DVD-R and DVD+R

[drew22to375]

Is there a difference between the two? This site has the same description for both types. Is one better or burn faster than the other..

[Throb1231]

DVD-R and DVD-RW
DVD-R/W was the first DVD recording format released that was compatible with standalone DVD Players.
DVD-R is a non-rewriteable format and it is compatible with about 88% of all DVD Players and DVD-ROMs.
DVD-RW is a rewriteable format and it is compatible with about 69% of all DVD Players and DVD-ROMs.
DVD-R/W supports single side 4.7 GB* DVDs(called DVD-5) and double side 9.4 GB* DVDs(called DVD-10).
These formats are supported by DVDForum.

DVD+R and DVD+RW
DVD+R/W has some better features than DVD-R/W such as lossless linking and both CAV and CLV writing.
DVD+R is a non-rewritable format and it is compatible with about 84% of all DVD Players and DVD-ROMs.
DVD+RW is a rewritable format and is compatible with about 70% of all DVD Players and DVD-ROMs.
DVD+R/W supports single side 4.7 GB* DVDs(called DVD-5) and double side 9.4 GB* DVDs(called DVD-10).
These formats are supported by the DVD+RW Alliance.


This was taken from the Glossary located on the left hand side of the site. Hop on over there and do a little reasearch about the + and - R/RW formats. There is a TON of info there and it is very well written.

As for speed, you haveto check on the drive. Generally DVD+R is at a max of 4x. DVD+RW os 2.4x. DVD-R is 4X and DVD-RW is 2x but individual drives and media may vary.

+ format is better for Video while the - format is better for data.

[LanEvo7]

Yes there is a difference. +R is the better format for video but the benifit of it is very insignificant.

[DVDJET]

Have you also considered the cheaper price of th DVD-R's compared to the DVD+R's.

[Cornucopia]

I disagree.

-R/W is better for video. When burning video via computer after (re?)authoring, video will be recorded in CLV via DiscAtOnce. Same for desktop recorders. Both + and - support CLV and DAO. Then it just comes down to compatibility, and because of its Forum support, its seniority, and its lack of confusing "Book value", it has the slight edge in compatibility.

+R/W is probably better for data. This is where CAV, multisession and lossless linking really come into play. 'Course I don't use my DVD's for data backup at the moment anyway, so I couldn't give a rat's a$$ about those capabilities.

Scott

[furball6969]

I don't really see what CAV or CLV recording has to to with compatibility and afaik all writing is done in CLV in both formats. CAV may be advantageous in drive models that have a 6x or higher CAV read speed.

All CLV means is that the discs rotation speed changes throughout the burn as the diameter of the writing track increases.

I do concur that -R is the more compatible format.

I believe that the DVDRhelp.com DVD player compatibility list had the -R's with about 88% and +R's with about 82% compatibility.

[LanEvo7]

In the end, they are both good. The advantages that one has over another are insignificant.

[Cornucopia]

true

[digitalmaster]

The DVD+RW alliance seems determined to make DVD+R\RW the most compatible format for television players. That seems to be their #1 objective, so in the future it may be the better way to go for home players.
http://www.dvdrw.com/

[Xtasy2002]

There is no future for +R since blue laser technology is out and will replace both it and -R. Besides which the +R drives are already out and there is unlikely to be any changes to the specs until they stop selling them. As it stands -R is by far more compatable with all players on the market stand-alone or otherwise, the media is cheaper, and it's got whordes more units installed in people's systems. Go -R if you want the best.

[digitalmaster]

4,000 for a blue laser burner. I do not think anytime soon there will a big mass market for them.

