Bill in Co. said:
Well, that's not the only reason. Come over and see for yourself.
Well, as I said in my other post, evidently there is some difference. To
recap:
We know the DVD+R discs are manufactured at least in some way different
from the DVD-R discs, but whether the problem is with reading the disc
themselves, or the way it is written to the disc, I can't say. But one
thing I can say: I have on at least a couple of occasions had discs I
made using DVD+Rs that could not be read by my older DVD players, whereas
when I made them using DVD-R discs, they worked perfectly. And yes, the
DVD writer was able to write both types of discs.
As I said before, the difference in the technology relates purely in the way
the disc is written. It is related to providing the write laser the ability
to accurately position burns subsequent to the first burn. Once the disc is
written, as far as reading the disc is concerned there is absolutely no
difference between them.
There was also some article covering this very point that I read some time
ago on the net, so it's not like it was just my case alone. The
recommendation then was to use the DVD-Rs for better backward
compatibility, and from what little I have seen, they were correct.
Again as I said before, this recommendation arose because quite a number of
video DVD players wouldn't read DVD+RW discs (the DVD+R didn't exist at this
point). Thus the story quickly spread that the '+' format wasn't fully
compatible with all DVD players. It was only when the DVD+R discs appeared
that it was discovered that the players that wouldn't play DVD+RW discs,
quite flawlessly played the DVD+R discs. This totally went against the
claimed reasons for the incompatibility. On investigation, it was found
that some video DVD players were reading the compatibility ID byte off the
disc (something that video players had no reason to do). If the ID byte was
'0' (DVD_ROM, DVD-R or DVD+R) or '1' (DVD-RW) then the player would play the
disc, but if the ID byte was '2' (indicating a DVD+RW disc - or more
accurately, indicating that the disc was byte eraseable and writable) the
player then executed a software routine that made the laser and motor behave
as though a non readable disc had been inserted, finally giving an error
message about incompatible format.
It was quickly realised that it was Toshiba players that did this and less
quickly realised that any other badged players where the player mechanism
was made by Toshiba. It should be remembered that it was Toshiba that
resisted the introduction of the '+' format, and Toshiba who was behind the
refusal to allow the '+' format to use the standard DVD logo on drives and
discs. Once Toshiba had succeeded in excluding the '+' format, it became
obvious that the DVD consortium would receive no revenue from this 'rogue'
format and so Toshiba had a vested interest in ensuring its demise. Once
the culprit was identified, the news travelled with Internet speed around
the planet and Toshiba suddenly found itself facing a consumer boycott*.
Toshiba had to a bit of backpedalling, and now their video players will play
DVD+RW format discs, but the their video DVD recorders continue not to
support the format, though to be fair to Toshiba the DVD+VR video recorder
format for DVD+RW is very different to the DVD-VR format for DVD-RW and
somewhat less flexible.
* In fact the Richer Sounds chain actually stopped stocking their goods
because no one would buy them.
I'd rather just stick with the tried and true DVD-R discs, which work on
about anything.
Virtually all my video DVD discs have been produced in DVD+R format and I've
never had a complaint. The only time I use DVD-R is for material that is
recorded on my DVD recorder. But even here, I will often record to DVD-RAM
and then transfer to DVD+R using authoring software if necessary. This also
allows me to add the widescreen flags which few, if any, video recorders
support when producing standard format video discs.
All of my data discs are DVD+R or DVD+RW.
