc in the compatibility bits. Ususally, these players are physically able to read the disc (since DVD+RW reflectivity is identical to that of a dual layered DVD-Video disc, which all players must be capable of reading), but their compatibility problems are due to different interpretations of these bits in the various firmware versions.
So, just use the book type setting changer in nero and youl be just fine.
I use a Pioneer 105 DVD-R/RW drive with Princo brand 1x DVD-R white top media. Many places have the media for $60 for spools of 100 with free shipping (see Pricewatch.com.)
The Princo 1x media (and others) can be burned at 2x with a firmware modification known as 2x4all (see Google.)
I have been doing verifys after every 2x write since I've done the mod but am pleased to have no coasters from the process.
2x recording at $.60/each seems good to me.
DVD+RW are what I use, cos that's what my xbox reads.
LG GSA-4040B 4X DVD+-R/RW DVD-RAM CDRW DRIVE IDE 2MB W/ SW OEM and forgit 'bout it
DVD+RW is supported by HP, Dell, Microsoft and IIRC Pioneer.
DVD-RW was supported by Sony, Apple and Compaq. Sony now does dual format drives. As of 10.3, Apple now has support for +RW in their OS (though still not in some apps), and Compaq got brought by HP and now supports +RW.
Mount Ranier (a sucessor to the packet writing technologies people use these days) is based on +RW.
And the compatibility thing may or may not be bullshit depending on who you speak to.
I think we have a winner. Get +RW or a dual format drive.