"Sony Corp. will begin selling the world's first Blu-Ray DVD in Japan on April 10th, with a storage capacity of nearly 23 gigabytes of data. The recorder, which Sony plans to sell for a retail list price of about US$3,800, will include a digital satellite tuner that will enable users to record up to two hours of high definition programming on a 12 cm Blu-Ray disc. Sony will begin selling the media at the same time for about $30. Sony's recorder will also retain the ability to play discs that use the existing DVD-R and DVD-RW red-laser formats."
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Mar/gee20030305018936.htm

"The sharp increase in the sales of DVD recording equipment comes at a time when the Plus format is making huge gains in market share for DVD recorders and DVD drives."
"Weber said third-quarter sales figures (latest available) for DVD recorders for home entertainment systems showed Plus format recorders with half of the sales in the United States, three-fourths of the sales in Europe and two-thirds of the sales in the Asian-Pacific market outside of Japan."
http://www.consumerdvreviews.com/news/0103/01102003_01.asp[/b]

[Bulten]

I must say I agree with digitalmaster!

Think about it. First you should read digitalmaster's post about the price and all that. Secondly we have another aspect. DVD-players are almost standard in most homes now. But it has took a while. The price had to go down, so they could be affordable. Also DVD (red laser) is at the moment enough for most home users I believe. On a DVD you can store high quality video with high quality audio, so what is the point of changing format at the moment? You don't see any movies coming out on blue laser yet, well, why should they do taht? There is no market for it, and the players/recorders are way to expensive. I actually think it will take lots of time for blue laser to establish a market, when DVD has nearly become standard. The population needs to be motivated to buy a new desktop player, and I guess that it will be quite hard at the moment... You could give the reason "lots of storage space, you can store many hours of video". Of course this is true, and there is no doubt that this format is better than red laser DVD. Still, it will take time to make switch from their new (most of them bought them not to long ago I guess) DVD-players.

At the moment, stick to DVD+/-R/W, if you want to store video. It surely has a feauture!

[bayaraa_us]

By the way what is "CAV or CLV"?

[thxkid]

disagree about price the DVD+R's are just or in some cases cheaper than -R's case in point
50 pack ritek -R's $67.99
50 pack ritek +R's $79.00

Verbatium +R's are $2 ea while the -R's are over $3

The prices of +R's are coming down while the -R's stay at current level or in a few cases like Ritek have jump in about 25% in price. Matter of fact I have stop buying the Ritek's in the -R's and switched over to meritlines brand, just as good and $17 cheaper per 50.

[thxkid]

Sorry I should have also posted that 3 months ago this was the price of those same ritek's

50 pack -R's $49.50
50 pack +R's $95.00

so as you can see that this same web site I buy from shop4tech the prices has really changed.

[jacknjt]

now the VERBATIM DVD+R price dropped to 1.67/each
compare to verbatim dvd-r over 3.00/each.


dvd+r is the way to go.

[SLK001]

dvd+r is the way to go.

Is this "fact" or again, just your opinion? Anyway, I believe that the 75-80% of the installed base (RE: DVD-R users) would disagree with you.

What you are seeing, is predatory pricing on the DVD+R disks. The DVD+R disk is slightly more difficult to build than the DVD-R, so the prices should be higher. The vendors who "bought into" the DVD+R format now need to force the market in their direction, and this is why you are seeing very high price discounts for this format. If and when they reach their "equilibrium" point, you will suffer the true cost of the disks.

I also wouldn't be surprised to see a federal dumping lawsuit brought against these manufacturers.

But then, this is just my opinion.

[silvergator]

I wouldn't be suprised if -R becomes a thing of the past. Don't get me wrong, I have a 104 myself, but I can't help but notice the overwhelming evidence.

Just go to Best Buy or Cicuit City and see how many -R recorders are being sold. I went to 2 different locations of each store and could only find one recorder capable of recording -R, and that was the Sony DRUAA.

Now where would you all say the majority of the population buys its DVD recorders? I would venture to guess retail outlets.

As far as price goes, +R is coming closer by the minute to matching -R, especially since that latest price hike for media.

It's only a matter of time until Beta Max rivals -R in usage.

[mpb]

I wouldn't be suprised if -R becomes a thing of the past. Don't get me wrong, I have a 104 myself, but I can't help but notice the overwhelming evidence.

Just go to Best Buy or Cicuit City and see how many -R recorders are being sold. I went to 2 different locations of each store and could only find one recorder capable of recording -R, and that was the Sony DRUAA.

Now where would you all say the majority of the population buys its DVD recorders? I would venture to guess retail outlets.

