DVD-R DVD+R DVD-RW DVD+RW

[Mistress Diana]

I know I saw the answer to this somewhere, but now can not find.

What is the difference between the -R -RW and the +R +RW

And, is one better than the other?

Thanks

Diane

[jsnkc]

-R and -RW are the best and most compatabe recordable DVD's

[orbital517]

I think there are pros and cons to both. For one, -R/RW media is cheaper in most places compared to +R/RW. Both seem to be very compatible with standalone DVD players. Many of the "BIG" names are supporting +R/RW (DVD +R/+RW alliance), such as Microsoft, Dell, Sony, etc.....

[Doggiedaddy]

Mistress Diana,
Don’t believe everything you read!!!! Research for your own decision, consider your needs, both formats have pros and cons. Actually +R/RW seem to be more compatible of the two in modern standalone machines but in the past -R/RW media was much lower in costs, not so much now though. I work with both formats and It seem to me a multi media format such as Sony’s+/-R/RW ,along with others brands, might be the way to go at this time. The best of all worlds until blue laser is public or they sort this all out.

justmy2cents
Dd

Just a start.

http://www.dvdrw.com/
http://www.dvdforum.org/forum.shtml
http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html

Just for fun a little on Blue Laser.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-984520.html

[Treebeard]

Here we go again ......

the debate rages on :blah1:

[Localboy8o8]

which burner can burn DVD-RAM, -R/RW or +R/RW???

seen it at CompUSA in the DVDR area.

[txpharoah]

Looking purely at the facts...

DVD-R was made with video as its primary use.
DVD+R was made with data as its primary use.
True, they can do both, but each was made with a distinct purpose in mind.

But the outcome is DVD-R having higher compatibility than +R on standalone DVD players. Anybody that disagrees with this has not been reading any industry reports in the past year or more since +R discs debuted.

The DVD-R discs are much cheaper than +R when bought online in bulk. You buy your CD-Rs in bulk, why not DVD-Rs too?

The DVD+R and DVD-R discs are about the same price in stores, but still at least twice the price of anything you can get online. This is likely to change in the future, again, as the DVD+R disc physically costs more to produce than the DVD-R discs.

Many video/studio computers come with -R drives in them. You'll see this in the professional video market. Apple, a company known for its superior video applications, has exclusively chosen DVD-R as its supported format. (FYI: I have a PC, but acknowledge the fact that Mac is superior in video and graphics. Sorry, that's the truth in this field of business. Mac is only rivaled by SGI and Sun. PCs are followers, and not leaders, in the video industry.)

Sony is the primary backer of DVD+R drives. They have a bad history in the storage business. Their Beta failed against VHS, Betacam SP is still fighting hard to try to win against S-VHS, the Memory Stick failed against the CompactFlash, and their Optical Drive failed against the CD-R. Is this next? How much do you trust Sony to not give up again? (They are like Sega and video games for you younger ones out there. Great for the short-term but bad on the long-term.) Their release of the DVD-R/+R drive shows some chinks in their armor already. Why make a drive for both when you mainly back the +R format? Something we should know about? Hmm...

Pioneer is the primary backer of DVD-R, and is developer of the technology. So are AOL-Time Warner, JVC, Hitachi, Toshiba and Thomson. They are all well-respected name in the audio and video industries, and not in mere computer fields like the +R forum members.

These two forums even give more validity to the video vs. data argument, as you see data/computer companies siding with +R and video/audio siding with -R formats.

Get what you want, but you'll find most professional users in the video industry will tell you that the DVD-R drive is the best quality and provides the best results, at least at the moment, but we do not see this likely to change anywhere in the near future.

The +RW discs were more compatible than the -RW discs, but nobody really cares since those discs get the least amount of use on the burners. Most of us only have a few of them at most, with 99% of burning being on the recordable discs and not the re-recordable or re-writable ones.

....and those are the facts.

I've had a burner since the Pioneer 103 came out in early 2001, and it cost well over $1K. I was on a waiting list even. I watched the market right up until when I bought my last drive a few months ago, and continue to watch it today. So I'm not just making any of this up.

Now my opinion. DVD-R. Without a doubt, especially for video work. And get the Pioneer A05/105 4x drive (or the cheaper Cendyne release) for about $175-200 when it goes on sale somewhere. Got mine at OfficeMax.

I have no real opinion on the Sony -R/+R drive, but I will say that I sure see a lot of posts with people complaining or tinkering with firmware to get discs to work properly.

