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Data Storage Media Hardware

DVD-RW Incompatibilities? 254

Posted by CowboyNeal from the hardware-haps dept.
rekkanoryo writes "It seems that there is some trouble brewing in the DVD-RW camps. According to CNET, new, faster 4x DVD-RW media may not be compatible with older DVD-RW drives. The DVD+RW camp is confident this won't be a problem for them, but the -RW backers think it will sometime in the future when even faster media starts to appear. Also mentioned is a dual-layer DVD+R capable of holding up to 8.5 GB of data per disc and the problem with really old DVD+RW drives not being upgradable to support write-once DVD+R media."
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DVD-RW Incompatibilities? More

DVD-RW Incompatibilities?

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  • Standards? Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:24PM (#8604495) Homepage Journal
    Why isn't there a standard format that can be adhered to so that a DVD RW here is a DVD RW there?

    If standards existed, a company that built an incompatible extension into their technology wouldn't be able to legitimately call their device a DVD RW.

    • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:27PM (#8604524)
      "Why isn't there a standard format that can be adhered to so that a DVD RW here is a DVD RW there?"

      Who gets to set the standards? There are several groups, each of which think that their system is the best. Why should all but one group be excluded? Why not just let the market decide what the 'standard' is?

      • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Pulse_Instance ( 698417 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:29PM (#8604547)
        Because if there are standards everyone follows we don't have a VHS vs. BETA fight again where half the people get screwed big time.

        • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by shepd ( 155729 ) <slashdot.org@gmail.COMMAcom minus punct> on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:42PM (#8604671) Homepage Journal
          The difference is:

          A DVD+ and DVD- disc will read in virtually any drive, period. Unlike a Beta tape, which will never read in a VHS VCR.

          More importantly, at the time of the format wars, a VCR cost $400, which, translated to today's dollars, probably feels like buying an $800 item right now. Also, the VCR was expected to last a decade back then (as a matter of fact, I still have a 1984 Zenith VCR - working). DVD burner for your computer is expected to last 2, maybe 3 years prior to replacement and costs $150.

          The absolute worst you can be screwed is:

          - Lack of media being produced in your format (You lose $150 on the drive)
          - Having media left over when your drive dies that will not work in burners now being sold (You lose... hmmm... in my case $50)

          The worst you could be screwed during VHS vs. Beta format wars was:

          - Entire tape collection obsoleted (if you bought pre-recorded tapes at the time, minimum $100, likely many thousands of dollars if you were an enthusiast)
          - Tape collection cannot be recovered into other format (assuming all Beta/VHS VCRs dropped off the face of the planet) (priceless, if you managed to tape something that will never be broadcast again, or if you had a Beta/VHS handycam)
          - Lack of media being produced in your format ($400 then, $800 now for a new drive)
          - Having media left over when your drive dies that will not work in burners now being sold ($50, maybe...)

          We're talking a lot of difference in losses here. $200 is manageable. Thousands of dollars, and a loss of priceless work isn't.

          • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:5, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:54PM (#8604766)
            priceless, if you managed to tape something that will never be broadcast again, or if you had a Beta/VHS handycam)

            R-Kelley w/ a handycam and an underage hooker? Priceless.
            • For DVDs and other hotbeds of market confusion, like memory cards:
              Some site, say, ExtremeTech, to put up a crosstab web page, along the lines of:
              Model|Standard_a|Standard_b|...|Standard_n
              my_junk...X.......

              So that it is fairly obvious who works with what.
              Then, the market can start hoisting fingers at vendors that just can't quite figure out how to sell something without a string attached.
              I can't believe this is a terribly new idea.
              Consumer Reports probably does this...
          • A DVD+ and DVD- disc will read in virtually any drive, period. Unlike a Beta tape, which will never read in a VHS VCR.

            Care to explain why my 2 year old DVD player and 2 year old DVD-Rom only reads DVD-RW and not the + version? Your statement above is simply not true.

            • Hey, look everybody! A single datapoint! (Score:4, Informative)

              by raygundan ( 16760 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @07:55PM (#8605225) Homepage
              Seriously, man-- you're the exception, not the rule. + and - both read in the vast majority of players. The parent poster didn't claim "all," he claimed "virtually any." Which you are unlucky enough to not be part of.

