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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."
This is why I'm sticking to CD-RW/CD-R for now. There are so many different formats in the DVD-RW market that it doesn't make sense to buy one now and then, *poof*, it's incompatible with everything else.
I have noticed that Some DVD players will like to play DVD-R media fine, and not DVD+R, and vice versa for other players. I took me a while to figure out which media works best in my DVD player. I have a 3+ year old Sony player and it likes DVD-R. My friends JVC likes DVD+R.
I also noticed that burning at 2x instead of 4x seems to play more reliably too. There is a noticably darker burn pattern on the disc if you closely inspect the 2x and the 4x burns.
I have only experimented with 2 or 3 different players, so the study is not very broad.
Calling all enthusiasts!!! Hello!!!!
If you look at it carefully, I'm fairly certain that this mess exists not because of technical disagreements, but because of POLITICAL disagreements. I have yet to hear of a real technical disagreement that doesn't get solved SOMEHOW, even if only as a compromise in the end.
Personally, I'd be willing to bet you this has EVERYTHING to do with power and control. Basically, we have two camps: the DVD Forum, and the DVD+RW Alliance (The Forum and The Alliance as I like to call them), and they are both vying for control of the "standard," because they both want to be able to get a cut of the royalties on every DVD+/-RW player made. If one got a MONOPOLY, it could be a real cash cow!!! Boy, I'd sure love to have a piece of that golden harvest, wouldn't you?!?!?
This is exactly why I haven't bothered with DVD burners yet. I'll wait (forever if I have to) until all the major manufactures involved get it together and support a common format.
*twitch*
The summary (of course I didn't read the article) says that the +R folk say this won't affect them. Well, hasn't something similar already hit them? I know the last pack of 4x DVD+Rs I got said on them that they wouldn't work with 2.4 without a firmware update to the drive..
Best thing you can do at this point is buy a drive which supports all formats. For example, Plextor's PX-708A works on basically all formats, and can be had for about than US$200. This is the direction I plan on going, when I get around to buying a DVD burner (can't justify the cost at the moment).
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Speaking of Media incompatibility, DVD media appears to be as compatibility-fragile as CDR's were way back when.
.20$/disc, which is acceptable. So, for 70gigs of storage, I paid 20$.
There are threads all over (dvdinfo.com?) that state media compatibility for burning, as well as for reliable storage. I wish for two things though:
1. DVD media all has a baseline "quality", meaning every piece of media you could buy (even cheaper ones) would be reliably written and read. Cheap CDR's do that now, and yes, you gamble with longevity, but really, do any of us typically expect a writable medium to last >5 years?
2. Cost. As of now, cost/storage unit is pretty sweet. A 100 pack of CD-R's recently cost me around 20$ (imations, I believe.) That's about
I currently pay Newegg about 46$ per 50 pack of Ritek G04 media (DVD-R). So, for 46$, I get 225gigs or so of storage. Cost per megabyte, this just makes better sense.
Oh. Back to cost. When the DVD-R media (my own preference... what is most compatible to my players) comes down below 50 cents per disc (decent media, not the cheap stuff) then I'll be really tickled pink. And this may happen with the new dual layer ones coming out -- of which, I won't be an early adopter of.
The only real reason I use CD's anymore is for swapping files out from home/work, as well as mix mp3 cds for the car. Of course, I'm waiting for a car player that will read DVD+-R/RW full of MP3's, so I'll have even fewer discs to keep!
Karnal
Wrong. DVD+R was released after DVD+RW. DVD+RW works best as filesystem accessible rewriteable media. The format was updated to include write-once media in order to compete with DVD-R. (You'll notice that even the write-once DVD+R discs bear the stylized RW logo.)
Check here for some more info on the entire DVD spectrum.
A few other quick notes:
1. The +RW alliance claims 100% compatibility with the DVD-Video standard. I've had no trouble using +R discs on very old DVD drives and DVD-Rom drives. Although, as has been said above, there seems to be a huge amount of variation across different drives and players.
2. +R/+RW media does not have the rediculous finalization (lead out) routine that's required with -R/-RW routines.
3. One more thing, formatting times for -RW are rediculous, whereas +RW media can format on the fly.
Although my drive is multiformat, the +RW camp has my vote through experience.
A lot of the compatibility depends on the writer and software setting used.
Some readers move to the middle of the disc when starting, to calibrate. If nothing is written there, they fail. This is the reason some drivs/software write a very long lead-out if very little data is written.
Then there is the 'book type' - a flag which tells the reader 'this is a DVD'. At least +RW (but -RW as well?) put something else thereso they know they can wite. This was in the DVD standard, by the way. But some readers just give up if it doesn't say 'DVD'. The solution? Change the book type.
Thomas
To be able to write with higher speeds the new drives will need to have higher output lasers together with a media that is more sensitive since it is impossible to get the effect by simply changing one of these parameters. (A nice story about the technicalities here.)
This means that an older drive, even though it has a lower effect laser, will destroy the more sensitive media since it stays longer over any one point.
These "bad" effects is probably more due to DVD being a more mature technology closer to the limits than CD were, 8x is a relative number.