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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."
Why isn't there a standard format that can be adhered to so that a DVD RW here is a DVD RW there?
If standards existed, a company that built an incompatible extension into their technology wouldn't be able to legitimately call their device a DVD RW.
I have been pwned because my
It seems like consumer DVD writing technology is coming out a bit too fast now. The format is fracturing more than it's uniting...
Whatever happened to the standard bodies who are supposed to prevent this?
My valuable pr0n collection! Now I have to start all over again!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Who gets to set the standards? There are several groups, each of which think that their system is the best. Why should all but one group be excluded? Why not just let the market decide what the 'standard' is?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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.
--
For great deals on DVD burners and other electronics, click here!
This is the exact reason why I still haven't bought a dvd writer. +RW, +R, RAM, -RW, -R... a gazillion formats and now we have speed incompatibilities AND ofcourse a bunch of manufacturers who lied about their drives being firmware upgradeable. Why can't these clowns all sit down and actually define AND FOLLOW a standard ? Thanks to them, the whole dvd writer market is substantially less than it could have been. I've been waiting for more than two years now for things to clear up but still there's all these silly incompatibilities. How the heck do they expect to convince Joe Sixpack to buy one when MY head feels like exploding from all the confusion around this ?
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.
Because if there are standards everyone follows we don't have a VHS vs. BETA fight again where half the people get screwed big time.
Because the market will decide to hold off on buying any DVD RW drives until one side has significant marketshare.
So it is actually up to the PC vendors to decide, and they will go with the cheaper, less useful system than the expensive feature filled one.
Because having four or five standards for effectively the same thing floating in the marketplace makes a mess. Consumers start to think the technology is just plain broken when they try to insert a type A disc into a type B reader and it doesn't work.
When we start having to say "D-V-D-dash-R-W" and "D-V-D-plus-R-W" and now start to get word that new larger-capacity discs of the same physical size are going to come out, the market starts to get really confused.
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.
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.
I'm shocked there still hasn't emerged a clear winner in the format-wars...
Anyone know what the "market share" of each format is?
This site helped me get my Sony DRU-510A DVD+/-RW+/-R DVD up and burning data dvds in no time. I haven't tried video, but then again, I bought it for data.
I gave up on doing anything related to DVD in linux not too long ago. In trying to get the DVD player software and install it, I felt like I was re-living that column on here not too long ago about trying to print in linux. Use apt-get! no, use up2date!, no, use yum (what kind of fucking name is that, btw)!, no, download packages! err, which packages? Well, all 10 of these of course! Or simply update your yum.conf file with this 50 character string and then do a yum install mplayer and wait for yum to download a gazillion headers and then....aw fuck it, all I wanted to do was watch a damn DVD. It's just too easy to do in windows to even fight with linux. Stick in the windvd CD and away I went.
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?!?!?
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.
The difference is:
A DVD+ and DVD- disc will read in virtually any drive, period. Unlike a Beta tape, which will never read in a VHS VCR.
More importantly, at the time of the format wars, a VCR cost $400, which, translated to today's dollars, probably feels like buying an $800 item right now. Also, the VCR was expected to last a decade back then (as a matter of fact, I still have a 1984 Zenith VCR - working). DVD burner for your computer is expected to last 2, maybe 3 years prior to replacement and costs $150.
The absolute worst you can be screwed is:
- Lack of media being produced in your format (You lose $150 on the drive)
- Having media left over when your drive dies that will not work in burners now being sold (You lose... hmmm... in my case $50)
The worst you could be screwed during VHS vs. Beta format wars was:
- Entire tape collection obsoleted (if you bought pre-recorded tapes at the time, minimum $100, likely many thousands of dollars if you were an enthusiast)
- Tape collection cannot be recovered into other format (assuming all Beta/VHS VCRs dropped off the face of the planet) (priceless, if you managed to tape something that will never be broadcast again, or if you had a Beta/VHS handycam)
- Lack of media being produced in your format ($400 then, $800 now for a new drive)
- Having media left over when your drive dies that will not work in burners now being sold ($50, maybe...)
We're talking a lot of difference in losses here. $200 is manageable. Thousands of dollars, and a loss of priceless work isn't.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
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*
Why isn't there a standard format that can be adhered to so that a DVD RW here is a DVD RW there?
