Can someone please help me with something. I know there is not a straightforward answer to this, but I will give it a shot. If a person had 100 standalone dvd players (varying in age) and they burned (all on pioneer 112d 8.21 or Nec AD-7170A 1.04 or any good burner) 100 verb +R, 100 verb -R, 100 TY +R, & 100 TY -R, all the +R's booktyped to dvd-rom, which one of these out of the 100 do you think the most of will play without issues??

I do a lot of vodeo distribution & have only done about 1/2 of these tests and, well basically, I am looking as you can see, for the best compatibility and quality. Money not being a concern.

Pioneer @ 8x on Verbatim -R = win.

But are you talking about 8x or 16x media? If you mean 16x media, I'd go with 16x +R Verbatim + Pioneer @ 8x burning.

If you can get 8x media, the Verbatim 8x -R is one of the most compatible DVD media ever made.

Sorry so long to respond, Do you think the built in defect management of +R affects compatibility?? The deep in-depth report here in cd freaks clearly shows that +R is superior but does not define compatibility, & I care more about this

Bitsetting to DVD-ROM can help with compatibility on +R media.

Seriously though out of 1000 burns which ones + or - R will have the greater compatibility (able to play on the most players without problems all the way through) of the two.

To many variables to give an either/ or answer. What works for you is all that should matter, if you are in need of mass distribution then have a master made and stamp it. You did say "Money not being a concern"

Leaving replication out of the picture. It just seems that burn after burn -R has better video standalone compatibility. I just don't understand how though when you add booktyping to the picture. & I agree with the +R superiority document here @ cd freaks that covers both formats & I seem to get better quality, lower fail rates & longevity with +R. I guess I'm looking for an answer that cannot be answered. I thought that maybe someone here has burned lots of + & - R's & maybe has had better compatibility luck with one or the other...

I've burnt thousands of +R and -R and I've also burnt plenty of verbatim media.

There's hardly any difference. I've never heard of -R simply not working and +R always working in a player. -R is pretty darn compatible. Bitsetting only affects shitty old players that for some reason refuse to play -R media. Bitsetting makes it detect as a DVDROM or something. If you're burning discs for shitty old DVD players, you might find +R could work and -R not.

But cmon, how many people have players this old that still work?

The most important thing IMO for compatibility =

Reflectivity - Low reflectivity = harder to read.
Jitter - Lower/steady jitter makes pits and lands easier to read.
Errors - the lower the error rate, the better. Too many can make things unreadable.

There's more but those are what I'd consider quite important and two of those figures are somewhat measurable with home based quality scanning devices.

Verbatim media in general has all of these good traits but MCC02RG20 is perhaps the best one because it is exceptionally strong in all aspects. Verbatim also happen to choose this media type for their archival gold discs - that's telling you something right there.

Using a pioneer and Verbatim 8x -R media should result in some of the best compatibility you can get.

MCC 02RG20 also used for their Hard Coat Protection discs and their MediDiscs.

Scans of MCC 02RG20 aren't always as pretty as some other discs, but I can't remember a MCC 02RG20 that didn't work for me (with the exception of my extremely crappy Matshita UJ-840S laptop drive which can kill almost any DVD).

Don't know, but it will probably not be DVD-R media burned in a NEC/Optiarc AD-7170A because that combination generally produces discs that have frequent slowdowns in some picky drives (e.g. Nexperia based BenQ drives) due to poor relinking, so it's natural to assume that at least some DVD players could have similar problems.

TY 16x DVD-R media (TYG03) is not as compatible with DVD players in my experience - choosing the right burner is essential to achieve playability in my pickiest DVD player, and there are probably even more picky players out there.

TY 8x DVD-R media (TYG02) have also been reported to have less compatibility with picky players (I haven't tested this myself).

Bitsetting to DVD-ROM for DVD+R media will improve compatibility.