              To add one more datapoint to this overwhelmingly thorough survey-- I have 3 old DVD players that both read both formats, and one old hitachi DVD-ROM that won't read any of them. And one IBM laptop that didn't used to, but now does after a firmware upgrade.

            • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:5, Informative)

              by swv3752 ( 187722 ) <{moc.liamtoh} {ta} {2573vws}> on Thursday March 18, 2004 @07:59PM (#8605257) Homepage Journal
              So you are one of the unlucky 15% thhat can not read DVD+R/W. Fortunately, you are not one of the unlucky 7% that can not read DVD-R/W.

              Depending on your sources the numbers will be slightly different and the older a DVD drive the more likely it will not read a given media. Still, the grandparent is not contradictory with the the parent post.

              I would also advise Sandman to try different media. Different brands use differnt dyes and reflective layers. This results in different compatibility matrices. I have seen where one brand would not play on a JVC deck but a diferent brand would mostly play. Sometimes the menu would lock but once the movie started, it would play fine.

              • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)

                by karnal ( 22275 )
                Speaking of Media incompatibility, DVD media appears to be as compatibility-fragile as CDR's were way back when.

                There are threads all over (dvdinfo.com?) that state media compatibility for burning, as well as for reliable storage. I wish for two things though:

                1. DVD media all has a baseline "quality", meaning every piece of media you could buy (even cheaper ones) would be reliably written and read. Cheap CDR's do that now, and yes, you gamble with longevity, but really, do any of us typically expect a

            • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)

              by shepd ( 155729 )
              >Care to explain why my 2 year old DVD player and 2 year old DVD-Rom only reads DVD-RW and not the + version?

              You have really, really, really bad luck or are way too cheap? :-)

            • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:5, Informative)

              by Destoo ( 530123 ) <destoo@gmail. c o m> on Thursday March 18, 2004 @11:51PM (#8606869) Homepage Journal
              Just take a look at bitsetting. It addresses exactly that problem.

              Simple explanation here [bobhudson.com]

              Basically, DVD-RW format did not exist when your player was built. Your player is probably able to read the disk but won't because it doesn't recognize the format. You need to trick it into thihking the disk is a plain DVD-Rom, and it should read it. (and that's what bitsetting does)

      • Why not let the market decide (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:29PM (#8604555)
        Because the market will decide to hold off on buying any DVD RW drives until one side has significant marketshare.

        So it is actually up to the PC vendors to decide, and they will go with the cheaper, less useful system than the expensive feature filled one.

        • Re:Why not let the market decide (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ajs318 ( 655362 ) <sd_resp2@earthsh ... minus herbivore> on Friday March 19, 2004 @05:29AM (#8608073)
          Actually it's likely not to be PC manufacturers, but consumer electronics manufacturers, who decide on the eventual standard. PCs will follow what the consumer market does.

          DVD Video recorders -- i.e., stand alone units that plug into TV sets -- seem to use the "plus" format, probably because they use Philips internals. At the moment, the "minus" discs are a few p cheaper per unit; it's also very possible that someone could bring out a new chipset based on DVD-RW. However, I think it most probable that future standalone units will go for all-disc compatibility ..... a TV recorder need not exceed 1* read/write speed anyway, so high speed is a lower priority than all-disc compatibility. A Sun-reading telly addict is not going to know the difference between +RW and -RW; he is only bothered that the recordable discs he bought at the pound store don't work in his new DVD recorder that he paid full price for.

          My Philips DVD+RW recorder <PLUG>Brilliant picture quality! Two SCARTs and front A/V/SV sockets!</PLUG> has an option to "attempt to make disc compatible with older players", so presumably this is setting the reported media type.

          All this does mean that drives which aren't all-disc-compatible may be useless a few years down the line; but, by then, the market will have stabilised {all those old VCRs will be replaced with DVD recorders} and newer drives will be cheaper.

      • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:31PM (#8604567)
        Because having four or five standards for effectively the same thing floating in the marketplace makes a mess. Consumers start to think the technology is just plain broken when they try to insert a type A disc into a type B reader and it doesn't work.

        When we start having to say "D-V-D-dash-R-W" and "D-V-D-plus-R-W" and now start to get word that new larger-capacity discs of the same physical size are going to come out, the market starts to get really confused.
        • So answer the question. Why gets to decide what the standard is and why should one group get total control over the market?

          • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by wfberg ( 24378 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:49PM (#8604734)
            So answer the question. Why gets to decide what the standard is and why should one group get total control over the market?

            Some reasons, historically abound;
            1. They're a monopoly already
            2. They're the ones allowing porn on the format
            3. They're the ones with the patents
            4. They're everybody, and everybody can join in

            1) is the ITU way
            2) is the VHS way
            3) is the CD way (philips/sony)
            4) is the ISO way

            But you're missing the real point; obviously if everybody involved in making higer-capacity-than-CD optical media could just come up with a single, future-proof standard, there would be no confusion among consumers, and everybody would be competing on a level playing field. Standards aren't about excluding competitors - at least, not by definition. That only happens when smart asses throw in a lot of patents to rake in the money.

            So that would be

            5. People get fed up with factions, the peace pipe is smoked, and a single standard is decided upon to make sure the technology works and SELLS.

            that would be

            5) the way of the screw.

            The way things are going with DVD, the Chinese stand a good chance to come up with a better, less encumbered, and more standardized format. And not because they're communists, but because they're cheap asses who don't want to spring for the MPEG4/ACC/CSS/Dolby/etc. patents.
        • <hat type=tinfoil>
          So if the marketplace is confused to buy a DVD burner that would allow them to make legimate backup copies of their DVDs, it seems that the only group who would benefit from this is the MPAA since there would be less 'piracy'... hmmmm... It all becomes clear now why we have a format war.
          </hat>

      • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Bombcar ( 16057 ) <racbmob&bombcar,com> on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:47PM (#8604723) Homepage Journal
        The best thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from! :)

      • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by pclminion ( 145572 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:59PM (#8604797)
        Why not just let the market decide what the 'standard' is?

        Look around. See anybody in the "market" deciding? The market is too scared to buy any DVD writer, precisely because there's no standard.

        Having competing manufacturers in the marketplace is a good thing. Having competing "standards" in the marketplace is a bad thing. This isn't about excluding any group. It's about excluding all the superfluous technologies.

        • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by iamhassi ( 659463 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @07:27PM (#8604980) Journal
          "Look around. See anybody in the "market" deciding? The market is too scared to buy any DVD writer, precisely because there's no standard. "

          since when? any walmart, compusa, office depot, staples, etc now cares drives that record in BOTH formats. That's right, you heard me, + and -. And those drives are usually the same price as the + only or the - only drives if not cheaper. Why? Because that's what the public is buying! We got fed up with the - only and the + only and refused to buy, so now that their are drives that do both they're actually selling well.

          Case in point: I bought a drive that does +R and -R at 8x for $100 shipped recently. No, not with rebates or coupons or other crap, that's regular price.

          Imagine what would have happened if they would have made machines that played Beta and VHS AND it was cheaper than the beta only or VHS only machines? I'd imagine we'd still have Beta around.

      • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:4, Funny)

        by funny-jack ( 741994 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @07:08PM (#8604853) Homepage
        Why not just let the market decide what the 'standard' is?

        Yes, anyone can clearly see, that plan has worked excellently for cell phones.

      • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by G-funk ( 22712 ) <josh@gfunk007.com> on Thursday March 18, 2004 @08:09PM (#8605328) Homepage Journal
        Who gets to set the standards?

        ISO. That's what they're for.

    • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:45PM (#8604703)
      Why isn't there a standard format that can be adhered to so that a DVD RW here is a DVD RW there?

      You can't get five people to agree on where to go for lunch; what makes you think it's easy for them to agree on technical issues, particularly when their companies have developed technology, products, patents, or markets at stake?

      Windows is de facto "standard" for PC software. Why don't you just run that instead of Linux? How come those Linux guys don't get together and just define one standard distro instead of having a zillion of them?

      Technology is developed before it is standardized. You don't just create paper documents of wishful thinking and then wait for someone to implement it. You start with proposals based on what is possible and usually what exists. After that, it's politics, not engineering.

    • You mean, it's NOT always good to have "competing standards" for "freedom of choice?"

      Welcome to the real world, Slashdot.

