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Data Storage Technology

Another Format War: DVD -R9 v. +R9 326

Posted by timothy from the tie-yourself-to-the-mast dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "Just when we thought the dust settled on the last format war between CD-R's we see a new one brewing with DVD recordable discs. DVD -R9/+R9 will apparently be the next technological slugfest where there are no rewards for second place. With all of these new recording format options made available to the public, how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?"
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Another Format War: DVD -R9 v. +R9 More

Another Format War: DVD -R9 v. +R9

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  • Easy (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 )
    how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?

    Easy: stick to what's proven. For me it's CDRs. I won't even touch DVD-Rs until I stop reading a million different labels at the store.

    • Re:Easy (Score:5, Funny)

      by WwWonka ( 545303 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:49PM (#10063375)
      Easy: stick to what's proven.

      Agreed.
      In fact I use the tried and true Debian formula when it comes to purchasing new video technology.
      That's why I enjoy my video of Dirty Dancing every weekend on betamax.

    • Re:Easy (Score:5, Informative)

      by damiangerous ( 218679 ) <1ndt7174ekq80001@sneakemail.com> on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:53PM (#10063407)
      A million different labels? There's two (some places may still have -RAM, but that was never a serous contender): -R and +R, each of those has a rewritable RW version but it's the same format. Consumer DVD players play both (yes some may choke or one or the other but that's how it goes with any consumer product) and dual format burners are no more expensive than single. Buy a dual format burner and whichever good media is cheapest (which is usually -R), there's no reason to wait.

    • Re:Easy (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 )
      "Easy: stick to what's proven. For me it's CDRs. I won't even touch DVD-Rs until I stop reading a million different labels at the store."

      For me, it's the occasional new hard drive + firewire bay.

      My beef with DVD-Rs isn't compatibility, it's longevity. It doesn't take much to screw up a DVD.

    • Re:Easy (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
      Confusing and proven are two different things. Writable DVDs have been available since 1999 or earlier.

      Besides, with a writable DVD, you can cut disc swapping to a sixth that of CD, waste less material and storage space in exchange. And you can do some home video authoring experiments that will work in nearly any DVD player.

      I really don't see it being that confusing either.

      If by proven you mean archive-once and put it in a vault, well, even CD-R hasn't proven itself because that format isn't much more

  • Do the same as w/ the current generation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by digThisXL ( 252109 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:44PM (#10063337) Homepage
    Buy a drive that supports both formats.

  • CD-R format war? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:44PM (#10063338)
    I think you mean the DVD-/+R format war. And, it'll end the same way. We'll all end up with dual format drives.

  • easy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:45PM (#10063339)
    you vote with your dollars, by refusing to by into either format until the company bigwigs kiss and make up their minds.
    • But what do you do when dell ships one format? People aren't going to buy from a different OEM just because of the dvd writer standard.

    • Re:easy (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
      "by refusing to by into either format until the company bigwigs kiss and make up their minds."

      And when they do they'll form a consortium to charge obnoxious licensing fees for the technology while keeping little "features" like DRM in the standard definition. Kinda like the DVD Consortium to begin with.

      No thanks, I'll stick with the capitalistic competition.

  • A winner is you! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:45PM (#10063340)
    Seriously, why can't these people work this out once and for all so that we don't have to buy DVD drives that support seven hundred formats?

    • Re:A winner is you! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by aksuur ( 628258 )
      Because the companies backing both formats have put too much money into developing and promoting them to just give them up. That's the way business goes.
    • Seriously, why can't these people work this out once and for all so that we don't have to buy DVD drives that support seven hundred formats?

      What's wrong with drives that support seven hundred formats? We made it through the CD era just fine...

      • have you ever looked on the package at how many formats a CD-ROM drive can support,

        A Multi read CD-ROM can read anything up to 700 MB on a 5 inch disk, including:

        VCD, Kodak photo CD, ISO 9660 Data, Philips Red Book CD Audio... the list goes on and on...

  • Familiarity wins (Score:5, Insightful)

    by r_glen ( 679664 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:45PM (#10063341)
    ...how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?

    My guess is that they'll buy into whichever format they current use for single-layer discs.

  • Simple really (Score:5, Funny)

    by flewp ( 458359 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:45PM (#10063342)
    With all of these new recording format options made available to the public, how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?"

