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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?"
Buy a drive that supports both formats.
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.
you vote with your dollars, by refusing to by into either format until the company bigwigs kiss and make up their minds.
Seriously, why can't these people work this out once and for all so that we don't have to buy DVD drives that support seven hundred formats?
...how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?
My guess is that they'll buy into whichever format they current use for single-layer discs.
With all of these new recording format options made available to the public, how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?"
If they send me 20 dollars I will tell them the secrets to buying a DVD burner.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
As long as they keep making +/- drives, I really don't care. Most all systems can read from either of them, and has long as you have a +/- drive you can write to either of them.
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
I stick to my millions of unlabled 3 and a half inch floppies.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Ask my grandma then pick the other. She still swears by Betamax.
Easy: stick to what's proven.
Agreed.
In fact I use the tried and true Debian formula when it comes to purchasing new video technology.
That's why I enjoy my video of Dirty Dancing every weekend on betamax.
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
It's hard enough already as it is. I'm still wondering if I should wait for dual layer or just go ahead and buy a single layer writer now. The drives are available now, though not nearly as large of a selection as single layer, especially when it comes to external drives. Dual layer media is currently not readily available retail here in western Canada and reportedly will not be till early next year, and then there will be yet ANOTHER format? What a pain! In contrast, I've had my CD-RW for over 4 years now, it's been the same media and format the whole time. Upgrading CPU's, video cards, memory etc is not such a big deal, but constantly changing media formats for your removable disks is a hassle. A hard drive will work in any machine (even SATA ones have adapters available), but these new DVD types will likely require drives that support them. You can't count on everyone to upgrade their DVD drives every year so you will be able to transfer data to them...
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.
how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?
by being intelligent maybe?
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..."
They're apparently lossy too.
There is no format war. I heard this same story back when DVD+/- R first came out. Guess what? Out of the 7 or 8 dvd playing devices I've ever owned, not ONE of them fails to read either format (including PS2).
Reason being, the big companies want to sell their drives and will almost always make them both + and - compatible.
The reason I say most and not all is because there's always some goon out there creating drives that can only read one format (for whatever reason). These drives never usually sell very well.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
1) CD-R cost more than DVD-R per MB (at least in Canada). Of course, if you use only 2 or 3 CDs a month then I guess you simply don't need DVDs. For someone who use 20 or 30 CDs a month, DVDs are a much better deal.
2) My weekly backup is about 1.8 GB. Using ONE DVD+RW is much simpler than THREE CD-RW.
3) A 8x DVD recorder is FASTER than a 52x CD recorder.
3) There will always be something "better". Will you wait forever ? Who cares if DVDs are obsolete in 5 years. Anyway CDs will become obsolete pretty fast too.
Maybe you don't know this, but most DVD players can read BOTH DVD-R and DVD+R. It's not like the VHS / Betamax war.
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 can partition them, and use them like slow hard drives. I'm..." .. using one as a swap drive right now!
"Derp de derp."
I know /.'ers are expected to comment without RTFA, but crikey, the title of the article includes "R9". That means dual layer, people! (Rounding up the number of gigabytes it will hold -- 4.7 for single layer, 8.5 for dual.) Of the 120-plus postings so far, only a handful address the point.
So far the only dual-layer DVD burners I've seen, and the only dual-layer media I've seen, has been of the +R variety. My Mad Dog Megastor (really a NEC ND-2510A) supports both +R/RW and -R/RW as well as dual-layer +R DL. Of -R DL, the fineprint on the box says "at the time of production, a (-) format Dual Layer standard has not been released".
Format war for +/- R9? I'd say + has won by default, there's no - competition yet.
(As for compatibility, my year-old DVD player plays everything I've thrown at it including 4x +R, 4x -R, 2.4x +RW, 2.4x -RW, and 2.4x +RDL. An older player (several years old) generally recognized the media (one problem with -RW I think) but sometimes had glitchy playback.)
-- Alastair
See Linux DVD+R/W page and search for "Book type".
In my case setting book type to DVD-R for a DVD+R dvd allowed it to play fine in a drive that would not accept plain DVD+R disk.
HP: +
Microsoft: +
Dell: +
Compaq: - . Then got brought by HP. Now +.
Sony: - . Now moved to dual burners.
Apple: - . Now moved to dual burners (though IIRC some things still require - disks).