Wow. I never found that.
Which is better well its all depends on whats on sale.
As long as its good media I could care less.

A subject that will really never have a end result! ! ! !

so far all of the above has said all that really needs to be said.

I use the +R's and I bought a spindle of -R's just incase I may need them, it's been almost a year now, I only opened them to see the Media Code, and now since my drives can do bit-setting I believe the -R's will just collect even more dust. Just a waste of TY

As for your Sony DVP-NC615, I read a report that stated you will be able to use +R's, what burner do you use? do you know if it can do bit-setting

I use a Sony DVD/CDRW Model DW D22A burner. I do not know if it can do bit-setting. How would I find this out?

P.S. I use CloneDVD 2 2.5.4.3 DVD Burning Software if that matters.

Neither format is going anywhere. IMHO it really depends on what applications you plan on using them for. Most people here recommend DVD+R overall but then again, they are usually just doing DVD Movie backups or computer applications. I for one prefer DVD-R since I also do videogame console backups and the -R format definitely seems to have an edge in that department. Those with Samsung drives in their XBOXs (like myself) or who have anything but the latest PS2 consoles are all over the place with +R media (even with the bitsetting adjustment). They work great for some people but not everybody. I have been using G03/G04 Ritek DVD-R and 8x Taiyo Yuden (TYG02) DVD-R over the course of the last two years and they have yet to meet a single peice of hardware that they were incompatible with (tested on 7 different versions of PS2s, 10 different DVD Players, all 3 of the stock XBOX DVD-ROM drives). As mentioned above, part of the problem with the - format is that there are quite a few more media manufacturers which also means that there will be more lower quality media manufacturers. However, as with DVD+R, this can simply be avoided by sticking to the recommended ones. It's pretty clear who stands out in terms of quality. Anyways, sorry to get long-winded but as mentioned above it really depends on what applications you plan on using your discs for.

No you don't. There is no such thing as a Sony burner anymore. You have a re-badged Lite-On drive. I believe the Lite-On 1633 is the one that your drive is the OEM version of. Stick with the Lite-On firmwares as Sony doesn't provide you with shit.

I don't know if I'm repeating material here, but:

If a device, like the game boxes, needs -R media, you have no option but to burn -R media.

From what I've read, the reflectivity spec for +R media is higher -R, reaching up to 80%, where as the -R media reflectivity is under 60%. I have no data as to why, or whether this means much, but if a drive is best served with higher reflectivity, +R media would have an advantage.

The two primary issues that strike me are the format of the error detection/correction code, and the multi-session structure. +R media has an edge on the error detection/correction code; there's more to the structure, and some technical reviews stop just short of calling the +R media superior on this point. The hint has been that +R media is better able to provide correction for errors than -R media, which may translate into an advantage in long term storage. Since all of this is fairly new technology, I doubt much data is available on long term storage effects.

For multi-session data, however, +R has a significant edge. The -R media requires a larger region of separation, which floats anywhere from 2Mbytes to nearly 60Mbytes of "lost" storage for each session. The +R media has a fixed 2Mbyte of loss for each added session. This would give +R media quite an edge for packet writing applications (which I don't use), or multi-session mastered disks (which I do use), but then if one adds only a few sessions (which is typical), the difference is small compared to the 4Gbyte+ of the disc.

Neither of these formats will survive very long, compared to the compact disc format for audio. Bill Gates predicted the demise, and while I'm not a fan of Gates and company, he does have inside information we're not privy to. I'm sure he's close to correct, in that the DVD formats we are cutting now will be obsolete in a few years, and something incrementally different will emerge, with radically different technologies a few years after that.

I read articles about 8 years ago which described a recording method which resembles the "Star Trek" memory devices imagined in the late 80's. A rod, rectangular or cube solid will be operated upon by two lasers which intersect within the interior of the object. Reading and writing will occur based on the strength and wavelength of the intersecting laser beams. The object will not move, only the lasers themselve move. It was estimated that a 1inch cube could hold 1,000 Gbytes of data. Possible target applications included the replacement of hard disk drives and removable media storage. At the time it was called holligraphic memory. While it was in a highly experimental stage at the time, they had working prototypes. Packaging the technology into a mass manufactured product would have taken many years, and that time has just about passed.

I'll bet my paycheck we'll be moving our DVD collections into a few rods before 10 years time. Such a notion would make the long term storage feature of DVD media a non-issue. Any "standards" we settle upon are, therefore, not permanent. We might be as "settled" as we're ever going to get. Anyone in the business with inside information on future developments wouldn't be well served to promote any further standards development or testing in the existing formats, and even in the "next" ones. Hollywood will be a stronger driving force for the upcoming HD-DVD standards, and even that will be short lived.

Inside 10 years our DVD burners will have a status not much above that held by a floppy drive.

Well, the famous story about Mr Gates predictions is that when Intel type microprocessor was upgraded years ago, they needed to decide on main memory layout, Mr.Gates said he does not see anyone even using more than 500KB of main memory. This is why they made the stupid hard coded 640KB as the limit for main memory, and put all the peripheral between this and 1MB.