As far as price goes, +R is coming closer by the minute to matching -R, especially since that latest price hike for media.

It's only a matter of time until Beta Max rivals -R in usage.

Yep, you just keep saying that until you start to believe it.

MANY people buy computer hardware from wholesalers, whether online, mail, local, or larger discoutners like Fry's Electronics and the like. Those businesses are selling far more -R drives... particularly Pioneer and clones.

One of my oldest friends, and best man at my wedding, is the purchasing manager for one such company, and it's one many of you have certainly dealt with. He says they go through unbelievable volume in Pioneer 105/A05 drives. The other recorders, + or -, are spittle by comparison. Though, he qualifies, when the Sony DRU500(x) drives are available, and always allocated, they sell through quickly. The market for dual standard writers appears healthy.

What I see at the local Fry's and what you can find at websites like esbuy.com and staples.com corroborates this.

Add to that the Pioneer drive being present in all Macintoshes that have DVD writers at all, all Sony Vaio 2002 and 2003 models, and even a lot of laptops... I mean, the Macs alone are a huge installed base. Laugh at the lack of Macs on business desktops if you will, but the PCs in such places don't tend to have DVD writers, and every college campus in America is INFESTED with those damned Apples, and they DO tend to have DVD writers. It's an easy decision for the students when they get a $1500 student loan bump from the federal government as long as they buy a computer with it. Guess what costs almost exactly that much? Why, an Apple iBook with Superdrive! Or a home iMac with Superdrive! And the Superdrive was once the Pioneer 103, then the 104, and is now (in the newest units) the 105.

Pure +R drives are really only showing up in HP/Compaq machines and Philips' home recorders.

Oh, and DVD-R is the standard, approved by the forum, and any drive that wants to claim that it supports DVDR's has to read that type. No such requirement exists for +R.

All that being said, it's abundantly clear that modern players are being released that can play both types, and with the option of dual-standard writers, choosing + or - is really up to personal preference more than anything else.

Me, I took my HP200i back to the store as fast as I could manage back in mid-2002, bought the Pioneer 104, upgraded to 105, and never looked back. Near-perfect operation this entire time, and rare is the player that can't play my DVDs. As always, your mileage may vary.

Oh, and: price hike for media? What, 70 cents for 2x and $1.70 for 4x (DVD-R) isn't cheap enough? Damn, and here I thought I was getting the stuff perfectly cheaply. (Riteks). Sure fooled me.

[-jsl-]

Add to that the Pioneer drive being present in all Macintoshes that have DVD writers at all, all Sony Vaio 2002 and 2003 models, and even a lot of laptops... I mean, the Macs alone are a huge installed base. Laugh at the lack of Macs on business desktops if you will, but the PCs in such places don't tend to have DVD writers, and every college campus in America is INFESTED with those damned Apples, and they DO tend to have DVD writers. It's an easy decision for the students when they get a $1500 student loan bump from the federal government as long as they buy a computer with it. Guess what costs almost exactly that much? Why, an Apple iBook with Superdrive! Or a home iMac with Superdrive! And the Superdrive was once the Pioneer 103, then the 104, and is now (in the newest units) the 105.

Pure +R drives are really only showing up in HP/Compaq machines and Philips' home recorders.

Sony's top models are now shipped with DVD±R/RW drives (both desktops and notebooks) and they will probably ship the mid range models with dual writers too soon. Apple also uses Sony's dual writer in its top model but with the DVD+R/RW format disabled (so far).
HP/Compaq and Dell (both using DVD+R/RW drives) have together about 50 % of the market share in the US. Apple has about 3 % of the market share (see here)...

Most of the new drives that have been announced lately have been "pure" DVD+R/RW drives (from Artec, ASUS, Benq, Optorite, Plextor, Ricoh, Sanyo etc.) and I doubt that all these companies would release DVD+R/RW drives if they didn't sell good.

[LanEvo7]

Hey DVD-R may fade out, it may not. Right now though, the fact is the majority(an overwhelming majority I might add) of the people burning DVDs are using DVD-Rs. Even people with Sony Dual drives primarily use DVD-R for their burning. If all these people are using DVD-Rs, then can't be fading out any time soon because there will be a market for it. As long as people still demand DVD-R discs, there will be suppliers willing to supply them. There is no debating DVD-Rs are cheaper than DVD+Rs. The prices are dropping and things might be different in the future, but presently DVD-Rs are cheaper.