You can't get five people to agree on where to go for lunch; what makes you think it's easy for them to agree on technical issues, particularly when their companies have developed technology, products, patents, or markets at stake?
Windows is de facto "standard" for PC software. Why don't you just run that instead of Linux? How come those Linux guys don't get together and just define one standard distro instead of having a zillion of them?
Technology is developed before it is standardized. You don't just create paper documents of wishful thinking and then wait for someone to implement it. You start with proposals based on what is possible and usually what exists. After that, it's politics, not engineering.
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..
The best thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from! :)
Fellowship 9/11
So answer the question. Why gets to decide what the standard is and why should one group get total control over the market?
Some reasons, historically abound;
1. They're a monopoly already
2. They're the ones allowing porn on the format
3. They're the ones with the patents
4. They're everybody, and everybody can join in
1) is the ITU way
2) is the VHS way
3) is the CD way (philips/sony)
4) is the ISO way
But you're missing the real point; obviously if everybody involved in making higer-capacity-than-CD optical media could just come up with a single, future-proof standard, there would be no confusion among consumers, and everybody would be competing on a level playing field. Standards aren't about excluding competitors - at least, not by definition. That only happens when smart asses throw in a lot of patents to rake in the money.
So that would be
5. People get fed up with factions, the peace pipe is smoked, and a single standard is decided upon to make sure the technology works and SELLS.
that would be
5) the way of the screw.
The way things are going with DVD, the Chinese stand a good chance to come up with a better, less encumbered, and more standardized format. And not because they're communists, but because they're cheap asses who don't want to spring for the MPEG4/ACC/CSS/Dolby/etc. patents.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
priceless, if you managed to tape something that will never be broadcast again, or if you had a Beta/VHS handycam)
R-Kelley w/ a handycam and an underage hooker? Priceless.
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$200. This is the direction I plan on going, when I get around to buying a DVD burner (can't justify the cost at the moment).
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
When CDRWs went above 4x, the formulation had to be changed, and faster CDRWs (e.g. 8x+) will not write on slower drives.
I wrote this perl script for installing DVD burners. You will have to tweak it slightly for your distro, but it should be obvious what you need to do.
m kiofs,);unshift@s,$_ ,$_ for 1..$e-1;unshift'',$_ for split$/,`cat $f`;$x=\$_for sort{$a<=>$b}keys%w;for$n(b ;H:for$y(@{$w{$s}}){if($y=~/[$b= ~s/$_/X/ for split'',$b;if($t=~/X{$s}/){$m{$s}=$y;if($s==3){for = (1,0);for(@s){push@m,$d=shift@m;push@p,$a=shift@p; $d?$a?++$x:++$y:$a?--$x:--$? $v<10?'00':$v<10
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
my($3,0,0,1,1,1,0,0)=(cdrecord,growiofs,
reverse 3..$x){for$b(@{$w{$n}})wget`$-`;{$s=$n-1;$m{$n}=$
]{$s}/){$t=$y;$t
(sort{$a<=>$b}keys%m){next if$_>$n;print:$e<10?$v<10?0:'':'').$v+t@s,$e;
@p
y,$l[$y][$x]=($e=>10
Look around. See anybody in the "market" deciding? The market is too scared to buy any DVD writer, precisely because there's no standard.
Having competing manufacturers in the marketplace is a good thing. Having competing "standards" in the marketplace is a bad thing. This isn't about excluding any group. It's about excluding all the superfluous technologies.
Why not just let the market decide what the 'standard' is?
Yes, anyone can clearly see, that plan has worked excellently for cell phones.
You probably shouldn't click this.
Sorry everyone, my bad. I bought the DVD-RAM drive a few years ago, and shortly later, that format died. A month ago, I bought a DVD-RW drive, and ummm... Well, I guess I kind of cursed it too.
A DVD+ and DVD- disc will read in virtually any drive, period. Unlike a Beta tape, which will never read in a VHS VCR.
Care to explain why my 2 year old DVD player and 2 year old DVD-Rom only reads DVD-RW and not the + version? Your statement above is simply not true.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
since when? any walmart, compusa, office depot, staples, etc now cares drives that record in BOTH formats. That's right, you heard me, + and -. And those drives are usually the same price as the + only or the - only drives if not cheaper. Why? Because that's what the public is buying! We got fed up with the - only and the + only and refused to buy, so now that their are drives that do both they're actually selling well.
