Clerk said DVD-R recorders have more resolution than DVD+R

[ann]

I was quizzing a clerk in a store that sold DVD recorders. He told me that DVD-R recorders had better resolution (more lines) on recordings over one hour than DVD+R. That it somehow had to do with the format. That sounded totally bogus to me, but I couldn't debunk it.

His cheapest recorders were DVD+R, and the one he recommended was a Pioneer that was double the price at least.

[Capmaster]

I was quizzing a clerk in a store that sold DVD recorders. He told me that DVD-R recorders had better resolution (more lines) on recordings over one hour than DVD+R. That it somehow had to do with the format. That sounded totally bogus to me, but I couldn't debunk it.

His cheapest recorders were DVD+R, and the one he recommended was a Pioneer that was double the price at least.

There ya go. He was trying to sell you the more $ unit.

DVD-R holds about 100MB more than DVD+R, but it's insignificant in the scheme of things. This guy probably remembered reading that off a DVD-R recorder box and exaggerated it to make a sale. But "more lines"?

[ann]

He claimed to have been on a course, and had learned this fact there. I was vocally dubious. I couldn't fathom that it could be true.

And no, he didn't make a sale. I already had a Philips DVDR70. I was just trying to make up my mind if I should return it or keep it. I just didn't tell him right away, to see what he'd say about the different recorders.

It works fine except for being a bit sensitive to a signal that isn't perfect.

[BJ_M]

tell the clerk he is an idiot

[ann]

Would have been my pleasure, except it's not smart. I derive a lot more satisfaction from the clerks realizing without me saying something that they're not omniscient. Or that he just made a fool of himself.

Hehe, last time I was in one of those stores, a young clerk came (a bit bored, I think) and announced that we could ask him anything about computers, because he would know the answer. I got this evil look on my face and asked him to repeat what he just said. Another clerk (who I've dealt with before, he's quite knowledgeable) said: Don't do it!

Hehe, the young clerk would have been in for it...

There's no way you can avoid being slaughtered if you give a geek that kind of challenge. After all, none of us would know the answer to ALL kinds of questions. Bluffing is NOT recommended!

[junkmalle]

There may have been a grain of truth in what he said. As recording times get longer there's a tradeoff of resolution. For example, at three hours, one manufacturer might choose to go with 352x480 (less resolution, fewer macro blocks), whereas another might choose 704x480 (higher resolution, more macroblocks). It might just have happened that the smaller frame size coincided with a DVD+R manufacturer and the higher resolution with DVD-R. Maybe he just generalized that to mean that DVD-R had more resolution at the longer recording times.

Or, as others have speculated, maybe he was just shooting for a higher commission!

[Marvingj]

I have some swamp land in Florida that a Tech from that store, said has Gold on it. I'll sale it to you For a Million dollars. But don't tell anyone you took advantage of me. O.K.!!!! HE-HEHE

[Capmaster]

There may have been a grain of truth in what he said. As recording times get longer there's a tradeoff of resolution. For example, at three hours, one manufacturer might choose to go with 352x480 (less resolution, fewer macro blocks), whereas another might choose 704x480 (higher resolution, more macroblocks). It might just have happened that the smaller frame size coincided with a DVD+R manufacturer and the higher resolution with DVD-R. Maybe he just generalized that to mean that DVD-R had more resolution at the longer recording times.

Or, as others have speculated, maybe he was just shooting for a higher commission!

I think your take is too generous. What's more likely is that it just so happened there was a slight size difference between the two. Now that I've thought about it more, I believe that was a coincidence, and that he was trying to BS his way into a higher commission, not knowing the first thing about either format

Remember that the average employee turnover in these stores is measured in weeks. They don't attract the best and brightest in the field to work minimum wage in retail sales.

[jimmalenko]

It sounds like BS to me ...

[ann]

That store has some good clerks, but not all of them are good. I think he actually believed what he said.