    • Re:Standards? Anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by xigxag ( 167441 )
      I know it's too much to expect anyone to read the article, but the problem here is not an absence of "standards." There is a standard DVD-R format, set by the DVD Forum. (Yes, there is also a competing DVD+RW format, but that has nothing to do with the problem at hand.) However, that standard format was not designed for higher speed technology. So the same standard-setting DVD Forum is putting their blessing on a higher speed 4x DVD-R which turns out not to be 100% backwards compatible with the old dri
    • Well... You know the old saying: The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from ;-)

  • Rushed to market? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:25PM (#8604511)
    It seems like consumer DVD writing technology is coming out a bit too fast now. The format is fracturing more than it's uniting...

    Whatever happened to the standard bodies who are supposed to prevent this?

  • *GASP* (Score:4, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:26PM (#8604520) Homepage Journal
    My valuable pr0n collection! Now I have to start all over again!

  • Crap! (Score:3, Informative)

    by dealsites ( 746817 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:28PM (#8604530) Homepage
    I just bought a Lite-On LDW-411S dual format drive. I hope I'm not affected by this. I wish I had read the article before hand, but as of now I haven't had any problems with -R, +R, or +RW discs yet.

    --
    For great deals on DVD burners and other electronics, click here! [dealsites.net]
    • I just got a lite-on 811 and wish I had gone about doing better research first, the lite-ons are crappy with -r media.

  • Can someone please sort this mess ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mesaeus ( 692570 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:28PM (#8604541)
    This is the exact reason why I still haven't bought a dvd writer. +RW, +R, RAM, -RW, -R... a gazillion formats and now we have speed incompatibilities AND ofcourse a bunch of manufacturers who lied about their drives being firmware upgradeable. Why can't these clowns all sit down and actually define AND FOLLOW a standard ? Thanks to them, the whole dvd writer market is substantially less than it could have been. I've been waiting for more than two years now for things to clear up but still there's all these silly incompatibilities. How the heck do they expect to convince Joe Sixpack to buy one when MY head feels like exploding from all the confusion around this ?
    • If they did it would mean there was someone with monopoly powers that said this is the standard like it or lump it.
      • Hey Fred, I'll disagree with you. Remember the 56K modem standards fight from ?10? years ago? Once they agreed on a unified standard, there were still tons of manufacturers out there making their own model that abided by the standard. I think the same principle applies to hard drives and other devices.
      • That worked pretty good for the telephone. My 70 year antique still works thanks the monopoly power that set the standard. Think your grandkids are going to find anything to play your 70 year old CD's? Actually, we won't have worry about that, because I can virtually guarantee(sp) you that there will be no playable 70 year old CD's. Vinyl on the other hand... Phonograph records are another standard that held up over the years. And you can still listen to them with no electricity, plus, there are plenty of 7
    • Thanks to them, the whole DVD writer market is substantially less than it could have been.

      Perhaps the **AA perfers to have the DVD writer market as small as possible. I doubt that they have had any influence on the mirade of 'standards' for DVD writers, but anything that decreases the willingness of people to buy DVD writers works in their interest.
    • If you are trying to use your drive as a general purpose drive then YES you are right.

      but for Video DVD creation, the matter is very solidly decided and easy to do ...DVD-R is the ONLY choice for maximum compatability with set top DVD players (who cares about PC drives for video creation) and has been demonstrated as FACT for the past 3 years now. EVERY DVD creation house or video creation house uses DVD-R without exception. so if you are to make your own video DVD's... DVD-R it's what the pro's use. an
    • Oh no, they've already got the next generation war all lined up. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray - same sh*t, different formats. It does make you want to scream doesn't it?

      Still, I have a dual format DVD-/+ drive and have found that DVD-R are best for consumer DVD's while +R are better for my data (mainly because of the 8X writing speed). It sucks that they can't get it all together, but it is doable.

  • Not too surprising (Score:5, Informative)

    by edwdig ( 47888 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:28PM (#8604544)
    It's not really too surprising. I've seen ~40x CD-R's that were labelled as being for use at a minimum burning speed of 16x.

    It seems reasonable that chemicals that work well at low burning speeds wouldn't work well at high speeds, and vice versa.

    1x DVD speed is a lot higher than 1x CD speed, so I would expect these issues to start popping up sooner in DVDs than they did in CDs.

  • DVD Player incompatibilies (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BigDuke ( 723666 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:31PM (#8604568)
    I have noticed that Some DVD players will like to play DVD-R media fine, and not DVD+R, and vice versa for other players. I took me a while to figure out which media works best in my DVD player. I have a 3+ year old Sony player and it likes DVD-R. My friends JVC likes DVD+R.

