what is the difference+ or- dvdr and whats better

[vonhosen]

different formats

-R is being pushed by Pioneer and was the earlier format so theoretically has wider user base, cheaper burners & media. In recent months though the price gap has diminished.

+R is pushed by Sony, Philips & HP . Is newer & technologically a little more advanced.

It's not clear yet which format will win out in the end, or whether they will happily co-exist. Sony has hedged it's bets a bit in the PC burner world by producing a burner that reads & writes both formats.

thanks

[kenfowler3966]

It is not true to say +r is more technically advanced, it is just a different format choice, that at the momment has less compatibility with existing dvd players and where the media is still more expensive than -r.

It is designed for ease of use in budget machines sponsored by phillips, that work in a linear fashion on the rewritable media (+rw), much like the humble vhs tape, rather than the better random access of the -ram machine which works more like the modern computer hard drive.

Both formats will survive as both machines can produce dvd's that will play on most other machines, particularly the most recent ones, even though +r is not formally supported by the dvd body. The -ram and -r formats are widely supported by computers and the budget +r is also getting some suport now even though it is less useful for data storage.
Remember betamax was not a failure, it was still the medium of choice in japan until quite recently by those who preferred quality and the last machines were still in production up to late last year.
It was only the video hire shops which killed off the betamax commercially in britain by only stocking vhs. This will not happen with dvd as the playback machines will usually play both -r and +r as well.
The machines willl all be usefull for their complete service life whatever route is chosen, with write once media being serviceable until dvd itself goes out of favour, which is unlikely as replacements such as blue ray or simillar are likely to be backwards compatible. If a format goes out of use it is only programs on rewritable material which will be lost, so keep that to a minimum for programs you wish to view and then delete for program time shifting.
At the end of the day you have to make your own choice as to which route to go down. Pick the phillips for simple one button recording where one program will overwrite another as on vhs, or the more sophisticated panasonic where you can time slip and utilise all the space on the -ram media without risk of overwriting other previously recorded programs.

If you are also considering the possibility of sky+, then forget the +r route and get the panasonic hs2 or its soon to be released replacement which will remove the need for sky+ and its additional subscription and allow you to record programs onto the hard-drive, remove ads etc and create perfect dvd-r media which will play on virtually any existing machine.

[vonhosen]

Which is the better format depends very much on your intended use & whether you are talking about recordable set top boxes or for DVD authoring on PCs. The +R discs I buy now are exactly the same price as the -R discs I buy.

As far as PCs go +R is supposedly more advanced than -R as apparently you can edit the table of contents on a +R disc prior to finalising but you can't do this on a -R disc.(not something I have had to do or test). They take far less time to finalise as well.

Up until very recently +R PC burners were faster burning than -R though the very latest and just available burners & media from Pioneer are 4X making them the current fastest.

DVD-RAM was the original re-writeable format , but doesn't transfer well to most stand alone DVD players. As suggested it makes a good "video recorder" due to it's "phase technology" which means you can read & write data from it at the same time. (Watch the first episode while recording the second) .RAM discs are really designed to be kept in purpose built caddy's to protect them and they are more reliable than -RW/+RW as they can have about 100,000 re-writes as opposed to about 1,000 for the other formats. They also have a longer shelf life.

I author DVDs on both -R & +R burners & I have no particular favourite, just supplying the most compatible disc format for my recepients set top. Compatability has as much to do with the authoring process & quailty of media used as the format itself.

I use DVD-RAM burner for archiving because of it's reliability.

I fully expect to see the trend in Japan coming here very soon, of Recordable set top players with large internal hard drives. You can then record high quality MPEG-2 files to the hard drive & keep what you want by burning to disc while recording over what was only wanted to be played back from the hard drive for one viewing.

I also expect all the formats to survive & it to be simply a matter of choice which one you choose. This will be healthy as the competition will promote innovation & value for money for the customer.

[Rasczak]

-R is being pushed by Pioneer

And Toshiba, Panasonic, JVC, Hitachi, Sony as well as most other companies. It is, after all, the official write-once DVD format.

[kenfowler3966]

Originally posted by vonhosen

I fully expect to see the trend in Japan coming here very soon, of Recordable set top players with large internal hard drives. You can then record high quality MPEG-2 files to the hard drive & keep what you want by burning to disc while recording over what was only wanted to be played back from the hard drive for one viewing.

Its already available, the panasonic hs2, and works perfectly.

[vonhosen]

Yeah I know about the hs2 , I was talking about 120Gb+ hard drive models like the Pioneer DVR-99H

[malcom]

dkapit8. The most important practical difference in my oppinion between the formats is that the Philips format is "linear recording technology". While the RAM is "random access". A very very important difference. With linear recording to put it mildly editing is a bit of a none event and very primitive.

Why any computer supplier should consider putting linear technology ( A huge step backwards) alongside hard drive technology is simply astonishing.