Good prediction? Just imagine the money and productivity loses due to this bad prediction.

Goudo:

True enough. At that time Gates was limiting his thinking to DOS, but he was not the one responsible for the choice of memory limitations. He had literally nothing to do with that part of the design; that was IBM.

At that time his prediction was accurate until the advent of the 386, and it wasn't until he witnessed the marketing opportunities in the Xerox Alto interface, and the version of it that became the first Mac, that he realized it was time to rethink his plan.

I assure you, Gates is not only older and wiser now, but his information from hundreds of technical innovation companies gives him an overview way beyond what we're aware of.

You can't judge someone's ability to predict future trends in technology based on one single error, any more than you can judge the quality of a burner or media by one bad burn.

The DVD format is at least as temporary a stopping point as the floppy and the CD-R on the way to reliable high volume storage.

JVene ive saved you the effort of creating a new sig just insert this straight in

[arsekiss] William Henry Gates III [/arsekiss]

Well thank you for informing the world of that information, im going to stop burning dvd's and sit right here and wait for my optical thumb drive from Dr. Spock

That all sounds impressive, but...

Nero InCD formatted Verbatim 4x +RW capacity: 4,696,898,584 bytes
Nero InCD formatted Verbatim 2x -RW capacity: 4,700,438,528 bytes.

IOW, the +RW disc is 4MB smaller than the -RW one.

And, BTW, Gates is a marketing freak and his musings on the future of hardware could very well fall into the same category as his musings on 640K of memory or the future of Microsoft "Bob": wrong.

Cute, but uncalled for. I’m not sure why these points have hit a nerve, but I’m game.

I'm no particular fan of Gates. He's rich because he's been right at least as many times as he's been wrong. One must give the devil his due, right?

The entire "640K prediction" is actually a legend grown out of context. He and others actually said, and I paraphrase for lack of a reference other than an old memory, that "you could rule the world in 64K, so ten times that is more than would ever be required."

Now, that limitation was due more to the Intel 8086 than anything Gates contributed. The 64K limit came from the Z80 and 8080, and similar chips. His belief in that upper limit was misplaced, but then in what context would anyone have guessed how far off that guess was at that time?

No contest on the point it was a dire error, but you must also agree he has completely changed his mind, too. Now, Bob was the most laughable error I know of his. Who can laugh at what he and his company has done to the likes of Lotus, Quattro Pro, Word Perfect, CP/M and IBM. Who would ever have guessed the IBM PC hardware division could possibly have been made irrelevant.

I’m not bad as a technological predictor, either. I was right when I described digital audio to my father in 1972, while I was learning electronics (at age 9). I happened to predict Tivo in 1986 to my staff in an IT department. In 1987 I predicted that people would download music from online sources, but I didn’t think it would take the form of Napster. I predicted on demand digital video, though I thought it might overtake the likes of video rental stores, should bandwidth become sufficient. I predicted parallel processors would be the next logical step to performance gains once silicon reached it’s limit, back in 1985. That one is only beginning to play out now, but as a software developer and engineer, I’m certain application development trends will take better advantage of it in the next few years.

At this point I’m curious to ask, therefore, just how long do you think the DVD will remain viable when denser, more convenient and faster means of storage are mass produced?

About 6 months ago I pulled the power cord from my floppy drive to power another peripheral. I’ve yet to have much reason to put it back. How long would you guess that kind of thing might happen to my DVD burner? And, if not, why not?

there's way too much money and equipment in the current DVD format to have it go away anytime soon (the general public isn't going to trash the hundreds of thousands of stand-alone DVD players, drives, movei libraries, etc.). look at VHS, it's still around. just because new technologies are being created, doesn't mean they're ubiquitous and/or affordable.

I don't think I said people would be motivated to trash their DVD players, did I?

What I said was the technology will be obsolete, and we'll move our collections into new formats, which is what has happening to VHS tape (and what we've done moving into DVD). They still produce them, but the volume is way down and falling. The same thing happened to vynil LP discs, remember? There were millions of turntables at the time; they're all but relics now. For that matter, the cassette tape still has some presence, but in the day of $30 CD cutters, why bother? I think you can still purchase cassette players for cars, but the volume is extremely low. At one time there were millions of those, but the last time I saw a cassette player in a new car was 1999.

Even now, a new DVD format is being prepared for introduction (with a handful of gotcha's I think the public will complain about loudly). We'll already be in the transfer mode to a new format by 2006, choosing to either remain with the (then) old DVD standard, or trashing our DVD players for new ones that can play the new formats, though it will be a DVD for that incremental step. VHS will probably still be available, but to what utility? The quality is inferior and a large minority recognize it, which is why they adopted the DVD format when players became so cheap.

The public has become familiar with the notion of new delivery media, be it satellite, digital cable, CD's, DVD's, HD television - though they've become familiar with confusion in the process. For a while I worked contracts for TV production facilities, and many of those folks swore it would be at least 20 years before HD television would be adopted for ANY broadcast products. They're reason was the same; too much already invested in the older technology.