Only for data-only usage would I suggest a DVD+R drive, and in fact, I may get one with a good stock of DVD+RW discs in the next six months. For data only though, and I'll buy a box full of discs, because I honestly think the format won't exist for very long. My video will always be -R until the next big format comes out, the HD-bluelaser-ultraspecial-whatever.

[orbital517]

That was a great post TXpharoah (sp?), but don't forget that Dell and Microsoft are both behind the +R/RW format. And both are VERY respected and big in the industry.

[LanEvo7]

Buy what you want. Right now, sale of DVD-R media is about four times the sales of +R. -R is officially supported by any dvd player on the market right now, +R is not. +R is supported by many dvd players unofficially. +R is gaining support in America because Dell and HP, America's two biggest OEM computer manufacturer, support it. Meaning if a you buy a computer with a dvd burner, its going to be +R. In Europe and Asia -R seems to be going -R.

On a sidenote:

Sony is the primary backer of DVD+R drives. They have a bad history in the storage business. Their Beta failed against VHS, Betacam SP is still fighting hard to try to win against S-VHS, the Memory Stick failed against the CompactFlash, and their Optical Drive failed against the CD-R. Is this next? How much do you trust Sony to not give up again? (They are like Sega and video games for you younger ones out there. Great for the short-term but bad on the long-term.) Their release of the DVD-R/+R drive shows some chinks in their armor already. Why make a drive for both when you mainly back the +R format? Something we should know about? Hmm...

LOL, bad history? You should check up on who invented the 1.44 floppy and the cd.
Sony not the primary backer, actually they support both formats. They have many computers that come with -R only drives. The big supporters of +R drives are mostly American companies, with Dell, HP and Microsoft begin the frontrunners.

Many video/studio computers come with -R drives in them. You'll see this in the professional video market. Apple, a company known for its superior video applications, has exclusively chosen DVD-R as its supported format. (FYI: I have a PC, but acknowledge the fact that Mac is superior in video and graphics. Sorry, that's the truth in this field of business. Mac is only rivaled by SGI and Sun. PCs are followers, and not leaders, in the video industry.)

Apple makes computers. They used to be really good in video editing, etc. Now that is not true, PCs are faster and more powerful. There are benchmarks all over the internet proving this.

[-jsl-]

Looking purely at the facts...
But the outcome is DVD-R having higher compatibility than +R on standalone DVD players. Anybody that disagrees with this has not been reading any industry reports in the past year or more since +R discs debuted.

Industry reports such as? Please provide your sources. All serious tests show very similar compatibility for DVD+R and DVD-R.

The DVD-R discs are much cheaper than +R when bought online in bulk. You buy your CD-Rs in bulk, why not DVD-Rs too?

The DVD+R and DVD-R discs are about the same price in stores, but still at least twice the price of anything you can get online. This is likely to change in the future, again, as the DVD+R disc physically costs more to produce than the DVD-R discs.

No they certainly don't cost more to produce. The problem has been that few companies have manufactured DVD+R media and Ricoh/Ritek has had about 80 % of the market share. The competition will get better now since more companies will start producing their own media.

Many video/studio computers come with -R drives in them. You'll see this in the professional video market. Apple, a company known for its superior video applications, has exclusively chosen DVD-R as its supported format. (FYI: I have a PC, but acknowledge the fact that Mac is superior in video and graphics. Sorry, that's the truth in this field of business. Mac is only rivaled by SGI and Sun. PCs are followers, and not leaders, in the video industry.)

The new Mac models are delivered with Sony's dual format writer but with the DVD+R/RW format disabled so far. That might change however: http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/03/06.4.shtml.
Dell and HP/Compaq have a much larger market share than Mac so the OEM computer market will affect DVD+R/RWs market share positively.

Sony is the primary backer of DVD+R drives. They have a bad history in the storage business. Their Beta failed against VHS, Betacam SP is still fighting hard to try to win against S-VHS, the Memory Stick failed against the CompactFlash, and their Optical Drive failed against the CD-R. Is this next? How much do you trust Sony to not give up again? (They are like Sega and video games for you younger ones out there. Great for the short-term but bad on the long-term.) Their release of the DVD-R/+R drive shows some chinks in their armor already. Why make a drive for both when you mainly back the +R format? Something we should know about? Hmm...

Sony is not the primary backer of DVD+R/RW and has never been. Philips, Dell, HP/Compaq and Ricoh are probably the most important companies for the DVD+R/RW format.

