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Another Format War: DVD -R9 v. +R9
Anonymous Coward writes "Just when we thought the dust settled on the last format war between CD-R's we see a new one brewing with DVD recordable discs. DVD -R9/+R9 will apparently be the next technological slugfest where there are no rewards for second place. With all of these new recording format options made available to the public, how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?"
I think you mean the DVD-/+R format war. And, it'll end the same way. We'll all end up with dual format drives.
Get Ritek DVD-/+Rs. They're the best, most reliable quality discs on the market right now. Amazon has some deals on them right now.
Check it out- it's not so hard.
ideally more choice==more competition==lower prices and most drives tend to read/write all the standards
A million different labels? There's two (some places may still have -RAM, but that was never a serous contender): -R and +R, each of those has a rewritable RW version but it's the same format. Consumer DVD players play both (yes some may choke or one or the other but that's how it goes with any consumer product) and dual format burners are no more expensive than single. Buy a dual format burner and whichever good media is cheapest (which is usually -R), there's no reason to wait.
"With all of these new recording format options made available to the public, how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?"
Simple, don't go for compatibility, go with whatever you need ost between speed or capacity.
Optical media are awfull when it comes to compatibility, at this point it is even a lost cause, there are already too much format. Each OS dealing with each format somewhat differently (ex.: session made ISO9660 after a session made HFS won't show in Windows) make the compatibility problem even worse.
For compatibility I go thumbdrive, USB key, however you wanna call them, these are marvelous, they work cross-platform and very well.
some places may still have -RAM, but that was never a serous contender
DVD-RAM isn't like the others. Its random access media, like a really big floppy disk. You can partition them, and use them like slow hard drives. I'm
At least, that's what I've found. My drive will do 8X +R's and 4X -R's, but the -R DVD Video tend to play better in older players. This is a concern for me because I help produce DVD's of various productions at the school.
When I need to backup some data however, I reach for the +R pack...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
DVD Industry Insider Report - August 20, 2004
Posted Friday, August 20 2004, by clint
DVD Industry Insider Report - August 20, 2004
The Scoop on Emerging DVD-R9 / DVD+R9 Hardware, Technologies and Standards
Recently we were asked why we didn't get more excited about the hardware that will deliver 8.5GB single-side writing capabilities to DVD.
Maybe we were a little negligent because the engineers at Philips, Pioneer and Matsushita have done a great job of proving the technology. But only a few firms (such as NEC, Toshiba and Matsushita) produce the laser diodes which are bought by the true burner manufacturers that are then bought by the PC manufacturers and branded product producers. After they are all done, you can buy the new burner, produce your great DVDs and send copies to friends & family...
[DiscLayers]Compared to the present DVD+/-R media you use (see image at right) the new dual-layer discs are a beautiful work of art and technology.
The media chemists and scientists deserve a tremendous amount of credit for developing the two dye layers and special UV adhesive that bond the two breath-thin resin layers. Moving those specifications onto the high-speed media production line demands a lot of quality production attention. During the early stages only the name brand media manufacturers will have the equipment and talent necessary so you don't produce more coasters.
Dual Standards, Dual-Layer
Because neither side has yet to blink, there will still be two different versions of DVD-R9 media (+/-). By the time you read this the DVD+R9 media spec will be a matter of record. The DVD-R9 specs will still be making their way through committee and DVD Forum approval.
One format won't be better than the other (unless you ask someone deeply committed to one camp or the other). However, it is a lot easier for two companies to work on a common goal and have six others agree than have multiple camps reach agreement and then get the coliseum of interested parties to agree.
All Philips and MKM (Mitsubishi Kagaku Media)/Verbatim had to do is develop the hardware/media technologies, make certain it could be inexpensively and reliably produced and the +RW Alliance was off to the races. Most of the rest of the members don't care which way the wind blows...as long as it blows.
On the other hand, Pioneer, Toshiba and Matsushita/Panasonic (two of the three don't play well together) had to hammer out their differences, go through a series of different working group studies and get the 200+ members of the DVD Forum to agree.
Dictatorships just seem to reach consensus faster than democracies!