    If they send me 20 dollars I will tell them the secrets to buying a DVD burner.

  • To answer your question (Score:3, Insightful)

    by over_exposed ( 623791 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:45PM (#10063346) Homepage
    "how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?"

    They won't. They havn't been able to since CD-R and CD-RW started confusing grandma and grandpa. This just adds more confusion to the casual computer user.

  • Dual Format Dirves (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jeffy210 ( 214759 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:46PM (#10063351)
    As long as they keep making +/- drives, I really don't care. Most all systems can read from either of them, and has long as you have a +/- drive you can write to either of them.
    • I imagine you are correct. Given enough time, I'd bet we can see drives that support both formats. Once that's settled, the best format will end up prevailing. I've noticed that DVD-R has more or less come out on top for its fantastic compatibility. I would guess the same thing will be true for the dual-layer media. I imagine a lot of people are making copi^H^H^H^H backups of dual-layer DVDs.
    • Although the dual format seems to add more to the cost.

      The cheapest DVD+/-RW is about $20 more then then cheapest +RW or -RW when I was looking last week.
    • I know my Plextor DVD writer accepts both + and - media of the R and RW type, but it only writes at top speed on the DVD+R (or is it -R hehe) media.

      Maybe other makes are different.

    • Re:Dual Format Dirves (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zakezuke ( 229119 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:05PM (#10063495)
      Most all systems can read from either of them, and has long as you have a +/- drive you can write to either of them.

      Systems are not that big a deal. Sure some people gotta update their DVD's firmware, but this is trivial. I must admit that I had to buy a new drive to do DVD -/+R for my old Samsung just refused to take it, but again this was $30 and trivial. The real problem is standalone players. My Magnavox for example refuses to play +R media. It's 5 disk surround sound deal with a replacement cost between $100-$200 or so. That's slightly less trivial. People don't want to buy a new DVD player every 1.5 years just because we can't agree on one format.

      Part of the reason people buy into DVD burners is so they can burn videos and share them. In the 20th century, this wasn't a problem. If you wanted to share your home movies you just made a copy onto VHS with 100% assurance that it would be playable. While it's cool to burn a DVD in well under 1/2 the time it takes to play it, it's not cool when the best you can assure people is, "It might work."

      • Magnavox (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ruie ( 30480 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @01:00AM (#10065119) Homepage
        Try cheating and setting a code to indicate that you have plain DVD disc instead of DVD+R - chances are Magnavox will play it just fine.

        See Linux DVD+R/W page [chalmers.se] and search for "Book type".

        In my case setting book type to DVD-R for a DVD+R dvd allowed it to play fine in a drive that would not accept plain DVD+R disk.

  • Intelligent? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:46PM (#10063353)
    Since where are consumers intelligent?

  • This is why... (Score:5, Funny)

    by NIK282000 ( 737852 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:47PM (#10063360) Homepage Journal
    I stick to my millions of unlabled 3 and a half inch floppies.

  • What is the advantage of one format over the other, besides attempted consumer lock-in?

    • Advantage of DVD+RW (Score:5, Informative)

      by doc modulo ( 568776 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:21PM (#10063625)
      The DVD+ format is better because it supports absolute accurate positioning of the sector to be written. DVD- isn't accurate to a single sector.

      That means a DVD+RW can be written to without gaps, just like you can write to a floppy or HD with accuracy in the written sector/without gaps.

      And this in turn means that only DVD+RW supports Mount Rainier (in the future). Mount Rainier is hardware assisted packet writing:
      - The most important thing is that you can use your DVD+MRW (Mount Rainier Rewritable) as a floppy disk/Hard drive. You drag and drop, delete, write something else etc. Just like a storage device is supposed to be used, none of this "burning" crap. MR has extra fault tolerance too.
      - Standard OS drivers for all MR drives, they all behave the same.
      - Formatting in the background by the firmware, the RW can be written to after about 1 minute, you don't have to wait for the whole DVD to finish formatting to start using it.

      Only problem is, there are no fully compliant Mount Rainier DVD+MRW drives yet :(
      The manufacturers are now scampering to get to 16x speed first. After the makers all achieve 16x then we'll get get other differentiating features in the drives, like MR.

      The only advantage you get with +RW at the moment is that OTHER packet writing methods (like Nero InCD) also benefit from the exact laser positioning. You don't get Some of the other MRW stuff like background formatting.

