DVD +/-R/RW Compatibility

[davpen]

Interesting report on the compatibility of DVD +/-R/RW.

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/DVDMediaFormats/

Cheers,

David.

[Jerry Jones]

Yes - this really doesn't surprise me.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

Me neither. The DVD+ formats were always more show than go.

Dr. Mordrid

[Hulk]

I would have thought that since the older "-R" players have been around longer they would have shown a HUGE lead over the newer "+R" players, not 9%, comprised mainly of +RW failings.

You'll notice that most of the incompatibility from the + comes from the Panasonic players. In addition, many of the tested players are not the most current models. I think we're going to find greater and greater compatibility for the "+R" format. Also, I kind of wonder how rigorously they tested the features. I've read many reports of good "-R" compatibility for playing and basic operation, but actual use shows obvious glitches.

Of course, whomever is "championing" their format will stand up and defend their choice, just as I am doing now! I only hope that one of the formats "wins" so that we can have 100% compatibility on all set top and computer players.

Please, no heat, I'm only voicing an opinion to the original post.

Mark

[Jerry Jones]

It seems the "+" camp made some early claims of superior compatibility that haven't materialized.

I couldn't help but chuckle at some of the remarks I heard from certain electronics store salesmen six months ago.

Are the "+" formats emerging as the dominant disc type?

I'm not so sure.

The first crack in the "+" camp armor seemed evident when Sony threw in the towel and added DVD-R/DVD-RW capability to their drives.

The real support for "+" format discs and drives was in the after-market, add-in computer drive category - at the low-end retailers such as Best Buy.

Even so, the DVD-R/DVD-RW formats have maintained a high profile partly because Apple has decided to continue offering those formats.

Don't ask me why, but when Apple speaks the market takes notice.

It seems the victory for the DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM camp has been the story of stand alone player/recorders.

The sheer number of models that support DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM is impressive.

Interestingly enough - I'm noticing that even Best Buy and Circuit City here in my city have backed off of pushing the "+" format and are now offering a healthy selection of both disc media types.

This is mainly due to the fact Panasonic has emerged as the low cost producer of stand alone player/recorders, which continue to capture market.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Flying dutchman]

With the current price drop in DVD players, the problem becomes somewhat academic. Buy the DVD burner of your choice, then select a $100 DVD player that's happy with the media.

There are no "incompatible" DVD burners, only incompatible players. And these will soon disappear from the market because of people like you and me. Four or five years from now the incompatible drives will have died out.

It makes no sense for a player manufacturer to refuse either "+" or "-" discs because sub-$100 players will kick them out of the market. Produce what the customer wants or be gone...

[Dr Mordrid]

Some burners are better than others as regards the accuracy of their tracking, which could very well affect player compatability. I read on some Aussie site a review of several burners and guess which one tracked the best?

Panasonic SW-9751

Dr. Mordrid

[wkulecz]

Most of the + incompatability has been designed in by Panasonic and Pioneer.

+ compatability is superior in the older players I've tested, but not enough to be worth argueing about. The player in our living room does DVD+R but not DVD-R so I went with DVD+R after returning the DVD-R burner. Since my wife has mostly figured out how to use this player, buying another is just not an option until this one dies. I've a Sony NS315 (which was one of the first to "officially" support both formats) in the editing room as my "gold" standard. I've never seen a glitch from it on a disk that has glitched in a test player -- if I did I'd conclude the disk was bad and repeat the test with different media.

There is more to compatabilty than not spitting out the disk. I've found lots of players that "accept" DVD-R but they glitch too badly on playback to be useful. With DVD+R these players seem to either reject the disk or play it glitch free -- which to me is much better behaviour. YMMV. But I don't see DVD-R vs. DVD+R compatability as different enough to be worth argueing about -- both are poor in older players and fine in most new ones.

But then some people just have to "win" an argeument., and Pioneer introducing an combo burner means DVD+RW/R had "lost". Right?

If you read the "playback quality" test description, its flawed. Watching only "random" 90 second selections would have led me to conclude virtually anything that didn't spit out the disks was "good". I made this mistake initially!

They also haven't tested multiple instances of nominally identical players. I've tested duplicate models of Panasonic and Sharp players where one played the DVD-R fine while the other glitched too badly to watch!