Despite the fact that there are differences (incompatibilities) between the two approaches there are some similarities.
Both have two thin substrates joined by specially designed UV bonding materials. When the laser is through writing to the first layer, it increases power slightly and begins writing to the second layer. When you are playing the dual-layer DVDR9 disc (+ or -) you'll have to look hard to notice the switch over from one layer to the other.
The result is a full 8.5GB or 4 hours of DVD-quality (16 hours of VHS -quality) video. Some manufacturers may refer to the capacity of 4 hours of SP and 16 hours of EP so make certain you understand the playback quality you want before you begin writing your write-once discs.
The other big similarity is that the DVD specification requires that players and drives read dual-layer discs. If you encounter one that will read "standard" +/- discs but won't read DVD+/-R9 media it means the manufacturer had a design flaw which they should correct at no charge.
DVD+R9
Cross-section of a dual-layer DVD+R disc
The big hurdle was to keep the new write-once discs compatible with existing player standards.
MKM was able to deliver compatibility by designing media that uses a thin layer silver-alloy as a reflector in the upper layer. This has produced reflec
The DVD+ format is better because it supports absolute accurate positioning of the sector to be written. DVD- isn't accurate to a single sector.
:(
That means a DVD+RW can be written to without gaps, just like you can write to a floppy or HD with accuracy in the written sector/without gaps.
And this in turn means that only DVD+RW supports Mount Rainier (in the future). Mount Rainier is hardware assisted packet writing:
- The most important thing is that you can use your DVD+MRW (Mount Rainier Rewritable) as a floppy disk/Hard drive. You drag and drop, delete, write something else etc. Just like a storage device is supposed to be used, none of this "burning" crap. MR has extra fault tolerance too.
- Standard OS drivers for all MR drives, they all behave the same.
- Formatting in the background by the firmware, the RW can be written to after about 1 minute, you don't have to wait for the whole DVD to finish formatting to start using it.
Only problem is, there are no fully compliant Mount Rainier DVD+MRW drives yet
The manufacturers are now scampering to get to 16x speed first. After the makers all achieve 16x then we'll get get other differentiating features in the drives, like MR.
The only advantage you get with +RW at the moment is that OTHER packet writing methods (like Nero InCD) also benefit from the exact laser positioning. You don't get Some of the other MRW stuff like background formatting.
I'm waiting with buying a DVD drive until there's an +MRW. You can also recognize compliant drives with the Philips "Easy Write" logo.
P.S. the DVD-R and -RW camp are the ones that do whatever the movie industry wants. The computer manufacturers split from that group because they wanted better features like absolute write-positioning and came up with +RW.
- -- Truth addict for life.
That said, I am frustrated by the constant news about Blu-Ray this and HD-DVD that, with no products available here yet in the US.
There is only one channel of HDTV in my area and not even one I watch. Start pressing HD discs of some sort already! I have had an 8 foot projection (Quad XGA no less) system for three years now, and only current generation DVD (which admittedly looks DAMN good when pumped out of a Radeon 9800) to watch on it. I'm ready for the full Theater experience!
Letter To Iran
Out of the hundreds of DVD's I've burned, I've had very few (maybe 2-3) coasters. How is that mediocre?
You're close but not quite. The cost of development/marketing is insignificant compared to the benefit they can reap. These companies want to monopolize the format. They want everyone paying them royalty for every DVD produced.
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
A dual layer dual format NEC is only $68 for an 8x or $87 for a 16x.
My NEC was in the low $90's when I got it last fall.
Uhm...many (most?) (all?) of your examples of free and open standards are patented and licensed. Firewire, for example, is patented by Apple, and they charge a license fee to manufacture Firewire chipsets.
I think that I would argue that the best analogy you make is the VCR analogy. Computer graphics cards end up working in all PCs (yes, some incidents aside), automobiles all use the same fuel (yes, diesel aside), and I'm not sure the other ones are appropriate comparisons either.
