Ok, more and more engineers are asking me to supply this or that on DVD.
So, the new computer that's coming can write these. Went to Costco to
et a stack of DVD and here was the puzzler: They had both DVD-R and
DVD+R, same price. I herewith openly confess that I had no clue. We
don't even have a DVD player at home but I guess that excuse ain't good
enough.

The new computer will be able to write both. Which one is the preferred
format?

Google resulted in very mixed opinions, mostly that +R has less write
errors but that -R is more compatible. Much of my material will be
drawings, ultrasound images and so on. It must run on other computers
including older models but also on DVD players in conference rooms. My
hunch is that -R would be better because it seems to be the older
standard (1997 or so) but I am not sure.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

"Joerg" <notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote in message
news:fNElh.56724$wP1.40248@newssvr14.news.prodigy. net...
My understanding was R- was slightly preferable but all of the players
within the last 3-5 years or so had no trouble reading either.

Robert

DVD and DVD-R are the early standards, and are well supported, and (as
you mentioned) DVD-R is slightly more compatible. Except for some
high-end Macintosh models, DVD-RAM never got anywhere (and should
probably be avoided), but the other variants all have good read
support.

There were write support issues with DVD+R at one time (burner programs
that didn't support it).

In article <fNElh.56724$wP1.40248@newssvr14.news.prodigy.net> ,
notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net says...
There is an especially good article comparing the various DVD formats
at:

http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/20...-choose-cddvd-
archival-media/

--Gene

"Gene S. Berkowitz" <first.last@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.200107fb28862af49897ff@newsgroups.comcast .net...
Interesting article. I'll use +R format for my archiving.

Thanks, Gene.

Bob

Joerg wrote:
The problems concerning engineering and DVDs
is not so much formats as wherer the disk is going
to be used. For conference rooms, schools,
and home use, you would want maximum compatibility,
like DVD+RW or DWD+R.
Put for systems that get a lot of wear and tear,
like cars, aiirplanes, it's preferrable in most
cases to use a lower compatibility format like DVD-ROM.

On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Dec 2006 01:56:27 GMT) it happened Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote in
<fNElh.56724$wP1.40248@newssvr14.news.prodigy.net> :

If it needs to play on _old_ DVD players use DVD-R.

DVD+R has many advantages, but needs the so called CDROM bit set for older
DVD players to be able to play it.
Soem modern DVD burners (like a 16x NEC 7173A I just installed) are unable
to set that CDROM bit for single layer DVD without a firmware upgrade.
This may cause problems.

So use DVD-R.

That said I always use DVD+R, let them buy a newer player.
mm maybe I should order some DVD- anyways, now I use the NEC,
it is always a disappointment if you give somebody a DVD and it does not play
in their player.
And firmware updates... YMMV.

Gene S. Berkowitz wrote:

Thanks, Gene. I will study that article when back from church. Nice!

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Jan Panteltje wrote:

What sunny day? SCNR...


After reading the article Gene mentioned it looks like DVD+R is vastly
superior from a technical point of view. Now the question remains
whether most DVD players can read that. I guess a lot of them should.


Firmware updates is what I'd really like to avoid, for me as well as for
the recipients.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

"Joerg" <notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote in message
news:_dZlh.1492$ji1.480@newssvr12.news.prodigy.net ...

IME they can play DVD+R but maybe not DVD-R








--

On Mon, 01 Jan 2007 01:12:26 GMT, Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote:

I have often found that the problem with reading is more to do whether
the disc was written multi session or left open for further writes. I
have found that if one writes a disk single session , and close the
disk, then the discs are readable by fairly old drives regardless of
whether I used DVD-R or DVD+R. With CD-Rs written as a single session
and closed using the ISO format, I have found that only very old 8x
and slower have problems reading the discs.

Regards
Anton Erasmus

Hi every one..
I dont burn many dvd or cds for that matter... but i do backups of
stuff everynow and then...
and for backup i always prefer to burn every thing in duplicate...

all the photos the videos i shoot and the stuff i download from the
internet gets written to dvds at one point or the other... and for that
purpose i always use two dvds for storing the same set of files...

earlier i used to use CDs and at one point i discovered that the ones
which were made by a company called PRinco had their datalayer getting
peeled off... that was a horrific experience...

at that point of time i googled out the reviews for dvds and cds for
hours at end and came to a final conclusion :

1) keep your hard disk defragmented and shut down your computer
properly everytime.. if there are bad sectors on your hard drive.. then
your computer might get hiung up while writing a cd/dvd and your cd/dvd
will get spoilt
2) even though you dvd writers support 16x writing and the dvd media
you use is 16x, never write at that speed... i personally dont write at
speeds above 4x... that ensures that the throughput that your dvd
drives require are quite less than your computers' limits.. hence
lesser chance of DVD burn process failing...
3) dvd/cd writer drives made by LITE -ON seem to be the best of them
all in terms of price and long life/reliability
4) always verify the dvd/cd after burning... most dvd/cd buring
software have an option to verify the written files ...
5) never use multiple DVD writers while recording multiple copies of
the same set of files
6) never do "copy on the fly" .. ie copy a DVD from one drive to
another direct... always copy the DVD/CD to hard disk first and only
then copy it to the target drive

Personally I use only Sony's DVD-R to back up stuff/distribute
photos/videos to my friends
and I use Nero with a LITEON DVD-RAM drive


Anurag


Anton Erasmus wrote:

On a sunny day (Mon, 01 Jan 2007 01:12:26 GMT) it happened Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote in
<_dZlh.1492$ji1.480@newssvr12.news.prodigy.net>:

Sorry about that.

