drumsncode
02-14-2010, 03:43 PM
I'm posting this as a public service of sorts. A few years back I poured over the web trying to understand what the differences were in the two formats of DVD's, "Minus R" versus "Plus R". I finally stumbled upon a very technical article which convinced me beyond all doubt that +R is the way to go.
The article was way over my head, but not so much that I couldn't comprehend that +R is a superior format at the low level, and that it has far better error correction capabilities. And I'm sorry I didn't save the link to the article. I remember sending it to my friends I was so impressed with the breakthrough.
I thought about this today when I was in a store buying DVD+Rs, and a guy was asking a salesman about the formats. I patiently waited like a geek stalking its prey until I had each guy isolated so I could explain it to them without upstaging the salesman.
The bottom line is, if your machine supports it, DVD+R is a much more reliable format. It's so good in fact, that on my Philips DVD recorder, if you have a power outage in the middle of writing to the disk, it can actually repair the damage and allow you to continue using the disk. I have never seen anything like that on a DVD-R. Credit goes too to the folks that wrote the Philips software. They really pulled out all the stops on that one. If I have an outage writing a disk on my Panasonic DVD recorder, I just have to throw the disk in the trash.
Anyway, when people burn DVDs they generally want to keep them a long time, and +R will help insure that happens. Also, do not buy the really cheap DVD disks. I've read horror stories about their shelf life. You'll have great luck with Taiyo Yuden, the best disk around, and I also have had good luck with Sony disks. As with anything, if it's really cheap in price, there's a reason!
The article was way over my head, but not so much that I couldn't comprehend that +R is a superior format at the low level, and that it has far better error correction capabilities. And I'm sorry I didn't save the link to the article. I remember sending it to my friends I was so impressed with the breakthrough.
I thought about this today when I was in a store buying DVD+Rs, and a guy was asking a salesman about the formats. I patiently waited like a geek stalking its prey until I had each guy isolated so I could explain it to them without upstaging the salesman.
The bottom line is, if your machine supports it, DVD+R is a much more reliable format. It's so good in fact, that on my Philips DVD recorder, if you have a power outage in the middle of writing to the disk, it can actually repair the damage and allow you to continue using the disk. I have never seen anything like that on a DVD-R. Credit goes too to the folks that wrote the Philips software. They really pulled out all the stops on that one. If I have an outage writing a disk on my Panasonic DVD recorder, I just have to throw the disk in the trash.
Anyway, when people burn DVDs they generally want to keep them a long time, and +R will help insure that happens. Also, do not buy the really cheap DVD disks. I've read horror stories about their shelf life. You'll have great luck with Taiyo Yuden, the best disk around, and I also have had good luck with Sony disks. As with anything, if it's really cheap in price, there's a reason!