    I also noticed that burning at 2x instead of 4x seems to play more reliably too. There is a noticably darker burn pattern on the disc if you closely inspect the 2x and the 4x burns.
    I have only experimented with 2 or 3 different players, so the study is not very broad.
    • I had this problem and wanted to find a disc that played reliably on my DVD player, my girlfriend's, and my parents. So I started a survey, using 11 demo discs, and have been seeing if I could find at least one disc that played in all the systems.

      So far, with five data points, I'm down to one disc that has played perfectly in my SD4900, SD3750, XBOX, PS-2, and DVD726; by the end of the weekend I'll finish the testing and hopefully, then, know what media to stock up on.

      BTW, so far the winner's Prodisc 4x
    • Not sure of the "reputation" of this site, but I found this article [cdrinfo.com] pretty interesting when I was psyching up to purchase a DVD burner. Also, I found this article [pctechguide.com] absolutely fascinating.

  • Get a multi-drive.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by HenryFjord ( 754739 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:31PM (#8604572) Homepage
    For all those who haven't upgraded to a DVD burner because of all the possible formats get a Multi-drive. I have a nice LG that burns DVD-/+R/RW and DVD-RAM as well as normal CD-R/RW's. They aren't too much more expensive and tend to make life much easier.
    • Yeah, it is better but still a major pain because you never know what devices will actually be able to read those disks once you make them.

      Out of curiosity, for people that are using +/-RW, what are you using it for? All the applications that I can think of needing large amounts of rewritable space, it would be better to just use an external drive than DVD.

      I can think of many uses for +/-R : archiving, home videos, cheap enough to give to people. But I haven't stumpled upon any uses for +/- RW.
      • I've been checking out DVD burners for a couple or three years now but haven't made the dive. As you noted for yourself, a cheap firewire external hard drive fits my situation better. It costs roughly the same as a good DVD burner, I don't need to worry about player compatibility, and its lifespan is roughly the same as burned DVD media (~2-3 years).

        When they come out with one standard, I'll check it out again.
      • Out of curiosity, for people that are using +/-RW, what are you using it for?

        It is an excellent backup choice if you use a media rotation plan and offsite storage if your data size is appropriate.

      • Out of curiosity, for people that are using +/-RW, what are you using it for?

        When authoring a DVD, I often burn it to RW and play it in my standalone player to see that it works, to test menus, text colors, etc. When I'm satisfied, then I burn it to a +R or -R.

  • I'm shocked... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BTWR ( 540147 ) <americangibor3@ya[ ].com ['hoo' in gap]> on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:32PM (#8604575) Homepage Journal
    I'm shocked there still hasn't emerged a clear winner in the format-wars...

    Anyone know what the "market share" of each format is?
    • The second article (mentioned here [com.com]) contains this statistic.
    • From the article:

      According to Santa Clara Consulting Group, the combined factory sales of -R and -RW blank media amounted to 61 percent of the total worldwide market share in the third quarter. DVD+R and +RW blank media accounted for 37 percent, while DVD-RAM media sales made up 2 percent. Dash media's worldwide market share hovered at about 60 percent for the first three quarters of the year, according to the research firm.
      • I keep on reading that the + format is superior, but the deciding factor has been price. + media is more expensive and thus I buy dash media. My writer is "aging" and the next one I buy will be dual layer. Forget this single-layer business.
  • Calling all enthusiasts!!! Hello!!!!

    If you look at it carefully, I'm fairly certain that this mess exists not because of technical disagreements, but because of POLITICAL disagreements. I have yet to hear of a real technical disagreement that doesn't get solved SOMEHOW, even if only as a compromise in the end.

    Personally, I'd be willing to bet you this has EVERYTHING to do with power and control. Basically, we have two camps: the DVD Forum, and the DVD+RW Alliance (The Forum and The Alliance as I like to call them), and they are both vying for control of the "standard," because they both want to be able to get a cut of the royalties on every DVD+/-RW player made. If one got a MONOPOLY, it could be a real cash cow!!! Boy, I'd sure love to have a piece of that golden harvest, wouldn't you?!?!?

  • Stale story (Score:5, Informative)

    by kzinti ( 9651 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:40PM (#8604650) Homepage Journal
    The last story about the non-upgradable HP 100i drive is over two years old! The article mentions a guy who bought his drive just a few months ago - but the HP 300i has been available since I bought mine in March 2003. The 300i is compatible with both +R and +RW - no upgrade needed.