      I'm waiting with buying a DVD drive until there's an +MRW. You can also recognize compliant drives with the Philips "Easy Write" logo.

      P.S. the DVD-R and -RW camp are the ones that do whatever the movie industry wants. The computer manufacturers split from that group because they wanted better features like absolute write-positioning and came up with +RW.
  • Isn't everyone still arguing over the DVD-R5/DVD+R5 thing? Why wouldn't they/we be fussing over the 9GB version when they/we can't figure out the whole 4.7GB version?
    • You would think all these 6 and 7 figure salaried geniuses would take a look at history and see that in the technology world, free and open standards almost always win out over closed, patented and licensed technologies:

      Rambus Vs. DDR
      Micro-channel vs. ISA, PCI, AGP, and now PCI express
      IBM PC Vs. Commodore/Amiga, Timex-Sinclair, Heck even Apple!
      Ethernet Vs. all comers
      Anything that conforms to an IEEE Standard, (Firewire, Wireless ethernet, ETC.

      I'm sure there are a few more...
      • Uhm...many (most?) (all?) of your examples of free and open standards are patented and licensed. Firewire, for example, is patented by Apple, and they charge a license fee to manufacture Firewire chipsets.

  • Who will win? (Score:5, Funny)

    by r_glen ( 679664 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:48PM (#10063373)
    Ask my grandma then pick the other. She still swears by Betamax.
    • And so do all the professionals out there.

      Betamax begat Betacam begat betacam SP, begat Betacam Digital.

      AFAIK, All backward compatible at least on the read side, (able to read older formats, but not able to record them.)

  • easy dvd format guide (Score:5, Informative)

    by sometwo ( 53041 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:49PM (#10063377)
    Check it out- it's not so hard. [www.idvd.ca]

    ideally more choice==more competition==lower prices and most drives tend to read/write all the standards

    • Re:easy dvd format guide (Score:5, Funny)

      by Yaztromo ( 655250 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:04PM (#10063485) Homepage Journal
      more choice==more competition==lower prices

      Except that this isn't a case where the dick manufacturers have their own standards which are competing. The disk manufacturers each make both types of disks, and generally charge the same amount for them.

      And it doesn't lower the procees of the drives when the drive manufacturers have to implement several different write standards just to be somewhat compatible with the plethora of disc types already out there.

      Yaz.

    • ideally more choice==more competition==lower prices and most drives tend to read/write all the standards

      Yes, ideally. That old canard of capitalism...

      That theory is usually true, but more often than not it doesn't hold water see: in Europe they never had much choice in cell phone technology and now *gasp* you can use your phone in most countries without any problem. Whereas in the good ole US of A where there's the sacro-saint consumer choice, there's a kajillion incompatible cell phone standards.
      • Whereas in the good ole US of A where there's the sacro-saint consumer choice, there's a kajillion incompatible cell phone standards.

        Sure, but there's also the worldwide standard available at the same price thanks to it having to compete with other kajillion formats. People who don't choose the worldwide standard find some aspect of the other services to be better for them. Everyone still wins.

  • Exactly! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kisielk ( 467327 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:51PM (#10063391)
    It's hard enough already as it is. I'm still wondering if I should wait for dual layer or just go ahead and buy a single layer writer now. The drives are available now, though not nearly as large of a selection as single layer, especially when it comes to external drives. Dual layer media is currently not readily available retail here in western Canada and reportedly will not be till early next year, and then there will be yet ANOTHER format? What a pain! In contrast, I've had my CD-RW for over 4 years now, it's been the same media and format the whole time. Upgrading CPU's, video cards, memory etc is not such a big deal, but constantly changing media formats for your removable disks is a hassle. A hard drive will work in any machine (even SATA ones have adapters available), but these new DVD types will likely require drives that support them. You can't count on everyone to upgrade their DVD drives every year so you will be able to transfer data to them...
    • but CD-R disks are still on the market and all the newest DVD Burners can still read and write to CD R/RW disks

      for you personally, I'd say, if you have a real need for 4.7 GB capacity, especially since DVD blanks cost about as much as an equivalent number of CD's (By my calculations, 7, when dealing with movies compressed to fit on a single overburned, (700 MB/80 Min.) CD-R

      $.10 is the cheapese I have ever seen brand name CD-R's sell for.

