DVD+R vs DVD-R
 

I am about to return a Mad Dog DVD write I purchased. It writes CDs and DVDs. My issue is that it only write DVD-Rs and by looking at sales circulars I am beginning to believe that DVD+R might emerge as the dominant format.

Does anyone have any opinions?

Best bet now is to buy a drive that can do it all. DVD-R, -RW, +R, +RW.

Yes, but I'd rather spend $80 on a drive that can do one or the other.

From what I understand (and I am not 100% sure on this), once a DVD blank is burned, it doesn't matter -- DVD+Rs, DVD-Rs and standard DVD players can all read it. If I'm full of shit, someone will correct me.

FWIW I borrowed standalone DVD recorder from work a while back to archive some old 8mm home videotapes. The resulting DVD-R's would not play in my Cyberhome 402 DVD player. They did fine on my portable Koss one. Cyberhome claimed it should play ay DVD-R and other folks confirmed that it did. So it might be worthwhile to do a quick compatibility test with whichever player(s) are improtant for you to use.

Also FWIW our media center director suggests DVD-R. I haven't gotten a chance to ask him why, but he really keeps up with all this stuff, and I'm sure he would have switched to DVD+R by now if he felt it was beneficial.

Also keep in mind that the _brand_ of the media blanks and the make of your player can matter as much as the +/- status. A lot of CD and DVD players are finicky about what they'll play. (For example, my Sony in the living room won't play VCDs unless they're on light-blue-dye media, and FujiFilm blanks are the only ones that have worked reliably with it. Likewise, my PlayStation only works well with dark-blue-dye (Verbatim DataLifePlus) CD blanks.)

The standards are not entirely compatible, so some readers won't like DVD-R or DVD+R, but some will be ok with both. Of course, some will be OK with neither.

The real question is, which standard has the widest support, therefore the highest likelihood of being readable by other DVD players? From what I understand, DVD+R is the most commonly supported format, but then again, I may be misinformed. But one thing that does make me bet on DVD+R is that Dell is pushing DVD+R/+RW pretty hard. If the biggest consumer desktop manufacturer is leaning towards a standard, I figure it's a pretty safe bet for the future.

Then again, I'm personally waiting until the manufacturers finally make up their minds on one standard (assuming that ever happens).

Apple pushes DVD-R,-RW. And Apple's big in the video arena.

Buy a dual-format. Or just stick to what you've got and figure by the time one of the formats "wins", you'll be able to pick up a dual-format cheap.