  • Holy ancient history Batman (Score:5, Informative)

    by jayteedee ( 211241 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @06:40PM (#8604651)
    "dual-layer DVD+R capable of holding up to 8.5 GB" article is from december of last year and the other "DVD+RW drives not being upgradable" article is from 2002.


    How about some recent info:


    href=http://www.theregister.com/content/63/36357 .h tml

    • Sorry for the formatting problem. Trying again:


      "dual-layer DVD+R capable of holding up to 8.5 GB" article is from december of last year and the other "DVD+RW drives not being upgradable" article is from 2002


      A much more recent article about the new double layer discs:



      Sony double layer article [theregister.com]

    • In case you missed the poster's intention, the other two links were provided for additional information that happened to be mentioned in the primary article.

      Do you have a habit of shouting at boy scouts who help old ladies cross the road too? Because clearly they didn't need to volunteer that extra effort either.

  • Hmmm... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by c4Ff3In3 4ddiC+ ( 661808 )
    This is exactly why I haven't bothered with DVD burners yet. I'll wait (forever if I have to) until all the major manufactures involved get it together and support a common format.
  • The summary (of course I didn't read the article) says that the +R folk say this won't affect them. Well, hasn't something similar already hit them? I know the last pack of 4x DVD+Rs I got said on them that they wouldn't work with 2.4 without a firmware update to the drive..
    • Different issue.

      The issue in the article is an issue where the 4x DVD-RW media won't work in a burner that doesn't explicitly have 4x DVD-RW support. This is a physical media issue, due to the changes in the media (to allow for a rewritable DVD- disc at that speed)

      The issue you're referring to is a drive based one. Some of the older drives may:

      A. Not recognize the faster rated disc as writable
      B. Choke on the 4x speed code and go into a loop of some sort.

      Firmware updates could correct this and allow you
  • With all these different formats, I am just going to stick with good old CD-Rs and CD-RWs for now. I know I can get multiple layers drives, but that's just silly. I will wait until the storm calms down before I get one.

    Look at this way, I don't even use the DVD burner (for DVD burning) in my PowerBook G4 1 Ghz and at work. I can't use the free DVD+RW in my PowerBook!

  • Sorry (Score:3, Funny)

    by alcmena ( 312085 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @07:12PM (#8604880)
    Sorry everyone, my bad. I bought the DVD-RAM drive a few years ago, and shortly later, that format died. A month ago, I bought a DVD-RW drive, and ummm... Well, I guess I kind of cursed it too.

  • HP isn't alone (Score:3, Informative)

    by davmoo ( 63521 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @07:38PM (#8605102)
    HP isn't the only company guilty of saying their drives would be upgradeable to support DVD+R discs and not following through.

    I bought a Philips DVD+RW drive when they first came out. Philips very prominently, on both the box and their website, proclaimed there would be an update to support DVD+R media as soon as the format was finalized. Several months later, not only was there no update, all mention of such was removed from the Philips website. And now, not only has there been no update, but DVD+RW discs themselves are getting harder and harder to find at my local stores.

    While my Philips drive has performed flawlessly and has served me well, it is useless to me if I can't buy media for it. Even Philips themselves, who's media I prefer, seem to have cut back massively on the production of DVD+RW discs.

    I can see from "the writing on the wall" that within the next few months I will probably need to consider a new drive because of the media situation. I have already decided two things. One, it will be a multi-format drive. And two, it probably won't be a Philips drive...they may screw me once, but it won't happen twice.
  • Besides, of course, the end to these squabbles over what format this and that - is the availability of cheap DVD Authoring drives. While regular DVD+/-RW drives are cool and all, why should we settle for the lesser capabilities offerred by them?

  • Holy Jeez -- 8.5 GB double-layer media?? (Score:3, Informative)

    by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @08:27PM (#8605493) Homepage
    WOW! Just imagine how much completely legal [ca.gov], free [dvdshrink.org] or open source [sourceforge.net] DVD ripping software [doom9.net] you could store on one of those!