      DVD-R's recently hit the $1.00 mark
    • I'm still wondering if I should wait for dual layer or just go ahead and buy a single layer writer now.

      Why would you wonder???
      If you price these around, you'll notice there's about a $15 difference between SL and DL DVD recorders.

      It's pretty much a no brainer, unless you only shop at Best Buy where they probably dont even have the DL drives.

      Get the DL drive, use it for SL until the price of media drops. Simple.
    • Several single layer drives have firmware updates that make them dual +R compatible. I have an NEC ND2500A for example, which costs around eighty bucks U.S. (I paid $120 for it eight months ago, but that's life.) You can either install the firmware for the dual layer 2510 or use a third party firmware that supports DL and higher ripping speeds.

  • what? (Score:5, Funny)

    by LBArrettAnderson ( 655246 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:54PM (#10063410)
    how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?

    by being intelligent maybe?

  • Have they learned nothing? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NMerriam ( 15122 ) <NMerriam@artboy.org> on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:56PM (#10063428) Homepage
    Dear God, i wonder what these execs are thinking sometimes. Don't they realize how much trouble the +- wars caused in consumer acceptance of DVD Recorders?

    And in the end of course it didn't make any difference whatsoever because as new hardware and software came out, the negligible differences and advantages each format had became fairly unimportant.

    I still have nightmares about the guy who wouldn't let me leave Best Buy until I explained to him what kind of discs he needed for his computer.
  • "With all of these new recording format options made available to the public, how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?"

    Simple, don't go for compatibility, go with whatever you need ost between speed or capacity.

    Optical media are awfull when it comes to compatibility, at this point it is even a lost cause, there are already too much format. Each OS dealing with each format somewhat differently (ex.: session made ISO9660 after a session made HFS won't show in Windows) make the compati
  • Like how I don't care if the DVD media I buy is - or + because my writer can burn into both, as long as they keep making writers that support all types of discs the additional competition can only be a good thing.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:02PM (#10063469)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Marketing psychology (Score:3, Funny)

    by Hao Wu ( 652581 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:04PM (#10063486) Homepage
    +R9 has a simple advantage..... This format uses "+" symbol. Naive Consumers think automatic "+ == GOOD". Likewise they assume minus sign, "-", is somehow inferior.

  • Who demands such choice? (Score:3)

    by EvanED ( 569694 ) <evaned@noSpam.gmail.com> on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:09PM (#10063533)
    It's like peanut butter! Crunchy, smooth, extra crunchy, what choices!

    (With apologies to Bill Watterson. I would have linked to the appropriate Calvin and Hobbes strip, but I can't find it online. I can't scan it because my scanner and books are packed for moving, and I don't even know where in the books it is.)
  • With all of these new recording format options made available to the public, how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?

    It's easy...Don't be the first to buy in. When the dust settles, whatever format has the most compatibility and support will be the defacto standard. Then you buy it.

  • NTFS +/- R9? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by izakage ( 808061 )
    Empty PCI slot + Cheap 200GiB Hard Disk = No need for DVD media.
  • There was a CD-R format war recently? And the DVD -R vs +R format war is coming?

    I was under the impression that the DVD+/-R debacle was still very much underway, with no "dust settling" over the last couple of years.

  • We live in ficticious times, with a ficticious war (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DroopyStonx ( 683090 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:18PM (#10063606)
    There is no format war. I heard this same story back when DVD+/- R first came out. Guess what? Out of the 7 or 8 dvd playing devices I've ever owned, not ONE of them fails to read either format (including PS2).

    Reason being, the big companies want to sell their drives and will almost always make them both + and - compatible.

    The reason I say most and not all is because there's always some goon out there creating drives that can only read one format (for whatever reason). These drives never usually sell very well.
  • From what I've seen, DVD players are already fairly entrenched into the consumers' living rooms. Even if the dual layer formats were to roll out in mass today, I don't think it would make much difference. Odds are that the - and + formats will both be very slowly accepted because when it boils down to it, not a whole lot of people make their own DVD movies > 4gb. With only a limited market (and the "gee whiz" factor) there won't be much reason for them to adopt the new formats.

