Quoting Electrolife Studios <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I've yet to enter the DVD recordable market but I am trying to do as > much reasearch as possible in hopes to not end up with the betamax > technology so to speak.
Er, I don't think there will really be a "BetaMax" in this battle. REWRITABLES ... >From a "read" standpoint, the technologies for both -RW and +RW are very similar. When DVD Consortium and +RW Consortium members aren't playing games, they can usually read each others discs, for the most part. Any other incompatibility is more or less a problem with Magento Optical (MO) media itself, which plagues CD-RW as well. Only DVD-RAM, the first re-writable standard (circa 1997), addressed the issues with MO (actually based on Panasonic's innovative PhaseDual predecessor technology that improved reliability and longevity of MO by a factor of 10, and rewrites by 100). So DVD-RAM drives usually read everything. Unfortunately DVD-RAM itself is an optical archiving format, not a consumer one, so it's own format is not very readable (sub-10%). You can think of DVD-RAM drives as someone with "AB negative blood" -- universal receiver, non-donor (except to itself). [ NOTE: 4G DVD-RAM drives now have the same DVD/CD-RW capability as 1G DVD-RW drives ] RECORDABLES ... Both 3G+ DVD-RAM and DVD-RW record DVD-R(G). DVD-R(G) (general) is a slight variation from the original (circa 1995) DVD-R(A) (authoring) format. Like DVD-RW is to DVD-RAM, DVD-R(G) is the consumer version of professional DVD-R(A). But unlike DVD-RAM, DVD-R(G) is almost univerally donated (like O blood). As far as +R, Sony/Philips originally promised to support -R. But when the 1G DVD+RW drives looked like they wouldn't support -R media, they came up with +R. But even to make the point moot, 1G DVD+RW drives ended up not being able to support +R anyway, which led to 2G DVD+RW drives that could use them. <bias> I actually predicted this to many of my colleagues who rushed out and paid $500 for a 1G DVD+RW drive. I told them it reminded me 100% of their original, 3GB disc format that never made it out of Japan -- introduced quite late and not really any sooner than 4.7GB DVD-RW. Sure enough, I was right. It's stuff like this makes me really wonder if Sony/Philips engineers live in the real world. Or maybe it's just the fact that +R/RW contniues to be driven by business/marketing decisions, and not technical ones. </bias> > DVD-R looks very strong from having more drives, cheaper media, and > support from people like Mac. Apple has been supporting DVD-RAM since 1998, and switched to DVD-RW in 2001. > However DVD+R has a lot going for it with support from HP/Dell/Sony > etc Because Sony/Philips sold PC vendors on marketing numbers, which PC OEMs ate up. In actuality, 2.4x CAV DVD+R/RW was _slower_ than 2x CLV DVD-R/RW. But Sony has finally made the point moot. I think a big reason was that 4x DVD-R(G) hit while Sony/Philips were still working on 4x DVD+R. So Sony introduced the DRU-500A with 4x DVD-R(G), and added the firmware to support 4x DVD+R media when it was released later. > despite having fewer 1st gen drives ??? I kinda miss what you meant there. FYI, 1G DVD+RW drives only did 2.4x DVD+RW and nothing else, no DVD+RW. And DVD+RW itself is based on Sony/Philips' Japan-only released 3GB disc technology that was a total flop. > and much less media selection that is more expensive. Quantity drives price. Even though DVD-RAM lasers and logic are far more complex and expensive, the proliferation of DVD-RAM as an optical archiving standard drove the price down very quickly. So while DVD-R(A) was expensive for a long time, DVD-RAM came down in price very quickly. Need drives quantity drives commodity. [ NOTE: Although DVD-RAM discs are still not cheap, because of the added manufacturing costs of MO media itself (and not just because of the cartridge, which is optional for single sided anyway). ] > Its a real hard market to read right now. I am new to this list... just > found it on google the other night during my research. Are most of you > pro DVD-R or is this list mixed? I'm biased since I've been using DVD-RAM on Linux since 1998. I can read my old, 4+ year DVD-RAM discs whereas most people with CD-RW drives cannot read theirs that are less than 3 years. DVD-RW/+RW has the same "standard MO" longevity problem. I now have a 3G DVD-RAM/R drive. Of course, DVD-R(G) isn't MO, nor is DVD+R. -- Bryan J. Smith (suffix-free title for your protection) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.thebs.org ------------------------------------------------------- Linux is Community, Windows is Capitalism. Neither has anything to do with Freedom. Only mandates can limit Freedom. A mandate of only one choice is Communism. Communism isn't about design, it's about forced choice. _______________________________________________ Dvdrtools-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/dvdrtools-users