Case in point: I bought a drive that does +R and -R at 8x for $100 shipped recently. No, not with rebates or coupons or other crap, that's regular price.
Imagine what would have happened if they would have made machines that played Beta and VHS AND it was cheaper than the beta only or VHS only machines? I'd imagine we'd still have Beta around.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
HP isn't the only company guilty of saying their drives would be upgradeable to support DVD+R discs and not following through.
I bought a Philips DVD+RW drive when they first came out. Philips very prominently, on both the box and their website, proclaimed there would be an update to support DVD+R media as soon as the format was finalized. Several months later, not only was there no update, all mention of such was removed from the Philips website. And now, not only has there been no update, but DVD+RW discs themselves are getting harder and harder to find at my local stores.
While my Philips drive has performed flawlessly and has served me well, it is useless to me if I can't buy media for it. Even Philips themselves, who's media I prefer, seem to have cut back massively on the production of DVD+RW discs.
I can see from "the writing on the wall" that within the next few months I will probably need to consider a new drive because of the media situation. I have already decided two things. One, it will be a multi-format drive. And two, it probably won't be a Philips drive...they may screw me once, but it won't happen twice.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
DVD+R/RW is heading for the dump, where it belongs.
Nice semi-troll. The article you linked to, of course, implies no such thing. Instead, it seems that single-format only drives are heading for the dump, where they belong.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
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
k3b supports DVD burning for data...
Just make sure you have growisofs and dvd+rw-tools. Then compile k3b with +dvdr.
Or those of us with Gentoo:
USE="dvdr" emerge k3b
Daniel
Who gets to set the standards?
ISO. That's what they're for.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I know it's too much to expect anyone to read the article, but the problem here is not an absence of "standards." There is a standard DVD-R format, set by the DVD Forum. (Yes, there is also a competing DVD+RW format, but that has nothing to do with the problem at hand.) However, that standard format was not designed for higher speed technology. So the same standard-setting DVD Forum is putting their blessing on a higher speed 4x DVD-R which turns out not to be 100% backwards compatible with the old drives. They are forced to do this by the realities of the marketplace.
;-). This is the price we pay for progress.
Note, companies build incompatible extensions into their technologies all the time. WinXP broke some Win98 apps. OSX broke some older MacOS apps. SVHS broke compatibility with regular VHS. DivX broke DivX
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
>Care to explain why my 2 year old DVD player and 2 year old DVD-Rom only reads DVD-RW and not the + version?
:-)
You have really, really, really bad luck or are way too cheap?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
WOW! Just imagine how much completely legal, free or open source DVD ripping software you could store on one of those!
Breakfast served all day!
Use VLC.
Works like a charm. MPlayer never made me happy exactly because of the crappy installation.
VLC on the other hand does all that, nicely and works on my Mac AND on Windows AND on Linux AND Solaris etc. And mostly out of the box, just some RPMs to install in Fedora.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Oh no, they've already got the next generation war all lined up. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray - same sh*t, different formats. It does make you want to scream doesn't it?
Still, I have a dual format DVD-/+ drive and have found that DVD-R are best for consumer DVD's while +R are better for my data (mainly because of the 8X writing speed). It sucks that they can't get it all together, but it is doable.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Columbia introduced the 33-1/3 RPM LP in 1948. RCA deliberately introduced the incompatible 45. During the "war of the speeds," both companies saw sales fall sharply. RCA's fell more and in 1950 they capitulated. By that time, the damage was done and users of turntables were saddled for five decades with the extra costs of multi-speed turntables and a variety of clumsy, awkward, expensive spindle adapters.
Just wait, any day now some DVD "standards" group is going to suggest changing the size of the hole. They've dicked around with almost everything else, it's about all that's left.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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.
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
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)
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
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.
Change the booktype on that DVD+R or +RW disk to DVD-ROM and it's pretty much guaranteed that your drive will be able to read it. Unfortunately booktype setting isn't possible with the -R format so if you have a drive that wont read -R, you're completely out of luck.
You know what I like about standards -- there are so many to choose from.
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.