    I'd also expect the - /
    • +R and -R have different success rates playing on home DVD players. the dual layer Discs (afaik) are supposed to be playable on home DVD players, like movie discs are already.
      I assume with the addition of +R9 and -R9 it would be similar, except now you can get 8.5gb of storage instead of 4.5gb

  • Too late to matter (Score:5, Informative)

    by DumbSwede ( 521261 ) <slashdotbin@hotmail.com> on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:26PM (#10063657) Homepage Journal
    With Blu-Ray and HD-DVD just around the corner, many will just choose to wait. I'm guessing with the dual layer bonding issues figured out, first generation Blu-Ray and HD-DVD recorders will likely support it at roll out.

    That said, I am frustrated by the constant news about Blu-Ray this and HD-DVD that, with no products available here yet in the US.

    There is only one channel of HDTV in my area and not even one I watch. Start pressing HD discs of some sort already! I have had an 8 foot projection (Quad XGA no less) system for three years now, and only current generation DVD (which admittedly looks DAMN good when pumped out of a Radeon 9800) to watch on it. I'm ready for the full Theater experience!

  • Why DVD+R(W) is superior to DVD-R(W) (Score:4, Informative)

    by nathana ( 2525 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @10:19PM (#10064079)
    Here's a GREAT article on the subject that I found a few months back with a lot of technical details on the differences between the two formats:

    http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/113

    Interestingly, although a number of people have noted that DVD-R seems to be more "compatible" overall with the majority of readers/players out there, my experience has been that my old ThinkPad 2nd-generation 2x DVD drive (Toshiba) reads DVD+Rs without a lick of trouble, whereas several different DVD-R discs that I've tried in it skip horribly and give me read errors. And this drive was manufactured before either standard was drafted! The especially funny part is that Toshiba was in bed with Pioneer drafting DVD-R (whereas Sony/Philips is the duo that brought us +R) and yet it can't even read the stuff.

    -- Nathan

  • *Dual* Layer! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @10:44PM (#10064248) Homepage
    I know /.'ers are expected to comment without RTFA, but crikey, the title of the article includes "R9". That means dual layer, people! (Rounding up the number of gigabytes it will hold -- 4.7 for single layer, 8.5 for dual.) Of the 120-plus postings so far, only a handful address the point.

    So far the only dual-layer DVD burners I've seen, and the only dual-layer media I've seen, has been of the +R variety. My Mad Dog Megastor (really a NEC ND-2510A) supports both +R/RW and -R/RW as well as dual-layer +R DL. Of -R DL, the fineprint on the box says "at the time of production, a (-) format Dual Layer standard has not been released".

    Format war for +/- R9? I'd say + has won by default, there's no - competition yet.

    (As for compatibility, my year-old DVD player plays everything I've thrown at it including 4x +R, 4x -R, 2.4x +RW, 2.4x -RW, and 2.4x +RDL. An older player (several years old) generally recognized the media (one problem with -RW I think) but sometimes had glitchy playback.)

  • Does it really matter? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BCW2 ( 168187 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @10:53PM (#10064285) Journal
    The winner will be the group that comes in at the lowest price, just like always. Remember the Betamax vs. VHS war? Technical merit had no meaning. The people supporting VHS undersold Sony and took them right out of the game. If it works 'good enough' and is cheaper, that format is the winner.

    Perfection is a nice goal, but money drives the marketplace.

  • Far Too Many Formats (Score:3, Funny)

    by rice_web ( 604109 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @11:45PM (#10064673)
    How on Earth are users supposed to choose between DVD-A [disctronics.co.uk] and DVDA [urbandictionary.com]? It simply baffles me.

  • How WILL they know [ (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mulletproof ( 513805 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @01:14AM (#10065190) Homepage Journal
    "how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?"

    Um, the same way they always have? Diligent research, maybe? I mean, it's just a thought...

  • Decisions, decisions (Score:3, Funny)

    by hcdejong ( 561314 ) <hobbes@x m s n e t . nl> on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @08:59AM (#10067515)
    how can any consumer intelligently know which one to buy into?

    Duh, it's just like every other decision: use the "Eenie, meenie, miney, moe" algorithm.

  • Both or None is my choice, not Either/Or (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JGski ( 537049 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @01:30PM (#10070884) Journal
    I only last week bought a DVD writer - and only because 1) the price was throw-away cheap, and 2) because it was multi-format: both + and - formats, ergo I chose both, not one or the other.

    Same will go for this format. I also have Mac, PC and Linux so give me a tent for all!

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