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DVD-RW Incompatibilities?
rekkanoryo writes "It seems that there is some trouble brewing in the DVD-RW camps. According to CNET, new, faster 4x DVD-RW media may not be compatible with older DVD-RW drives. The DVD+RW camp is confident this won't be a problem for them, but the -RW backers think it will sometime in the future when even faster media starts to appear. Also mentioned is a dual-layer DVD+R capable of holding up to 8.5 GB of data per disc and the problem with really old DVD+RW drives not being upgradable to support write-once DVD+R media."
I just bought a Lite-On LDW-411S dual format drive. I hope I'm not affected by this. I wish I had read the article before hand, but as of now I haven't had any problems with -R, +R, or +RW discs yet.
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It's not really too surprising. I've seen ~40x CD-R's that were labelled as being for use at a minimum burning speed of 16x.
It seems reasonable that chemicals that work well at low burning speeds wouldn't work well at high speeds, and vice versa.
1x DVD speed is a lot higher than 1x CD speed, so I would expect these issues to start popping up sooner in DVDs than they did in CDs.
It depends on the drive. Most drives should be able to read the media. However, if the new DVD's require a diffrent timing to write them at the fast 4x speed, then older DVD drives might not be able to replicate that sort of setting, thus being unable to read them.
Its like the 90 minuite CDs that you can get (and using Overburn on a 80 min cd, you can make them as well), only drives which allow you to move the laser to the edge of the disk can use them, and there are quite a few drives out there with firmware that prevents the laser from going that far out, thus making it impossible to use those disks.
Hopefully someone will make a damn standerd out of it and have done, its quite annoying having to think about DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, and what drives can take them.
NeoThermic
Use my link above, or to view my server, NeoThermic.com
For all those who haven't upgraded to a DVD burner because of all the possible formats get a Multi-drive. I have a nice LG that burns DVD-/+R/RW and DVD-RAM as well as normal CD-R/RW's. They aren't too much more expensive and tend to make life much easier.
The last story about the non-upgradable HP 100i drive is over two years old! The article mentions a guy who bought his drive just a few months ago - but the HP 300i has been available since I bought mine in March 2003. The 300i is compatible with both +R and +RW - no upgrade needed.
How about some recent info:
href=http://www.theregister.com/content/63/3635
Religion and science are both 90% crap..but that doesn't negate the other 10%.
The tool you want for linux is growisofs in the dvd+rw-tools package. (I undertsand that it supports -r[w] as well).
If you want, you can use the nautilus-cd-burner package, as is also a great front end for data burning and includes support for growisofs.
Very easy, very simple.
Seriously, man-- you're the exception, not the rule. + and - both read in the vast majority of players. The parent poster didn't claim "all," he claimed "virtually any." Which you are unlucky enough to not be part of.
To add one more datapoint to this overwhelmingly thorough survey-- I have 3 old DVD players that both read both formats, and one old hitachi DVD-ROM that won't read any of them. And one IBM laptop that didn't used to, but now does after a firmware upgrade.
So you are one of the unlucky 15% thhat can not read DVD+R/W. Fortunately, you are not one of the unlucky 7% that can not read DVD-R/W.
Depending on your sources the numbers will be slightly different and the older a DVD drive the more likely it will not read a given media. Still, the grandparent is not contradictory with the the parent post.
I would also advise Sandman to try different media. Different brands use differnt dyes and reflective layers. This results in different compatibility matrices. I have seen where one brand would not play on a JVC deck but a diferent brand would mostly play. Sometimes the menu would lock but once the movie started, it would play fine.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
nr.1. DVD-R
DVD-R is 100% compatible with the DVD-ROM standard. The DVD-ROM standard is actually closely analoge to the CD-ROM standard upon which the very popular CD-R recordable is based.
burningtools :
no.2. DVD+R
DVD+R is not 100% compatible with the DVD-ROM standard. Basicly DVD+R is a packet writing standard, instead of tracks, where the last track normally ain't closed. Only to be used in this way for multitrack multi-volume backup and archive tasks. growisofs however has been extended to write -dvd-compat dvd-video iso-images to DVD+R recordable, and closing the disc.
burningtools :
no.3. DVD-RW
DVD-RW is mostly an analog standard to CD-RW. I use it when designing/creating and debugging new iso's.
burningtools :
no.4. DVD+RW
DVD+RW is where i touch in the dark. Basicly i would assume that DVD+RW is just a DVD+R which can be 100% erased, and thus be used again as Multi-track/Multi-volume archive disc.
burning tools:
Urls : e s/joerg.schilling/private/cdrecord.html
dvd+rw-tools: http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/
cdrecord-prodvd: ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/ProDVD/
cdrtools: http://www.fokus.fhg.de/research/cc/glone/employe
oss dvd: http://crashrecovery.org/oss-dvd.html
Robert
I just bought Memorex DVD+R media.
A paper insert said older 2.4X drives (like my HP dvd200i +R/+RW drive) would be incompatible with the 4X media (at 2.4X speed) unless the drive were upgraded to latest firmware.
I did the update and was able to write 4X media just fine.
Perhaps the -R/-RW camp will come up with drive firmware upgrades for the older drives?
The standards for media writing apparently changed a bit from 2.4X days to 4X. Unflashed older drives aren't compatible. The firmware upgrade makes them compatible with new standards, but they still write at 2.4X maximum spee.
Just take a look at bitsetting. It addresses exactly that problem.
Simple explanation here
Basically, DVD-RW format did not exist when your player was built. Your player is probably able to read the disk but won't because it doesn't recognize the format. You need to trick it into thihking the disk is a plain DVD-Rom, and it should read it. (and that's what bitsetting does)
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