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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.
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.
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..."
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
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.
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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.
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