I usually give them a test before I believe what they say. Most fail the test. And it's got nothing to do with a higher commission usually.

However, I believe the main culprit is this: They see a female, and think that they know more about computers than I do. So they fall back to what's natural - they bluff if they don't know the answer.

I can't count how many young men, especially clerks, have tried to bluff me. The smart ones figure me out real quick, and won't answer my questions unless they're 100 % sure they know the answer. They get my respect, and I'll believe what they say. Because, as I said, nobody knows everything...

I was told by a clerk in that same chain, that a particular DVD burner was a DVD+ burner. He was very sure, so I bought some of that media. Turned out he was wrong...

EDIT: and about the reduced frame size: I don't know of any recorders that drops to a reduced frame size when you exceed a length of one hour. Mine drops below full frame at 3 hours, I believe. I've also noticed that the picture is interlaced, for some reason.

[DanaT]

Ann said: ... and about the reduced frame size: I don't know of any recorders that drops to a reduced frame size when you exceed a length of one hour. Mine drops below full frame at 3 hours, I believe. I've also noticed that the picture is interlaced, for some reason.

The Toshiba D-KR2 drops to 352x480 any time the user chooses a video bit rate less than 4.0Mbps (corresponds to 2hrs 19min for a full DVD)

[Cornucopia]

Ann said: ... and about the reduced frame size: I don't know of any recorders that drops to a reduced frame size when you exceed a length of one hour. Mine drops below full frame at 3 hours, I believe. I've also noticed that the picture is interlaced, for some reason.

The Toshiba D-KR2 drops to 352x480 any time the user chooses a video bit rate less than 4.0Mbps (corresponds to 2hrs 19min for a full DVD)

Yes, and being still the full 480 lines, would still be interlaced (if the original wasn't already progressive to begin with). It would only lose interlace when it dropped down to 352x240.

Scott

p.s. I love it when women get give BS artist chauvanists their come-uppance! 8)

[ann]

I admit there's a lot I don't know. But I've had enough of men trying to bluff me.

Got one I would have made business with (local shop), but he's tried to bluff me one too many times, so I go elsewhere. I mean, he didn't know the first thing about routers for broadband use. Then why couldn't he just say so? He keeps insisting he's right, long after everybody who knows a little bit realizes he's full of it.

Sorry, didn't mean to go off like that.

I guess what we all need to do is this:
1) Do our homework before we hit the stores.
2) Non-geeks should find a friendly guru and take him/her to the stores
3) Figure out through use of a guru if there's a clerk that can be trusted (be aware that they sometimes bluff outside their core area of knowledge)

[junkmalle]

and about the reduced frame size: I don't know of any recorders that drops to a reduced frame size when you exceed a length of one hour. Mine drops below full frame at 3 hours, I believe. I've also noticed that the picture is interlaced, for some reason.

I don't know of any that drop below 704x480 until they go over 2 hours. Liteon for instance shows the following:

HQ 1hr 9.5Mpbs MPEG2 720X480 720X576
SP 2hrs 5.1Mpbs MPEG2 720X480 720X576
LP 3hrs 3.3Mpbs MPEG2 352X480 352X576
EP 4hrs 2.5Mpbs MPEG2 352X480 352X576
SLP 6hrs 1.7Mpbs MPEG1 352X240 352X288
SVCD 34mins 2.5Mpbs MPEG2 352X480 352X576
VCD 68mins 1.15Mpbs MPEG1 352X240 352X288

At this page:

http://www.liteonit.com.tw/DC/english/lvw_5002_5006/lvw_5006_2.htm

And there's no difference between + and -.

[JohnnyCNote]

This wasn't at Best Buy, was it?

[Alan69]

There ya go. He was trying to sell you the more $ unit.

DVD-R holds about 100MB more than DVD+R, but it's insignificant in the scheme of things. This guy probably remembered reading that off a DVD-R recorder box and exaggerated it to make a sale. But "more lines"?