Its easy enough to find a new player for well under $100 that officially supports DVD-R and DVD+R. With players older than about ~14 months, don't expect buch better than 2 in 3 for either DVD-R or DVD+R unless you are willing to ignore the glitches. To maximize your coverage you need a combo burner to cover the ones that play DVD+R but not DVD-R or vice-versa. I find copying the DVD+/- to DVD-/+ (or vice-versa) with Nero is fine assuming the DVDROM in your computer handles both.

To me if the disk does not playback glitch free for at least 30 minutes and have correctly working FF/REV the player is not compatible. If the player does not "officially" support burned media extrapolating from one instance to all of that model is clearly risky since in both my tests with duplicate players extrapolation failed at N=2.

Menu navigation bugs I've not investigated, but I've certainly seen players that were otherwise "compatable" by my definition where the menu navigation didn't work "correctly" as defined by the authoring software's "test mode" before burning.

If you are only making disks for yourself, then get the burner you like and buy a compatible player -- I'm in complete agreement with FD here. Price of media in your area may be the deciding factor. Around here there is no difference in price between DVD-R and DVD+R for brand name media. (I use Fuji mostly and Verbatim when I can't get Fuji, my friend uses Memorex, I'm biased against them from prior experience with tapes and CDs, but have had no problems with the disks he's burned for me). Noname DVD-R media does seem cheaper if you are willing to chance a rather larger lot than I'm comfortable with given the declining prices. The situation seems reversed for RW. I picked up a 10-pk spindle of DVD+RW from K-Hypermedia (which I'd define as "noname") for $19.95 that I've used for data without problems so far. I've seen ads for these recently for $15. IMHO, RW media for DVD video is pretty much a waste of time unless you're doing it only for your own compatible player.

If you are making disks for clients get a combo burner and warn them up front that they may need a new player and there is nothing you can really do about it.

--wally.

[Jerry Jones]

Wally claimed:

>Most of the + incompatability
>has been designed in by
>Panasonic and Pioneer.

Actually, Panasonic and Pioneer were designing and manufacturing DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM drives long before the "+" camp ever got to market.

So your opinion doesn't seem logical and I would challenge you to provide a shred of evidence to back up that claim.

A link to an article or study, perhaps?

>There is more to compatabilty than
>not spitting out the disk. I've found
>lots of players that "accept" DVD-R
>but they glitch too badly on playback
>to be useful.

I doubt that has anything at all to do with format.

That would - instead - seem to be related to the purchase of defective players.

All of my players support DVD-R and DVD-RW media without any glitches.

It seems to me the "+" devices are late to market.

The drives were long delayed and late.

The stand alone player/recorder models have been few and late.

There are still no camcorders being manufacturered that will record to DVD+R or DVD+RW media.

Late.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

And lets not forget the compatability problems caused by using MPEG audio instead of AC3 in NTSC players. This is a non-trivial problem.

This is very well illustrated by a 1999 model Philips DVD deck we have in storage. I pulled it out the other day for some testing and sure enough it just would not play a DVD-R encoded with MPEG audio, but if I put an AC3 disk in there was no problem at all.

Uppance: the utility of MSPro7, its special version of DVDMF2 and DVD Workshop AC3 are not to be underestimated when it comes to DVD deck compatability in NTSC.

Dr. Mordrid

[wkulecz]

Go to the original DVD+ Alliance website where they showed a table of physical parameters of pressed single and double layer DVDs vs DVD-R vs DVD+RW. DVD+RW is virtually identical in physical properties to the second layer of dual layer disks. The only reason for any player to not read DVD+RW is because the firmware gets confused when presented basically a second layer without having had a first layer to read. This is the basis for the "compatability switch utility" that fixes a few old players like Toshiba 2709 (if I remember the model number correctly) which rejects DVD-R, but reads DVD+RW disks made with the compatability hack. This is not much help in general since this "hack" to the disk headers will break some other players that would otherwise work. DVD+R compatability is much better than DVD+RW.

