Best bet for the future of DVD burners?

[KRSESQ]

Which is going to survive the inevitable shakeout?

DVD-RAM?
DVD-RW?
DVD+RW?

Don't wanna be stuck with something I'm not going to be able to buy media for 2 or 3 years from now (anyone remember LS-120's? Good idea, just 5 years too late...glad I got the CD-RW instead!).

Kevin

[KuroNeko]

All three will survive - that is, you will be able to find discs for them for a long time to come. Base your choice on what you need:

- DVD-RAM is basically a PC mass storage format. Great for storing large amounts of data on long-life discs at 9,6 GB. The push of a few companies to get this format into DVD-video area is not expected to be of any importance.

-DVD+R and DVD-R are both aimed at the DVD video market, i.e. making your own video DVDs to be played back on standalone DVD players. Compatibility is in favour of DVD-R now, may or may not improve for DVD+R. The difference is small anyway. My bet here is on DVD-R as it is supported by the official DVD Forum - it is _the official_ DVD R standard, whereas DVD+R is made up by a bunch of rebels that didn't want to pay the licence fee. Notice the absence of the DVD Logo on their disc products.

-DVD-RW and DVD+RW. Aimed at

1. DVD Standalone Recorder format (so you can erase discs again, like tapes). Useless once DVD Recorders with HDs start hitting the market.

2. Also good for testing your DVD Video before burning to R. In that case, +RW is worthless, as compatibility is extremely poor. In either case, this format comes free with your choice of + or - R drive.

3. Computer format. In this case +RW may hold the better cards as Microsoft has decided to embed software for +RW in their next OS. However, with Microsoft still under heavy fire because of their integrating components into the OS, thereby abusing their monopoly to distort competition, and the discontentment of the DVD Forum with this MS decision, this is far from certain. Personally, I never liked the CD-RW format, it proved very unreliable, and I don't trust DVD-RW or +RW either for PC use. If you want mass optical storage, rewritable, DVD-RAM is the only reliable solution IMO, and it offers twice the capacity to boot.

Note that new drives with 4x speed will arrive in the fall, with quite a few new combo drives of DVD-R and DVD-RW _and_ DVD-RAM. And with lower prices too. Also note that many of the cheap +RW drives on offer DO NOT support +R (making them worthless IMO). If you choose the + camp, get the latest (and still more expensive) models.

Neko

[Flying dutchman]

My advise is: Get a DVD+RW burner that supports DVD+R and especially the forthcoming "Mount Rainier" standard.

A big advantage of DVD+RW is, that the disks can be read in a DVD-rom drive even if they're not finalized, so you can keep adding files.

The latest test in issue 11/2002 of the German CT magazine demonstrates that the compatibility of DVD+RW is better than that of DVD-RW (79% against 65% of the tested consumer dvd players would play them). The +R and -R media achieved even better compatibility results; only very few players would reject those.

The compatibility "problem" has 2 causes:

1 - The lower reflectance of the RW disks. Many DVD players erroneously think they are double-layered DVD's. This can sometimes be solved with a firmware upgrade of the dvd player.

2 - The "magic marker". A DVD has a digital identifier that designates the type of disk (DVD-rom, -R, -RW, +R, +RW). The guy who thought this one out must have had a bad day. How can an "old" player know how to handle a disk with a "new" identifier ?

This problem can easily be overcome on DVD+RW burners by using a freeware tweakíng utility that tells the burner to write the "DVD-ROM" identifier onto the disk and thus fool many older DVD players. The testers of the CT magazine could get these disks to work in many older DVD players that would otherwise reject them.

[wkulecz]

% of players rejecting the disks is not so important.

What % actually play the disks glitch free for 30+ minutes of video? That's the problem I had back in October with the DVD-R Pioneer A03 and DVD+RW HP100i.

For DVD-R, 27 of 30 players I tested, or 90%, "played" the disks. Unfortunately only 5 of 30 actually played back glitch free. All 27 seemed to work if you only watched a couple of minutes.

--wally.

[Jerry Jones]

The only doubt I have with the DVD+R and DVD+RW formats is they're not approved formats by the DVD Forum as this Web page clearly explains:

http://www.dvdforum.org/forum.shtml

The DVD Forum - ironically - includes the companies that are backing the DVD+R and DVD+RW formats, but those companies are admittedly marketing a "rogue" format... not guaranteed to be supported by upcoming "DVD Multi" drives...

The "DVD Multi" specification has been released and the DVD+R and the DVD+RW formats are not among the formats that are supported within the specification:

http://www.dvdforum.org/tech-dvdmulti.htm

Still, I would think the new DVD Multi drives would still recognize the DVD+R and the DVD+RW discs.