Bet so too. *Always* keep in mind that reps for things like this often give away vacations and similar perks for pushing their items and meeting certain levels of sales. Come back next month, and the other cam may have better resolution! Reasoning often has much more to do with what he gets from the sale than what you get, even if it's not money. More common in audio crap but I wouldn't put it past them for camcorders etc as well.



But the high vs low priced cams do beg some thinking on more than just the actual disc space. A good MPEG encoder can create better files than an inferior one, so raw space is not the only factor. Which means at the same space and bitrate, the better camera may produce noticably better files. Not twice better, but it might appear to have half as bad artifacts etc at the same times per disc.. Someone untrained might label half as bad pixelation as being twice the resolution, even if it rarely happens and isn't close to twice the actual resolution in normal operation. People tend to judge video by the worst it gets, and only remember that later, no matter that the two were basically the same the other 119 minutes of the video.

PS The salesperson is still obviously clueless, any notable difference between the cams has nothing to do with the format, that 100 MB format difference isn't it.

Alan

[ckwok1]

He told me that DVD-R recorders had better resolution (more lines) on recordings over one hour than DVD+R. That it somehow had to do with the format.

What he said is not completely wrong but I doubt whether he understand what he had said.

Followings are the resolution of the video recorded using my JVC DR-M10S (PAL) under different recording mode.

DVD-VR (DVD-RAM and DVD-RW)
===========================
Mode  Min. Frame Size VBR(Max) Audio Bit Rate
----  ---- ---------- -------- -----
XP    60   720 X 576  8820     384
SP    120  720 X 576  8760     256
LP    240  480 X 576  4140     256
EP    360  352 X 288  2580     256
FR150 150  720 X 576  6900     256
FR190 190  544 X 576  5340     256
FR195 195  480 X 576  5220     256
FR480 480  352 X 288  2040     128

And

DVD-Video (DVD-RW and DVD-R)
============================
Mode  Min. Frame Size VBR(Max) Audio Bit Rate
----  ---- ---------- -------- -----
XP    60   720 X 576  8820     384
SP    120  720 X 576  8760     256
LP    240  352 X 576  4140     256
EP    360  352 X 288  2580     256
FR190 190  352 X 576  5340     256
FR480 480  352 X 288  2040     128

I don't have a recorder that recorded on DVD+R/RW. Since the disc recorded in DVD+VR format is supposed to be able to play back on standard DVD player after finalizing, I would suppose all recording in DVD+R/RW would use standard DVD resolution only. If this is true, recording in DVD-VR mode using DVD-RW or DVD-RAM can have a higher resolution than recording using DVD+R/RW in the 3 - 4 hours mode.

Note that this is recorder dependent. Other recorder using DVD-RW/RAM may not use the same resolution. And it is not directly depending on the disc type.

[ann]

Mine (DVD+R/RW) has full resolution up to and including 150 minutes. 180 has reduced resolution.

[ann]

I went to another similar store today, and told the clerk what I'd heard from another clerk, and that it was bullshit.

He told me that he'd been to a course arranged by the supplier of DVD-R recorders, and that THEY had told them the resolution on the DVD-R format was better.

So, the clerk told the truth as he knew it.

The supplier was the liar, or the ill informed.

The clerk I talked to today said he'd never told any customers what he'd learned, but he remembered. And after hearing what I had to say, he said he certainly wouldn't tell anyone in the future either. I guess they're not all bad... Though of course, he should have smelled a rat before I told him...

[dmelgar]

Recording resolution has absolutely nothing to do with DVD- vs DVD+. Different recorders use different resolutions independent of + or -.

Generally the people with the least knowledge about anything technology related are store clerks. I can't get over what my father tells me he's been told by clerks. I would never take anything they say as being true.

[handyguy]

Even if it has better resolution, chances are your eyes won't notice.

[ann]

I did some tests with mine at smaller resolution. I did see the difference, even on a small screen.