DVD-R or DVD+R

[yznf]

All DVD recorders/players I own support both DVD-R and DVD+R. Is there any reason to buy one format over the other and if so, which is the best to use?

Thanks

[Cornucopia]

I would HOPE that by now there would be no difference in player support, but who's to say? YMMV, so I suggest you get which ever is the best QUALITY media (that you can get a hold of).
There is an extremely minor difference in the available sizes (-R/RW is ~7MB larger than +R/RW), but not much else to even mention.

Scott

[yznf]

I would HOPE that by now there would be no difference in player support, but who's to say? YMMV, so I suggest you get which ever is the best QUALITY media (that you can get a hold of).
There is an extremely minor difference in the available sizes (-R/RW is ~7MB larger than +R/RW), but not much else to even mention.

Scott

Thanks for the info Scott!

[jman98]

Scott is correct. I suppose it might be worth mentioning that if you search on this subject on the internet that you can find some websites with long articles from 4-5 years ago that go into gory detail as to why DVD+R is fantastic and DVD-R is pure crap. If you have the patience to get through it, here's an article that's actually from 2003 on the subject.
http://www.myce.com/article/why-dvdrw-is-superior-to-dvd-rw-203/

DVD-R came out first and was the only approved format for a while. It caused a lot of customer confusion when (if I remember correctly) some DVD-R discs were labeled "for general" and others were labeled "for authoring". There was no such confusion about DVD+R.

In truth despite articles like the one I listed, DVD-R has stood the test of time and the hysterical rants like in my link have not proven to have any merit. In practical terms, DVD+R and DVD-R are equally good and any DVD/BluRay player made in recent years really should support both. DVD+R got created in part to get away from what its creators perceived as unnecessary license payments for DVD-R technology. In the early days some burners and DVD players did not support both formats but I really can't think of anything made in the past 4 or 5 years that doesn't fully support both. There was a lot of thought years ago that one format would win and kill off the other, but that never happened. For many years DVD mastering shops were only accepting DVD-R discs for commercial mastering, but now I think just about everybody accepts DVD+R too. This is really no longer necessary unless people have really old DVD players, but some older players refused to touch DVD+R discs unless they were burned to fake the player into thinking it was a DVD-ROM disc. This was called "bitsetting" and you can research it if you are interested but it's completely unnecessary with any modern DVD or BluRay player.

Finally, I want to offer my opinion that when it comes to DL (dual layer) and RW (re-writable) media that DVD+R DL and DVD+RW have superior implementations over their -R equivalents. There is just no denying that. DVD-R DL and DVD-RW were both kind of force fitted onto DVD-R technology whereas DVD+R DL and DVD+RW were a more seamless branch from existing DVD+R technology. DVD-R DL and DVD-RW discs cost a lot more than their +R equivalents and may have somewhat lesser compatibility with DVD and BluRay players.

[fritzi93]

I think most members here would agree that -R and +R single-layer write-once discs are functionally equivalent.

But as jman says, for double-layer discs, no question +R DL is better.

To give just one example in regard to double-layer discs, with +R DL you have some flexibility in where to set the layer break for DVD-Video. With -R DL, you must fill one layer before the layer change. This, obviously, can produce a noticeable pause when viewing DVD-Video. The -R DL discs are more expensive anyway (if you can find them) because they're in less demand.

As to -RW, I haven't used any in years, the few I bought didn't last long, for whatever reason. For rewritable DVDs, I use +RW only.

Good luck.