Pioneer is the primary backer of DVD-R, and is developer of the technology. So are AOL-Time Warner, JVC, Hitachi, Toshiba and Thomson. They are all well-respected name in the audio and video industries, and not in mere computer fields like the +R forum members.

All members in the DVD forum are not backing the DVD-R/RW format. AOL-Time Warner probably doesn't care about recordable DVD formats at all (it probably wished recordable DVDs didn't exist at all) and Thomson is one of the main members in DVD+RW Alliance so it certainly doesn't back DVD-R/RW...

[boss]

i hate dvd+rw/r. for many reasons. firstly it does'nt even have offical support from the dvd forum. in fact i'm amazed that dvd+r/rw discs are even allowed to carry the dvd logo!
secondly, less players support it. but thats not surprising- it feels like dvd+rw/r's only came out last week. remember all that trouble with early +writers not been compatible with dvd+r because it was'nt even released yet!
thirdly dvd-r/rw has the support of the pirates. all the bootleg dvd's that i've seen so far were all dvd-r's. now if that is'nt a sign that dvd-r will thrash dvd+r then i don't know what is!

[Bob W]

i hate dvd+rw/r. for many reasons. firstly it does'nt even have offical support from the dvd forum. in fact i'm amazed that dvd+r/rw discs are even allowed to carry the dvd logo!
secondly, less players support it. but thats not surprising- it feels like dvd+rw/r's only came out last week. remember all that trouble with early +writers not been compatible with dvd+r because it was'nt even released yet!
thirdly dvd-r/rw has the support of the pirates. all the bootleg dvd's that i've seen so far were all dvd-r's. now if that is'nt a sign that dvd-r will thrash dvd+r then i don't know what is!

I believe cost will determine what prevails. Sort of like VHS and Beta where Beta lost out partly because it just cost more for the recorders and media. I use both however I burn more DVD-R because the price is one half that of DVD+R.

[Gil T Pleasure]

i hate dvd+rw/r. for many reasons. firstly it does'nt even have offical support from the dvd forum. in fact i'm amazed that dvd+r/rw discs are even allowed to carry the dvd logo!

And how do you explain DVD-RAM? It's one two rewritable formats approved by the DVD Forum and yet it cannot be read by most DVD players/DVD-ROMs.

[ghoster]

Here we go again ......

the debate rages on :blah1:

no kidding why start another one of these. just do a search and read the thread of the one all ready started.

[Al-eye]

I have a question, is a dvd-r good for data? I want to get a dvd writer but I want a good one for video and for data. Is that impossible?

[joebleux]

Something I found

Intellikey Labs announced some days ago, the results of their study about DVD recordable/re-writable format compatibility "war". Pioneer hired Intellikey Labs in July 2002 to analyze the performance of the competing recordable DVD formats for Pioneer's planning purposes. Intellikey Labs released their test results on 19th of September, while Pioneer on 20th released much different results making us and probably most users confused about the background of this study...
According to the released Intellikey Labs results, the DVD+R format is the most compatible with 90%, while DVD-R stays behind with 77%! On the DVD re-writable format, the DVD+RW got 72%, while the DVD-RW only 66%.

"Consumers have been struggling with the decision to purchase DVD+RW/+R or DVD-R/-RW recordable devices because of confusion over compatibility. This research arms them with information needed to confidently select a product for sharing their video creations and data backups. To provide the widest possible breadth of DVD compatibility, Intellikey Labs is constantly adding new DVD systems to maintain the world's largest DVD testing facility." said Lars Keffer, Intellikey Labs Managing Director.

One day after, Pioneer released much different test results (from the same study)! This time DVD-R and DVD+R formats had the same compatibility percentages (78%), while DVD+RW was most compatible (63%) than DVD-RW (58%)!

"We agree with Intellikey that consumers have been struggling with the decision to purchase DVD-R/RW or +R/+RW recordable devices because of confusion about the recorded discs' playback compatibility. The nature of recordable DVD technology makes it difficult to draw a clear conclusion about compatibility -- the variation between the two Intellikey test results clearly illustrates this. It is not in the consumer's best interest to present one set of results as conclusive evidence. Pioneer's belief is that the support of the DVD Forum -- the organization that originally brought DVD to market -- will be the overriding factor in the success of any of the recordable DVD formats," said Andy Parsons, senior vice president for the Business Solutions Division of Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc.[/quote]


Like I'd care that my DVD-R disk was backed by the Fourm If it didn't work in my standalone.Check out Doggydaddys link's it's about as unbiased as your gonna get in here.Some people seem to search the boards in the quest to push thier format.