Ignore the Panasonic and Pioneer players and recalculate the percentages, which is more compatible now? Where are the players from Apex, Zenith, RCA, JVC, Sharp and other "independent" makers without a stake in DVD Forum's IP in these tests? These are the players most of my friends have and that dominate in my tests. My Apex glitches both DVD-R and DVD+R, but DVD+R is infrequent enough to be watchable (generally passes the 30 minute viewing test but never seems to go past 40-60 minutes without a glitch. But FF/REV is broke for either media on this player so I rated it incompatible for both in my totals.

Doc, the player you mention is the first I've heard of that wouldn't do MPEG layer2 audio -- I've ran into a few that required a setup menu selection to enable "stereo" outputs, but beyond this none of the players I tested were "fixed" by using a test disk with LPCM instead of MPEG layer 2 audio. Maybe AC3 audio would help, but I wouldn't bet the cost of AC3 encoder and authoring tools on it!

There are lots of problems with compatability, Bottom line is neither format is very good and its still too easy to end up with an incompatible player even now. This is mitigated by cheap players that do offically support both formats -- like the ~$90 Sony NS325.

Basically I don't think their percentages are stastically significantly different and are probably overly optimistic for either media. The only safe assumption is if a player doesn't say it reads DVD-R and/or DVD+RW on the box (or in the manual) you'd be a fool to count on burned disks working!

Very early in the format war Sony stated it'd be "trivial" to make burners to support both + and - formats. That most new burners being announced are combo burners would seem to bear this out. Having a combo burner maximizes your chances of being able to make a disk that will work in an existing player.

If media costs for either format stays significantly cheaper the other will likely die out eventually. I don't see this happening, so having a combo burner and a player compatible with both lets you buy whatever media is "on sale" when you need it.

If you've got an "older" player and want to buy a burner figure about a 1 in 3 chance you'll need a new player no matter what burner you buy.

I've an older player in the living room that needs DVD+R so that's what I use for now. Personally I think both formats suck and hope Blu-Ray or whatever comes along for HD gets its shit together -- but I'm betting Hollywood won't let it happen :-(

--wally.

[Jerry Jones]

Wally wrote:

"Ignore the Panasonic and Pioneer players and recalculate the percentages, which is more compatible now?"

"Where are the players from Apex, Zenith, RCA, JVC, Sharp and other "independent" makers"

Independent?

Hardly.

Apex has clearly exhibited a "+" leaning - with its newest player/recorder release.

Same is true of RCA.

You still haven't produced a shred of evidence to back up your initial suggestion that there is a Panasonic/Pioneer 'conspiracy' to rig their players against DVD+R discs.

In fact, both companies were producing DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM players long before the "+" formats ever hit the market.

The backers of the "+" formats made very prominent and bold claims about superior compatibility that - based on the evidence available - seem to have fallen short of expectation.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Hulk]

It would really take a tremendous amount of time to complete a comprehensive, unbiased comparison of the two formats. Discs would have to be tested with a critical eye for upwards of an hour per player. Also, all menu fuctions would have to be tested.

After buying my "+" recorder, I took a burned disc to Best Buy and Circuit City and tested a variety of players. As Wally noted, NONE of the Panasonic or Pioneer players would accept a "+" disc. In addition, all of the players that accepted the +R also accepted the +RW and played all functions, including a quite elaborate menu perfectly. Very important since it's rare to get a disc authored exactly correctly on the first try, at least for me anyway. The +RW test discs have saved me a bundle.

My next burner will be dual format so this really isn't a big deal.

Mark

[Jerry Jones]

Still...

Panasonic and Pioneer were manufacturing and selling DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM players long before the "+" camp could get to market.

In that circumstance, it seems to me the burden would be on the "+" camp to produce a disc that will play on those first generation machines.

What happened was the exact opposite, apparently.

Even with that kind of lead time, the "+" camp still couldn't produce a disc that would play on existing players.

And the other apparent suggestion in this thread is that Pioneer and Panasonic should now be expected to "backward engineer" their players to work with the new "+" format.

Or - the suggestion being made in this thread is that the "+" discs worked fine on first generation Pioneer and Panasonic players, but that then Pioneer and Panasonic huddled together and decided to conspire against the "+" formats and produced newer players that reject "+" discs.

That's preposterous, in my view.

It seems to me what really happened was that the "+" format was too little and too late.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[wkulecz]

And Pioneer's A06 Combo burner means DVD+ is dead right? Maybe someday Panasonic will wake up too.

--wally.