But aside from compatibility, the disadvantage of the DVD "plus" formats is the cost of the discs.

They're currently way more expensive than DVD-R and DVD-RW.

1. DVD-R (write once): $1.35 each

(Pioneer/Panasonic)

http://www.allmediaoutlet.com/P-DVDR-4.7-GENPR10.html

2. DVD-RW (rewritable): $1.37 each

(Pioneer)

http://www.allmediaoutlet.com/P-DVDRW-4.7PR25.html

3. DVD+RW (rewritable): $5.70

(Philips/HP)

http://store.yahoo.com/meritline/merdv47.html

4. DVD+R (write once): $4.49

(Philips/HP)

http://www.shop4tech.com/cgi-bin/shop/shop.cgi?action=specs&&item=1022790963&&choice=CDR%20%20CDRW%20%20DVDR&&subchoice_1=&&subchoice_2=

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[KuroNeko]

Flying Dutchman,

The tools you mention don't work on all drives and firmwares, and only solve a few of the problem players. Not to mention you have to always keep this in mind and apply this tool. DVD-RW works out of the box. The big problem remains the reflectivity of the RW discs which causes players to ID them as dual layer DVDs. That will not be fixed in current standalone players, it will require people to buy new ones if they care for RW playback. And in that case, the cards are much better for -RW as it is a DVD Forum approved format, whereas +RW is not. Unless you want to be tied to Philips and Sony as standalone players.

Note that you need to use bitsetting tools for +R also, not just +RW! Neither -R or -RW need this.

I find the Mount Rainier format quit unnecessary. It does not do much more than standard UDF software like Nero INCD already supports. Not to mention this is a format that Microsoft helped create. This means it will be most likely limited to Windows because access for opensource and other OS will be restricted, and I can imagine what stability will be like for the first few versions.

-RW can be written to in UDF packet format just like +RW, and does not need to be finalised, at least not on my Pioneer and Toshiba DVD-rom players.

I am a bit personally biased towards Pioneer DVD-R/RW format though. Out of personal experience, out of reasons I cannot reveal because I am under NDA from a big Dutch electronics company , and because the +RW camp promised/hyped a lot of things like better standalone compatibility and backwards +R compatibility. Instead, DVD-R quitely proved to be much better for DVD-video, and folks who bought early +RW drives are now told to buy new ones because firmware upgrade for +R is not possible. I very much dislike this kind of dirty business practice and won't support it.

Cherry on top (sarcasm) : compatibility in new standalone players is quite good for both + and - R discs. Except for Philips standalone players. All brands try to make it as compatible as possible within DVD forum rules. Not so Philips who on purpose blocks the -R/RW formats to force people to get + drives. Sony for instance, supports both and allows the consumer the choice, where Philips only thinks of its own pockets.

With Philips being the main pusher of + technology (Sony licenced -R/RW as well as +R/RW), what kind of support can I expect in the longer future?

I'm quite happy with the performance of my Pioneer drive (both reliable and compatible) and feel comfortable knowing the official DVD Forum format will have certain support for a long time to come.

Just a pity we don't get the prices you mention over here, Jerrold. Cheapest discs are Verbatim, at 6,50 Euro.

Wally, I burned many discs with my Pioneer. They all work on just about every player I tried at work, without _any_ glitching. I used SpruceUp and Spruce Maestro to author them. Note that in the C'T articles Dutchman mentions, they also clearly state the earlier perceived compatibility problems were NOT caused by the discs but by poor (Sonic) DVD authoring software! They claim the new generation of authoring kit has this now licked (although I still have my doubts about Sonic stuff)

SpruceUp is a simple and good piece of sw. It's been abandoned (website down, no more ways to buy it, Apple says they will not make any more Spruce sw for PC, only Mac) so find it on the net, get a crack and start authoring compatible discs!

Neko

[davpen]

Has anyone seen any reports on the compatibility of +R compared to -R?

Although it is a bit too late for me now. I have already ordered a Pioneer A04 and will be picking it up on Friday. I am not too worried about my choice though. I have done my homework and for my purposes the A04 is a pretty safe bet.

The biggest question mark is what authouring software I am going to use. ULead DVD Workshop looks very promising. They also have a fully functional demo which makes it easy to test. From what I have heard Sonic's software is a bit crippled especially in only supporting PCM encoding of audio on their cheaper packages. If anyone has any suggestions or recomendations I would be happy to hear them.


David.

[Brian Ellis]

Neko

That big Dutch company wouldn't happen to be in Eindhoven, would it?

[KuroNeko]

How'd you guess? Was it something I said ?

Neko