Do you remember the VHS vs Beta wars? Two competing videotape formats lead to mass consumer confusion, and woe to all those consumers that chose Beta and ended up with a nearly useless VCR (despite Beta being the technically better of the two formats). Well, it seems as if the lessons of history have not been learned as there are currently 4 DVD Recordable formats competing for your hard-earned dollar (6 if you want to be really pedantic). With prices for DVD Recordable devices starting at $2,000 and going up from there, you'd better hope you pick the right model.
To rub salt into the wound, each competing format has a very similar acronym. We have; DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM, pretty much all of which have little to no cross-compatibility with each other. Plenty of early adopters have been burned by purchasing DVD+RW media and finding out that it doesn't work in their DVD-RW hardware, and who can blame them?
Anyhow, on to the formats themselves;
DVD-R is the easiest format for novices to understand. Fundamentally the same as CD-R except at a higher density, DVD-R is merely a writable version of DVD. There are a few limitations - many DVDs these days are dual-layered in order to store higher quality imagery. DVD-Rs are not dual-layered, so can only store 4.7Gb (or 3.9Gb) of data, which should be enough for around 1 - 2 hours of decent quality video. The majority of DVD players will read DVD-Rs, but not all of them will. Whether your player will or won't read DVD-R seems a bit of a lottery, as DVD-R compatibility seems somewhat hit and miss amongst manufacturers' ranges, but is getting better. DVD-R could be considered the "lowest common denominator" of the recordable DVD formats, but is limited by being writable only once and also by the cost of mistakes. Much like CD-R was in the early days, blank media are costly - at $20 per blank - and coasters are easy to produce.
DVD-R recorders are rapidly coming down in price, and a PC-based one can be had for less than $1,000.
Essentially an extension of DVD-R, DVD-RW (note the 'minus') is a format supported by Pioneer, amongst others. Essentially a rewritable form of DVD-R, DVD-RW is not quite as widely compatible as DVD-R, with around 1/2 of all standalone players being able to read DVD-RW discs. Some standalone players can be made DVD-RW compatible with a firmware upgrade.
Pioneer and LG will probably have standalone players on the Australian market later this year and computer-based -R and -RW drives are currently available for under $1,000.
DVD-RAM has been around for some considerable time in the writeable DVD arena. Supported by Panasonic, DVD-RAM has only limited backwards compatibility with existing DVD players. DVD-RAM discs come in a protective caddy and are recorded in a substantially different format to standard DVDs. On the plus side, DVD-RAM discs are very good at random access, and have found a niche as high capacity rewritable computer optical storage.
Panasonic have a DVD-RAM recorder available for around $3,300 which will also write DVD-R discs and PC-based DVD-RAM drives are less than $1,000.
DVD+RW (note the 'plus') is the newcomer on the DVD rewritable block, supported by a number of manufacturers (who aren't Pioneer) but the format is not officially sanctioned by the DVD Forum at this time. It has a similar level of compatibility to DVD-RW, but + and - blank media are not interchangeable despite the similarity in name.
Philips have a DVD+RW standalone DVD recorder available for around $3,000.
This is a really hard call at the moment. No recorder currently available supports all the recordable DVD formats, although many of them support more than one format. The 'minus' formats (DVD-R/DVD-RW) have a considerable head start in this high-stakes race. DVD-RAM seems destined to remain a niche product. Whether or not the 'plus' formats (DVD+R/DVD+RW) will make an impact, given the significant number of manufacturers who support them, remains to be seen.
As a consumer, the best advice I can give you is to ensure that whichever product you choose, make sure that it can write DVD-R discs, as these are the most compatible of the recordable formats for standalone DVD players. Otherwise, you are still somewhat on your own in this rapidly-evolving and highly complex area until the manufacturers can finally settle on a single across-the-board standard.
© Michael
Demtschyna (read my bio)
February 18, 2002