DVD-R vs. DVD+R

[SmackFu]

If I have a recorder that burns both, and they are both the same price (this week at Staples), which is the better choice?

[Papermache_Prince]

It’s my understanding that it depends on what device you’ll be playing them on. I think if you’re playing them on your computer or the DVD recorder you mentioned, it doesn’t make much difference. If you’re going to play them on a stand alone DVD player, you’ll want to know if it plays DVD-R, DVD+R, or both. Information on specific DVD players here.

[N9IWP]

DVD-R is probably playable on more DVD players than DVD+R. But check your computers / DVD players , but check yours out in the link provided.

My DVD recorded only burns DVD-R, and only OFICIALLY plays pre recorded DVDs or DVD-R, but word is that it unofficially plays DVD+Rs also. (My DVD player cannot read DVD+Rs, that is why I got a recorder that burns DVD-Rs)

Brian

[Brute_Force_Orthodontics]

There’s an old article at CDFreaks comparing the + and - formats. The author feels that + is better-engineered. Compatibility with standalone DVD players is a surprisingly complicated issue, since its effected by the media, the player, the recorder, the recording software, and the options chosen when burning:

A famous example of such logical incompatibility is the “Book Type” field, which indicates the type of the disc. The first DVD-ROM specification only allowed 0 (i.e. read-only) to be written there, but later each recordable format defined its own value to identify itself ; unfortunately it turned out that some players simply refuse to read a disc with a non-zero value. To handle this problem, the latest DVD+R standard specifically authorizes to write a zero Book Type for compatibility reasons, and nowadays many drive manufacturers have made this bit programmable. But this cannot be done for DVD-R(W), as the Book Type (with several other information in the lead-in) are pre-embossed (i.e. pre-recorded) on blank media. Note however that although it reduces compatibility, this pre-recorded Book Type also improves copy-protection security, as it enables any player to easily identify a DVD-R(W) disc.

My standalone DVD player was made in the late 90s, before any recordable DVD formats were common, yet it works fine with DVD+R discs with DVD-ROM book type.

[Fridgemagnet]

The DVD+R camp has most of the juicier patents, and so there are some non-ideal techniques with DVD-R, such as land pre-pit data embedding instead of the much more robust DVD+R wobble encoding.

When DVD-R first came out, the discs were completely incomptable with ordinary DVD players, while from the very start DVD+Rs had seamless linking that made a written +R/RW disc backwards-compatible. Now almost all DVD players are designed to be DVD-R compatible, and the DVD-R technology was tweaked a little to overcome the problems that prevented backwards compatibility, so that’s less of an issue these days.

SmackFu, go for a named brand +R/RW player, not just the cheapest. Lots of companies can make working models, but making DVD recorders that work really well takes major resources that a no-name company hasn’t access to.