If you know hat player 'they have': there is a compatibiliy list,
now the whole list is no longer on line but a search can be made.
http://www.dvdplusrw.org/Compatibili...0&sid=2&aid=59

Happy New Year :-)

On a sunny day (1 Jan 2007 04:00:43 -0800) it happened lithiumhead@gmail.com
wrote in <1167652843.429094.71120@n51g2000cwc.googlegroups. com>:

In case of DVD+ it is perfectly OK to stop writing for a while and
have the computer do other things due to load.
For example (I am a Linux user) I can record DVB-S digital satellite
directly to a DVD+R, but the stream comes in only at about 4 Mbits/s,
so the DVD writer light will go on and off as it waits for data.
This is the way the TV DVD recorders you can buy work too.

Well, I have a Philips, it was one of the first, it has burned a half
thousand or more DVD+, plus some respectable number of CDRs, and is still OK.
However it can no longer work with anything above 8x it seems, so
I upgraded.
Also it was on 24/7 for 6 years ...
Philips fails 100% with firmware updates, not only are newer ones not there,
older ones can not be found on the ever changing Philips website.

Absolutely I always do that.


Same as above, makes no difference for DVD+ if the hardware is OK.

Same as above, makes no difference for DVD+ if the hardware is OK.

Mmm, I wrote much of the software myself for Linux, use
dvd+rwtools from Chalmers, contributed to Linux dvdauthor (subtitles,
multiple audio channels), did some other stuff, see my web page:
http://panteltje.com/panteltje/dvd/index.html
login with user 'guest' and password 'none'.

So, for me at least DVD+ works great :-)

I cannot speak for MS windows, I _have_ Nero (it came with a DVD writer).
The only thing I would now need to write (software) is a labelflash utility
for my NEC, it seems to be a module in the later Nero versions (supported),
but this was a bulk writer, and no data available on how labelflash works.

(labelflash has the laser burn text onto a blue backside of the DVD, it
is different from that other system 'lightscribe', and looks a bit better,
disks are _very_ expensive.

At this moment I use an Epson inkjet to print nice colored layout directly on
printable DVDs.
The Epson sucks however, so does their support.
Next one will no way be Epson.

The inkjet printed DVDs look absolutely beautiful however, and allow you to be
as artistic as you like.
It will set you back $$$ in ink, especially if you use a lot of dark
or colored background.
If you want it for production, then you can try this perhaps (have not tried this myself):
http://www.continuousink.com/proddetail.asp?prod=epson6

On Mon, 01 Jan 2007 12:52:35 GMT, Jan Panteltje
<pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote:

I have picked up problems with media written at the maximum speed in
the past. The first time it happened I used the utility software that
came with my plexor writer to do some investigation. I checked the
quality of discs written at various speeds. The plextor utility checks
the number of errors (correctable) per sector or track and plots this
with a threshold line that indicates where the number of errors are to
many to correct. When writing at the maximum speed the number of
errors were already at close to 80 to 90% of this threshold. At 4x
writing the number of errors were at less than 10% of this threshold.
The system it was checked on were fast enough to handle the transfer
rate at 16x, so the writer did not need to stop/start.
On a slower machine where the writer needed to stop/start, there were
definitate peaks in the error rate where the disk was stopped/started
again.
Hence for important data I never write faster than 4x. For less
important data I might consider 8x on a fast machine.


I have found both benq and lite-on drives to be very good. Many other
brands are actually manufactured by benq or lite-on. Both companies
seem to fix problems with their firmware and provide very good quality
burns.

[Snipped]

Regards
Anton Erasmus

On a sunny day (Mon, 01 Jan 2007 19:14:47 +0200) it happened Anton Erasmus
<nobody@spam.prevent.net> wrote in
<rrfip2tofe2j8992q70cb1hg2chlhf8eae@4ax.com>:

Yes this happens, I have seen some tests that confirm that.
If you want to write slower to reduce error rate it is OK I think.
There are big differences between disks and writers too however.



If this was DVD+ then there is something wrong.
I emailed the author of dvd+rwtools years ago about this, as I had errors too,
but he pointed out I must be imagining :-) Later I found out my setup was wrong
(cannot remember what it was).
Have a read here:
http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/
It is Linux specific, but scroll all the way to the bottom, where its says:
'Unlike DVD-R[W], DVD+R[W] recordings can be suspended at any time without any side effects.'

It is a very interesting page from the autor of the soft himself.
And we are all learning :-)


In general I am very satisfied with the optical media, just use good disks.
I use Verbatim now, have tried many.... Sometimes you get a bad batch,
had some Ritek last year that sort of get black spots, same problem
I had with TDK years ago.
Best look up the media code, and then google if somebody had problems.
TDK for example changed manufacturer.... just after I recommended these to somebody.
Buying more expensive disks is worth it, just avoiding the stress of re-trying.

Jan Panteltje wrote:

Well, after a cold night we were blessed with an absolutely gorgeous day
this Jan-1. Almost like summer.

Thanks. However, mostly they won't know what's in the conference room.
Also, it happens a lot that I get there and they say that there is an
urgent ad-hoc meeting in the room we were supposed to be in and we move
to some other place.


Same to you.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

On Mon, 01 Jan 2007 12:30:56 -0800, in sci.electronics.design Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote:

of hours, but
http://news.independent.co.uk/enviro...cle2116873.ece




martin

"martin griffith" <mart_in_medina@ya___.es> wrote in message
news:q2tip21vp9tbe017ed9q5mb3crgp25mhe4@4ax.com...
From which I quote:
Is that Celsius or Fahrenheit?



And you (all) too.

Steve
http://www.fivetrees.com

On Mon, 1 Jan 2007 21:02:26 -0000, in sci.electronics.design "Steve at
fivetrees" <steve@NOSPAMTAfivetrees.com> wrote:



martin