This has happened before, though. The story of AM and FM radio was among the first. One might even go as far back as Edison and his DC power station proposal vs. alternating current.

Unless, for some reason, history stops being an outline of the way things continue to happen, how would this media survive for long? What property does it have that gives it staying power over, say, the laser disc?

I realize it may be sacrilege to suggest the demise of a medium this forum is dedicated to. I don't suggest this is going to happen in 2 or 3 years, but at some point, either by a series of incremental changes, or by the introduction of radical new methods, it must happen.

Don't think, either, that I'm not an enthusiast of the format. I just purchased my first DVD burner last month, and so far it's been a dream peripheral. My interest is the reason I signed on to this board in the first place.

BTW, I'm going on vacation for a few days. If I drop off of this thread, it's not quite because it's lost appeal - don't count me out until Friday.

i don't disagree that the current DVD format will eventually become obsolete. all im saying (IMHO) is that there's at least 2-3 years of extensive use in it and likely more than that. i don't have statistics off hand, but im fairly confident in saying that all these new technologies (i.e. HDTV, LCD/Plasma TV, bluray/hddvd, etc. etc.) are still FAR OUTNUMBERED WORLDWIDE by older technologies such as CRT computer monitors, VCRs, corded telephones landline phones, standard tube televisions, etc. etc.

just because new technologies are out there and get most of the publicity, doesn't mean they've necessarily replaced the previous generation for the majority of users.

we, being tech savvy, have a skewed perspective on technology...the average person couldn't care less as to what's the newest/hottest/highestdefinition way to watch TV.

That is a pretty general response. I don't quite buy those specs. If they were an average then that would make sense as their are more lower quality manufacturers of DVD-R than DVD+R. However, I seriously doubt the reflectivity of Taiyo Yuden DVD-R and Taiyo Yuden DVD+R varries by 20%. There really isn't that much difference when comparing a quality disc of both formats.

Most informative. Thank you.

I agree with your predictions 110% despite what some others on here seem to have to say. I, too, have made most of the predictions you have made, as well as other predictions, and have watched nearly all of them come true.

I agree also with your opinion on Gates 1 mistaken prediction versus his many successful predictions. One cannot argue with the magnitude of unparalleled success of Gates. His 1 oft-quoted "mistake" is statistically insignificant.

Thanks again for the DVD+R/DVD-R education.

Brad

Dr. Spock? He died 7 years ago.

I used the search function and still am unable to determine what to buy+R or -R. Say I have a choice of Maxell 8X -R and +R and want to make movie back ups(on a LG 4163B 100AFW) which should I buy? Why? I did buy the Maxell 8XDVD+R, DVD INFO see's them as RICHOJPN R02, I made 4 backup's with them, all play very well on the LG,Toshiba pc drives and Lite on 5005, Pansonic RV31, Daewoo(daughter's) stand alone players. If I get -R should I expect the same quality?
Jim
I'll apologize in advance if this has been answered many times, for some reason I can't find the answer, been searching for 4 hrs.

There's very little difference between -R and +R as long as you stick to good brands of each. Maxwell is good in both +R and -R. Sometimes +R has compatibility problems with older dvd players if you dont set the booktype of your dvd burner to the 'dvdrom' setting before you burn. The LG burners support the bitsetting capability.

Hi jims47,

there is no straight answer to your question.
Personaly i prefer to use +R, because data is not exactly written the same way as on -R and it seems more efficient to use +R.

But in the end the final question is : will i be able to play the burned discs onto all my players, (computer, laptop, standalone player, video walkman and so on).

So, if the price of your Maxell seems fine to you and if your discs play well on your different players, then why change?

Set the booktype of DVD+R media to DVD-ROM to achieve the same level of compatibility as DVD-R media.

Personally to me, the only difference for me would be the price. I'd go with either one. As FreqNasty mentioned, just remember to change the booktype of your DVD burner to "DVD-ROM" if you're using +R discs. Check the Hardware forum to see if your burner has bitsetting capability (in order for you to change the booktype).

Again, the only difference, IMO, is price of the discs.

Thanks to everyone for the answers. I have been going crazy trying to figure out what the differences in them, besides price, was. As of now, the +R Maxell's seem to be doing a good job. I don't get any read errors on the burned discs. They are RICHOJPN R02's. I am pretty sure my LG(4163b) automatically sets the booktype to DVD-Rom. I can change it but that seems to be the default setting. I guess I'll continue using these as they even play on my daughter's Daewoo player. Again Thanks for clearing things up for me.
Jim

here's a good link (including the "More Info" links) that will explain some of the differences between the 2 formats. it gives a general sense of compatibility, etc.
http://www.videohelp.com/dvd.

DVD-R is actually just slightly larger in capacity but a negligible amount. also, i believe +R can be burned in multisession whereas -R cannot (not 100% sure of this difference though).