  • The "War of the Speeds" (Score:3, Funny)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @09:18PM (#8605895) Homepage
    Columbia introduced the 33-1/3 RPM LP in 1948. RCA deliberately introduced the incompatible 45. During the "war of the speeds," both companies saw sales fall sharply. RCA's fell more and in 1950 they capitulated. By that time, the damage was done and users of turntables were saddled for five decades with the extra costs of multi-speed turntables and a variety of clumsy, awkward, expensive spindle adapters.

    Just wait, any day now some DVD "standards" group is going to suggest changing the size of the hole. They've dicked around with almost everything else, it's about all that's left.

  • My preferred choice of DVD media with Linux (Score:5, Informative)

    by stock ( 129999 ) <stock@stokkie.net> on Thursday March 18, 2004 @10:25PM (#8606341) Homepage
    My preference of most pupular DVD (re)writable media :

    nr.1. DVD-R
    DVD-R is 100% compatible with the DVD-ROM standard. The DVD-ROM standard is actually closely analoge to the CD-ROM standard upon which the very popular CD-R recordable is based.
    burningtools :

    • cdrtools-2.0x : cdrecord-prodvd, oss dvd, dvdrecord
    • dvd+rw-tools : growisofs

    no.2. DVD+R
    DVD+R is not 100% compatible with the DVD-ROM standard. Basicly DVD+R is a packet writing standard, instead of tracks, where the last track normally ain't closed. Only to be used in this way for multitrack multi-volume backup and archive tasks. growisofs however has been extended to write -dvd-compat dvd-video iso-images to DVD+R recordable, and closing the disc.
    burningtools :
    • dvd+rw-tools : growisofs + mkisofs

    no.3. DVD-RW
    DVD-RW is mostly an analog standard to CD-RW. I use it when designing/creating and debugging new iso's.
    burningtools :

    • cdrtools-2.0x : cdrecord-prodvd, oss dvd, dvdrecord

    no.4. DVD+RW
    DVD+RW is where i touch in the dark. Basicly i would assume that DVD+RW is just a DVD+R which can be 100% erased, and thus be used again as Multi-track/Multi-volume archive disc.
    burning tools:

    • dvd+rw-tools : growisofs + mkisofs

    Urls :
    dvd+rw-tools: http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/ [chalmers.se]
    cdrecord-prodvd: ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/ProDVD/ [berlios.de]
    cdrtools: http://www.fokus.fhg.de/research/cc/glone/employee s/joerg.schilling/private/cdrecord.html [fokus.fhg.de]
    oss dvd: http://crashrecovery.org/oss-dvd.html [crashrecovery.org]

    Robert

    • About +R/+RW (Score:3, Interesting)

      by yoink! ( 196362 )
      Wrong. DVD+R was released after DVD+RW. DVD+RW works best as filesystem accessible rewriteable media. The format was updated to include write-once media in order to compete with DVD-R. (You'll notice that even the write-once DVD+R discs bear the stylized RW logo.)

      Check here [dvddemystified.com] for some more info on the entire DVD spectrum.

      A few other quick notes:
      1. The +RW alliance claims 100% compatibility with the DVD-Video standard. I've had no trouble using +R discs on very old DVD drives and DVD-Rom drives. Although,

  • 2.4xDVD+RW drives incompatible w/4X unless flashed (Score:3, Informative)

    by MMHere ( 145618 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @10:44PM (#8606460)
    I just bought Memorex DVD+R media.

    A paper insert said older 2.4X drives (like my HP dvd200i +R/+RW drive) would be incompatible with the 4X media (at 2.4X speed) unless the drive were upgraded to latest firmware.

    I did the update and was able to write 4X media just fine.

    Perhaps the -R/-RW camp will come up with drive firmware upgrades for the older drives?

    The standards for media writing apparently changed a bit from 2.4X days to 4X. Unflashed older drives aren't compatible. The firmware upgrade makes them compatible with new standards, but they still write at 2.4X maximum spee.

  • Laws of physics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pacc ( 163090 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @03:26AM (#8607709) Homepage
    To be able to write with higher speeds the new drives will need to have higher output lasers together with a media that is more sensitive since it is impossible to get the effect by simply changing one of these parameters. (A nice story about the technicalities here. [nikkeibp.co.jp])

    This means that an older drive, even though it has a lower effect laser, will destroy the more sensitive media since it stays longer over any one point.

    These "bad" effects is probably more due to DVD being a more mature technology closer to the limits than CD were, 8x is a relative number.

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