DVD+R vs DVD - R

I was told by a salesman that the 50 packs of TDK DVD+Rs are $20
dearer than 50 packs of DVD-Rs because the DVD+Rs are intended for
archival use whereas the DVD-Rs are for recording things like TV
shows. This is not what I've been told about the difference in the
past. The packs seem to be almost identical, no mention of quality on
either pack.

Thanks
Mike

On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 04:40:38 GMT, MikeM wrote
in :

I was told by a salesman that the 50 packs of TDK DVD+Rs are $20
dearer than 50 packs of DVD-Rs because the DVD+Rs are intended for
archival use whereas the DVD-Rs are for recording things like TV
shows.

Total baloney. The price of DVD+R and DVD-R is normally the same.
I personally prefer DVD+R because of better error management, but that
has nothing to do with price.

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

MikeM wrote:
I was told by a salesman that the 50 packs of TDK DVD+Rs are $20
dearer than 50 packs of DVD-Rs because the DVD+Rs are intended for
archival use whereas the DVD-Rs are for recording things like TV
shows.

If you had brains would you be a salesdweeb at some electronics store?
The short version is that he's pushing one version for the profits.

This is not what I've been told about the difference in the
past. The packs seem to be almost identical, no mention of quality on
either pack.

Pretty much.

--
Ray Fischer

On 11 Feb 2008 06:05:00 GMT, (Ray Fischer) wrote in
:

MikeM wrote:
I was told by a salesman that the 50 packs of TDK DVD+Rs are $20
dearer than 50 packs of DVD-Rs because the DVD+Rs are intended for
archival use whereas the DVD-Rs are for recording things like TV
shows.

If you had brains would you be a salesdweeb at some electronics store?

If you had brains would you be believing a salesdweeb at some
electronics store?

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

MikeM added these comments in the current discussion du jour ...

I was told by a salesman that the 50 packs of TDK DVD+Rs are
$20 dearer than 50 packs of DVD-Rs because the DVD+Rs are
intended for archival use whereas the DVD-Rs are for recording
things like TV shows. This is not what I've been told about
the difference in the past. The packs seem to be almost
identical, no mention of quality on either pack.

Mike, are you intending to use either of these DVD types on your
PC or a TV DVR or both? I personally like Verbatim DVD-R the best
on my PC because they are the most reliable. Most other brands of
DVD-R also work generally very well on my PC but I stay away from
the no-name discs or store brands. The reason is that these
things are a dollar or less, sometimes two bits when on sale for
a spindle of 50 or 100 and it makes no sense to shave a few
pennies only to find out later there was some corruption even
with a no-errors burn.

I also have a Panasonic DVR with a VHS tape drive and a DVD
reader/burner. It will use either DVD-R or DVD+R but wants to
format the +R even though it is unnecessary. Some brands, such as
Memorex -R or +R simply will not burn on the DVR. It gets
anywhere from 50% complete to 100% and is in the process of
"finalizing" the disc when it fails. So, I use Verbatim -R
exclusively.

You didn't mention dual layer DVD-R/+R, but here's my experience
with those: I find that both Memorex and Verbatim of either type
work perfectly fine on my PC. Other name brands such as Sony also
work OK. I use these when I need to either pack as many gigs
worth of files as I can onto one disc or the size of the file
exceeds a single layer capacity. e.g., my Acronis True Image
image files average between 5 and 6 gig depending on compression.

My Panasonic DVR will burn a dual-layer disc but it is quite
unreliable, sometimes over a 50% failure rate. So, to get around
that, I increase the compression of the copy from either cable TV
or VHS tapes so movies fit. Since I am still on analog cable and
do not (yet) need higher quality DVR files to burn to DVD for
HDTV shows, the lower quality ratings do not show visible
degradation, at least for me.

As to what your salesman told you, it is exactly what the droids
at one computer store, Best Buy, and Circuit City tell me, but
when I challenge them as to why a +R is better, they give me a
blank stare and mumble some nonsense about it being a newer
technology. Well, OK, but new is not synonymous with better
always.

As far as longevity is concerned, what I have learned Googling on
this issue some time back (so I am likely out of date), discs can
and do degrade over time but I couldn't find a clear consensus on
the lifely life before failures. But, a far bigger issue to me is
that 10, 20, 50, 100 years from now when your children's children
attempt to view your family or vacation movies, DVD technology
and the multiple kinds of files that can be burned may well be as
obsolete as 8" or 5.25" floppies or 8-track tapes. But, to try to
mitigate the possibility of an immediate failure of some kind
and/or some unknown failure over time, I create new discs
periodically for the most important of my data. I did the same
with CD-R before I had a DVD burner and discs were economical
enough.

I'm sure I went beyond your basic question and may have missed
your entire point but I hope I've given you some personal
experience for you to evaluate in your situation.