[jacknjt]

your wrong
presently dvd+r is cheaper.
go to your local store and check out the prices

[furball6969]

By the way what is "CAV or CLV"?

CAV: Constant Angular Velocity meaning that the disc always spins at the same RPM

CLV: Constant Linear Velocity meaning that the disc spins at a variable speed so that the track being read/written is being read/written at the same data rate or same track distance per second. A disc must spin a fair bit faster at the inner tracks than it does at the outer tracks to achieve this.

[LanEvo7]

your wrong
presently dvd+r is cheaper.
go to your local store and check out the prices

1) We are talking about online ordering. Why would you go to your local store to buy blank DVD discs? Its more expensive and you have to pay local tax. Your money, your choice.

2) DVD-R and DVD+R are the same price at my local store(JandR and Staples).

[VinnySem]

I have a simple solution: get a Sony multi-format burner.

I have the DRX500UL. It burns both -R/RW and +R/RW at 4x, and CD-R at 24x. BestBuy sells branded Verbatim 2x -R media for $40 for 15 ($2.66) apiece, and the same price for a 15 pack spindle of +R. The price differences have stabilized mostly, you can find places that sell one format for more than the other, and another site that sells them in the reverse.

Get the multiformat version and ensure yourself the mose widespread compatibility and that you will almost always find somewhere that has good quality media for a good price.

[LanEvo7]

Who cares. Neither is going anywhere right now. The CURRENT statistics are there are more owners of DVD-R only drives than owners of DVD+R drives. Also DVD-R drives/media is at a lower price than DVD+R drives/media. Don't give me bs about oh, dvd-r or dvd+r is the way to go. Neither has a clear edge regarding compatiblilty. Frankly that little improvement that DVD+R has over DVD-R is so insignificant that it shouldn't even be called an improvement. DVD+R media is going down in price and more people are buying dual format drives. I don't see either winning the race anytime soon. If one were to win the race, most the big name companies would have to band together and say we will no longer support DVD-x.
Everybody is going to have problems because DVD burning is still fairly new. People like to find the best price/quality ratio for media. So they buy all kinds of media and test it. Its not the drives fault if the media is crappy.

[txpharoah]

Consider this...

The DVD+R is MORE LIKELY to fail.

Because it is worse technology? Probably not.
Because it is BACKED BY SONY? Yes.

Sony just sucks at storage technology. That's not just my opinion: its historical fact.

Remember Sony Beta? Yep, lost to VHS.
Remember the Sony Memory Stick? Yep, lost to CompactFlash.
Remember Sony Optical Drives? Yep, lost to CD-R.
My bet is that DVD+R is next.

Yes, these still exist. But high sales or high usage? Not at all. Mainly only Sony still carries them.

I cannot think of a single format that has survived. Sony Betacam SP does not count. It's a small niche market, and still fights against SVHS and DVHS (I know a lot about broadcasting, the major user of SP and SVHS, so save your breath trying to argue).

I'm surprised Sony has managed to survive all these years seeing as how they make bad decisions. They need to just give up on storage, and continue to advance plasma and other display technologies.

You'd think other companies would have learned this by now. The big ones did. How many +R drives are made by the top 10 quality companies? Almost none.

I have BOTH a DVD-R and a DVD+R. The DVD-R is proven to be more compatible, and media is cheaper. Allmediaoutlet.com, esbuy.com, dvd-rwmedia.com, meritline.com, etc, etc, etc. More pop up every month.

More things I want everybody to consider:

1. Best Buy is NOT a computer supply store. I'm sick of people using this as the benchmark reason of why DVD+R is cheaper. Best Buy is a low-end consumer junk store full of half-quality products. Go to a real office supply store, an online supply store or a high-end computer/electronics store if you want to compare prices. Plus Best Buy is known to live in its own world when pricing items. They are always MORE EXPENSIVE on everything than competitors in my area (Texas USA). Yes, they carry more DVD+R blanks. But notice they don't even carry DVD-R drives in most locations. It's like complaining there are no PCs in the Apple Store.