[hde]

txpharoah, your article had some seriously false statements, mostly corrected by jsl .

I got myself a DVD+RW NEC drive, even before Microsoft joined the alliance. Microsoft joining the alliance will be a huge boost.

ps. The plus media costs almost the same, and its getting cheaper.

[frizb]

My experience with DVD-R was crap. I had a Pioneer 104 that produced mostly coasters. I switched to an HP-300i & have yet to produce a coaster & the discs have played on every DVD player I've tried, new & old. The booktype option of DVD-Rom doesn't exist for DVD-R, but it does for DVD+R. I've tried DVDs that I have burned in DVD players that are supposed to support DVD-R, but not DVD+R & guess what? The DVD-R discs would flake out almost instantly if they played at all, but the unsupported DVD+R would play perfectly.

[LanEvo7]

Just buy what you like. Its the same thing. DVD-R media is cheaper than DVD+R media. Whoever disagrees doesn't want to face the facts. Good DVD-R can be found for about $0.70 each. DVD+R is at least $1.50 each.

[dcsos]

SO HAS NO ONE ACTUALLY DEFINED THE DIFFERENCE YET?

There is a difference between the formats that no one has explained yet..
DVD-R must be finalized after burning.

LIKE a CD-R,you don't need to finalize the DVD+R after you burn it unless its a DVD VIDEO..

That is, the only real difference between the formats is you don't need
tofinalize the plus unlessits a DVD

If its a DATA DISC,, you can keep adding data to the DVD+R

to do this with a minus you gotta use flakey dla "drive letter access" software

This is where most people got the idea that DVD+R is better for DATA

It is not better at holding data,,just you need'nt finalize it
(FINALIZING can take up to 10 minutes)

[PhilipL]

Withdrawn

[vric]

Maybe I'm wrong, but first Sony DVD writer was a +RW and now they make DUal Format.. What's next ? -RW only ?

Microsoft Choose the +RW only becose it's a "data oriented" Media which is more "professional", while -RW is more "video oriented" which Microsoft don't care (they don't support DVD Video, they have there own System with Mediaplayer 9 and there Windows Multimedia Center thing)

Anyway, the thing for sure, future Standalone DVD player will play both format, if +RW win, then all our -RW will still work in future (even when Blueray will be out) if -RW win, then +RW will still be playable. But before the fight is over, our DVD-/+RW will probably be dead

oh and Who's sayd we need a winner ? I think we can leave with +RW and -RW

that's my opinion

[PhilipL]

Withdrawn

[spiderman2k1]

DVD-R is better it will work with the blue laser in the HD DVD player's. Also the DRU500AX is junk alot of people have problem's iwht it get your self pioneer

[LanEvo7]

Just know both standards will serve your needs nicely. The "advantages" that + offers is mostly on +RW type discs. Most DVD players will support both as long as your using the right type of media. The majority of the people in the world have DVD-R drives, but +R has gained support from many big name companies. The two that probably have the most effect are Dell and HP. In America Dell and HP sell the most computers(more than 50% of computer sales per year, in America, are by them). So if you buy a pc with a DVD burner from either of them, they kinda "force" you to use +R. Since most people think, dvd is dvd, they buy it. Then they wonder why the -R discs don't work. Just buy whatever you like.

[dcsos]

So its only in VCR REPLACEMENTS that +RW has a different character!
Thanks for straitening me out!

The only time +RW (not applicable to +R) doesn’t require finalising in the traditional sense is when used in set-top recorders with the +VR recording format

[PhilipL]

Withdrawn

[Gil T Pleasure]

DVD-R is better it will work with the blue laser in the HD DVD player's.

When Panasonic came out with their first standalone DVD-RAM recorder, it didn't support DVD-R. And now all of their DVD-RAM recorders support it. This will be the same with BR recorders. If not Sony though highly unlikely, then other BR manufacturers will.

[dcsos]

Has anyone seen results from that new $4000 dual DVD burning PIONEER PERSONSAL VCR REPLACMENT w/120HDD built in?
I know it uses DVD-R but does it do RAM as well?

[Gil T Pleasure]

No, the PRV-LX1 doesn't do DVD-RAM. I wonder how it stacks up against the Casablanca Prestige?