Anyways, Beta was a superior technology, but it was not a superior format overall due to cost and licensing issues. There's a lot more to consider than just the technology. In the case of single-layer DVD, it is arguable that the superior compatibility and low costs of DVD-R media is what makes it the best. Those two things alone compell me to not care about the technological differences between - and +.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
Here's a GREAT article on the subject that I found a few months back with a lot of technical details on the differences between the two formats:
http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/113
Interestingly, although a number of people have noted that DVD-R seems to be more "compatible" overall with the majority of readers/players out there, my experience has been that my old ThinkPad 2nd-generation 2x DVD drive (Toshiba) reads DVD+Rs without a lick of trouble, whereas several different DVD-R discs that I've tried in it skip horribly and give me read errors. And this drive was manufactured before either standard was drafted! The especially funny part is that Toshiba was in bed with Pioneer drafting DVD-R (whereas Sony/Philips is the duo that brought us +R) and yet it can't even read the stuff.
-- Nathan
I have never had a coaster on my NEC (generic label) 4X DVD+R(W) burner and have burned approx 500 DVDs with it.
This is using soley Verbatim media.
Unless things have changed, last I looked into brand-x vs brand-y with cd-r's it turned out that all the different lables (with a couple of exceptions) just bought from wichever factory gave them the best deal that month for thier sales volume and slaped thier lable on it. If it hasn't changed then what was brand-x this month could be the exact same discs brand-y is selling next month. I usually just buy the cheapest at the speed I want and have rarely burned a coaster because the discs themselves were bad when bought.
What used to be true a couple years ago was that if your burner didn't work well with some batches try looking at the color of the record side, this was more likely important as there are different dyes and reflective coatings in use, though most modern burners shouldn't care.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
my friend works for Verbatim and says they no longer manufacture ANY of their own media...it's ALL relabelled from another manufacturer...I asked what he thought about Ritek media and he said "Well, we buy it..."
worth investigating...
"No, they're mediocre. You can get much better quality if you're willing to pay for it."
Absolutely correct. Procuring top quality CDR/DVDR optical media is a black art. The best CD-R, DVD+R and DVD-R optical media you can get is from Taiyo Yuden and disturbingly expensive. The best +Rw IMO is Ricoh. The best +R9 is yet to be seen. Ritek is still decent though, and often a very comfortable compromise between quality and expense. My preferred cost/quality compromise for +R would be Mitsubishi Chemicals DVD+R. I rarely buy -R, now so when I do purchase, I get the best.
(And of course 'the best' changes from burner to burner. Some discs like one brand more than others. Go read reviews on CDFreaks.com and see for yourself how many cheap Lite-on burners will choke on Taiyo Yuden discs. I have both a Plextor PX-708A Dual Format DVD burner and PX-W4012A 40x12x40 CDRw myself for burning purposes, and a modded Pioneer 106S DVDROM slot loader for convenience. Still I am waiting for Plextor's dual layer offering and more reviews of the Pioneer A08 and NEC 3500A DL burners as well before I invest in DL.)
The trick of course is actually finding products made by the real manufacturers. There are less than 20 companies in the world that actually manufacture DVDR or CDR discs and they are simply branded for whomever's buying them. You will not walk into Worst Buy and find any product labelled Ritek, Ricoh or Taiyo Yuden. Typically for CDR, I get FujiFilm "Made in Japan" and that is T-Y. Be careful to avoid the "Made in Taiwan" as that is Prodisc. (Note: There are many Taiwanese based CDR and DVDR manufacturers like Product, CMC, Ritek, etc. and Made in Taiwan can be any one of these depending on the brand name.) For -R, again FujiFilm boxes (not spindles,) made in Japan. I have not been able to find T-Y +R in my country, so I generally purchase Maxell +R "Made in Japan" which is from Ricoh. For +Rw, I get the boxes (not spindles) "Made in Taiwan." These are actually mislabelled and the discs inside are clearly Made in Japan. It's printed on the individual Jewel Cases and also on the discs themselves.
Where do you get these things? The genuine ones? (I've seen plenty of fake Pioneer DVD-R in Chinatowns for low prices.) I hear lots of good things about ACCA Products, though I have not shopped there myself due to the customs importation annoyances assicated with being in Canada.