2. Also remember that more PCs sell because they are cheaper. Also consider cheap buyers don't buy DVD-R/+R drives. So Mac really DOES have a large say in the DVD formats, as they tend to ONLY get the bigger bankroll buyers. And Mac users tend to do more video.

My first DVD+R drive died. My friend's DVD+R drive died. Both conveniently after the warranty let up. My Pioneer A03 from May 2001 is still burning strong, and it gets heavy use. New Pioneer 105 couldn't be better. I have doubts about the DVD+R drive lifetime, in addition to other worries.

Those that have DVD+R, enjoy the drives for now. Time will tell. I'm a gambling man. My money's on DVD-R, and for more reasons than the childish "mine's better" or "I got a better deal". Consider all the facts: the companies involved, the technology, the value, the compatibility, and the long-term prices, not just what's on sale this month (ahem, all you "+R now cheaper than last month" people).

I've said enough.

[psychoace]

Remember Sony Beta? Yep, lost to VHS.
Remember the Sony Memory Stick? Yep, lost to CompactFlash.
Remember Sony Optical Drives? Yep, lost to CD-R.
My bet is that DVD+R is next

What about sony mini disc? they have now been around for years and its a leading format for mini audio players. Also sony memory sticks hasn't lost its just wasn't ment to go farther then sony products that is why you think it lost. It is still a big format in sony formats and now soon they are coming out with 1 gig sticks. I say get a sony dru burner though it seems like the safer choice you get 4x burning of both dvd+ and -r you get all the things you need without having to worry about this war. Also since sony is in a way supporting dvd-r by having it supported on the drive does that mean dvd-r will lose also cause sony backs it? The dvd foramts arn't a war people can play nice on both sides I don't see why you people think it has to be one diffinitive format it can be multiple formats damnit and in 5 years anyhow blu ray will take over and the dvd format fight will be moved on to something different. Last do you think a dvd forum will back out after putting so much money into a format? They will not just go "oh we lost we spent billions of dollars on this but we give up you win" no not at all and since its big buisnesses behind these forums the chance of any of them breaking up cause of money lose is highly unlikely.

[jacknjt]

y u saying that???
JUST TO LET YOU KNOW MOST PPL BUY THEIR ELECTRONICS FROM LOCAL ELECTRONIC STORES.

only a few that buy from onlines.

if most local stores dont carry dvd-rw then guest what ppl gona buy?? of course dvd+rw, then +r medias gonna go down and it's going down rite now.

the cheap medias UNBRANDED FROM ONline of course gona be cheaper than BRANDED medias. i bet you your medias wont last as long as the VERBATIM i got from sam and best buy. and definately you gona have about 5% bad disc from the bulk packs.

RAISE your hand ppl if you think best buy is not a good store to buy from.
you saying that best buy carry bad medias??? verbatim, memerex, maxell, and fuji are bad??? then what your idea of good medias???

about the sony products. because their previous inventions were too expensive for consumers. BUT DVD+R IS cheap now.

dvd-r branded medias IS more expensive than BRAND NAME DVD+R MEDIAS.

[LanEvo7]

DVD-R and DVD+R branded media(of the same brand of course) is the same price. I have yet to find a store that sells DVD-R for more expensive than DVD+R media. Best Buy sells them for the same price, staples sells it for the same price, and JandR sells it for the same price. Besides that's pretty bad arguement to go for DVD+R because you ASSUME "no name" or non-retail media is worse than branded media. There are plenty of people that SONY generic DVD-R discs that work perfectly.
Yes, there are a lot more people buying at retail stores, but do you know for sure that online / "true" tech stores don't sell an equal or even more media than retail stores? Think of it this way, the average joe that goes to these retail stores doesn't really buy in bulk or doesn't go often to buy in bulk. There might be less people that buy from online stores, but they buy more. So if the average 6 average joes buy 10 dvds a month and 2 "techies" goes to the online store and buys 50 packs per month, then who really sells more?