My Mom is a Newbie

[HatchetMan]

She forwarded this to me from work (Arizona Department of Revenue), saying it was on her intranet under "Jargon of the Month". I thought I'd share because it included a link to this site.

What do all those letters mean? Well they are different (and very confusing sometimes) DVD formats. The DVD industry is doing what so many others have before it, and is going through that difficult stage where different standards are competing with each other. Some of you may be old enough to remember the betamax vs. vhs wars or the early days of the CD when there were several formats that you could use to write a CD and not every CD player would read them all. The same process is happening now with the DVD format. The whole subject of which is wide and deep and many books and manuals have been devoted to it already, but in an attempt to put it in a nutshell:

there are six recordable versions of DVD: DVD-R for General, DVD-R for Authoring, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD+R. DVD-R and DVD+R can record data once, like CD-R, whereas DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW can be rewritten thousands of times, like CD-RW. DVD-R was first available in fall 1997. DVD-RAM followed in summer 1998. DVD-RW came out in Japan in December 1999, but was not available in the U.S. until spring 2001. DVD+RW became available in fall 2001. DVD+R was released in mid 2002.

None of the writable formats are fully compatible with each other or even with existing drives and players. In other words, a DVD+R/RW drive can't write a DVD-R or DVD-RW disc, and vice versa (unless it's a combo drive that writes both formats). As time goes by the different formats are becoming more compatible and more intermixed. A player with the DVD Forum's DVD Multi is guaranteed to read DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM discs, and a DVD Multi recorder can record using all three formats. Some new "super combo" drives can record in both plus and dash format, and a few "super multi" drives can record all 5 disc types (DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM).

In addition, not all players and drives can read recorded discs. The basic problem is that recordable discs have different reflectivity than pressed discs (the pre-recorded kind you buy in a store) and not all players have been correctly designed to read them. There are compatibility lists at CustomFlix, DVDMadeEasy, DVDRHelp, HomeMovie.com, Apple, YesVideo.com, and elsewhere that indicate player compatibility with DVD-R and DVD-RW discs.

DVD Demystified provided most of information for this article and is a great source for more detailed information.

[HatchetMan]

I forgot to mention that I gave her my old NEC 1300A and set her up with DVD Shrink, DVD Decrypter, and DVDInfoPro, so she's good to go.