Once upon a time Dave in Boston shaped the electrons to say... > >From what I saw, there were DVD-R's, DVD+R's, as well as DVD-RW...and > DVD+RW.
The DVD burner TiVo's only work with DVD-R and DVD-RW, so that simplifies your choices. -R is Recordable, -RW is Re-Writable. In other words, -R is burn-once and the recording is permanent. -RW you can re-use, recording over whatever is on the disc. > I would like to buy a large stack for both the Humax Tivo....and for the DVD > burner in my computer. For a long time now nearly all PC DVD burners have been multi-format drives that will handle -/+R/RW. Beforw the recordable DVD format war truce you would find drives that were -R/RW only or +R/RW only, so you'll have to check the drive in your PC to be sure. But odds are it will handle the same -R/RW discs the TiVo uses. > Can anyone tell me what type would work in both situations...as well as work > in the machined of people I give finished disks to (like > family/friends/colleagues)? DVD-R may have a small compatibility edge on DVD-RW. Most players sold in the past 5+ years won't care, but the older the player the more of a chance it will balk at -RW. And some really old players don't handle -R or -RW well, but they're rare. So if you want the best possible odds for compatibility, buy -R discs. But you missed yet another issue - speed. DVD blanks are sold in different speeds rates - the first discs were 1x, then 2x, then 4x, 8x, and 16x. You may find some oddballs too like 6x and 12x. The faster the recording speed, the more expensive the media. However, the drive in the TiVo is a 4x burner, so even if you use 8x or faster media, it will never be faster than 4x. (That means it records an hour show to DVD in 15 minutes.) If the drive in your PC is a faster burner, then buying faster media to take advantage of the PC drive speed might be a good idea. But yet ANOTHER caveat - to bump recording speeds from 8x to 16x they made some changes to the standards, and 16x discs have proven to be unreliable in TiVos. So you probably don't want to bother with anything beyond 8x media. (16x media also experiences more compatibility issues on playback.) And finally, yet another issue - single-layer vs, dual-layer. The TiVo only burns single-layer media, so there is no point in buying dual-layer media. (You may see them differentiated as DVD-R vs. DVD-R-DL or 4.7GB vs. 8.4GB.) So you probably was 4x or 8x DVD-R single-layer media. If you have the option you might buy a small pack of the brand of discs you plan to buy to test before blowing money on a giant spindle. -MZ -- megazone-at-megazone.org http://www.MegaZone.org/ Gweep, Geek, Human, me. http://www.GizmoLovers.com/ http://www.Eyrie-Productions.com/ -><- Hail Eris "A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-852-2171