Good luck and have a great week!

P.S. I have also had very good results with TDK. I always buy
spindles because I can buy a box of 100 thin jewel cases for only
$15 in clear or about $35 or so for the fancy multi-colored jobs.

--
HP, aka Jerry

"Never complain, never explain" - Henry Ford II

John Navas added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

I was told by a salesman that the 50 packs of TDK DVD+Rs are
$20 dearer than 50 packs of DVD-Rs because the DVD+Rs are
intended for archival use whereas the DVD-Rs are for recording
things like TV shows.

Total baloney. The price of DVD+R and DVD-R is normally the
same. I personally prefer DVD+R because of better error
management, but that has nothing to do with price.

John, I've not heard of anything that improves error handling so
I am quite interested in your expanding on your comment even
though I am not the OP. I use Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 and it
seems not to matter at all whether I use -R or +R. The failure
rate on my PC is so low that it makes no difference to me and I
buy whichever is on sale for my PC. See my reply to the OP,
though, for the entirely different results I get on a TV DVR.

Any info you could pass on wrt error handling would be most
appreciated.

--
HP, aka Jerry

"Never complain, never explain" - Henry Ford II

On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:02:33 GMT, "HEMI-Powered" wrote in
:

John Navas added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

Total baloney. The price of DVD+R and DVD-R is normally the
same. I personally prefer DVD+R because of better error
management, but that has nothing to do with price.

John, I've not heard of anything that improves error handling so
I am quite interested in your expanding on your comment even
though I am not the OP. I use Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 and it
seems not to matter at all whether I use -R or +R. The failure
rate on my PC is so low that it makes no difference to me and I
buy whichever is on sale for my PC. See my reply to the OP,
though, for the entirely different results I get on a TV DVR.

Any info you could pass on wrt error handling would be most
appreciated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD%2BR

In addition, DVD+R(W) has a more robust error management system than
DVD-R(W), allowing for more accurate burning to media independent of
the quality of the media. Additional session linking methods are more
accurate with DVD+R(W) versus DVD-R(W), resulting in fewer damaged or
unusable discs due to buffer under-run and multi-session disks with
fewer PI/PO errors.

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 04:40:38 GMT, MikeM wrote
in :

I was told by a salesman that the 50 packs of TDK DVD+Rs are $20
dearer than 50 packs of DVD-Rs because the DVD+Rs are intended for
archival use whereas the DVD-Rs are for recording things like TV
shows. This is not what I've been told about the difference in the
past. The packs seem to be almost identical, no mention of quality on
either pack.

For brand quality, see http://www.videohelp.com/dvdmedia

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

I have used DVDs to back up digital photos on my computer. I started
using HDDs because I kept getting errors on the disks. Since then I
have read a number of posts about burning speed making a difference. I
am thinking of having another go at disks, but burning at the slowest
speeds. The speed difference might explain my experience that DVD-RWs
didn't have errors, it seems it might have been because they are 4X. I
was burning the DVD-Rs at whatever speed my burner chose.

On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 04:40:38 GMT, MikeM
wrote:

I was told by a salesman that the 50 packs of TDK DVD+Rs are $20
dearer than 50 packs of DVD-Rs because the DVD+Rs are intended for
archival use whereas the DVD-Rs are for recording things like TV
shows. This is not what I've been told about the difference in the
past. The packs seem to be almost identical, no mention of quality on
either pack.

Thanks
Mike

John Navas added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

John, I've not heard of anything that improves error handling
so I am quite interested in your expanding on your comment
even though I am not the OP. I use Roxio Easy Media Creator 8
and it seems not to matter at all whether I use -R or +R. The
failure rate on my PC is so low that it makes no difference to
me and I buy whichever is on sale for my PC. See my reply to
the OP, though, for the entirely different results I get on a
TV DVR.

Any info you could pass on wrt error handling would be most
appreciated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD%2BR

In addition, DVD+R(W) has a more robust error management
system than DVD-R(W), allowing for more accurate burning to
media independent of the quality of the media. Additional
session linking methods are more accurate with DVD+R(W)
versus DVD-R(W), resulting in fewer damaged or unusable
discs due to buffer under-run and multi-session disks with
fewer PI/PO errors.

John, thanks for the link. I read the entire article but still do
not understand the apparent point. I've not seen Roxio 8 throw any
errors thus I have no direct experience but if the +R format
supports better error reporting, maybe I haven't seen it because
all of my burns have been error free with both -R and +R, at least
as far as Roxio "sees."

I haven't had a buffer under-run error since the early days of CD-R
and I don't do multi-session discs, do not "format" them to emulate
a read/write HD file system, nor do I use RW anything because my
few attempts were very unrealiable. So, thanks muchly for the added
info and link; I am still confused.

Do you have an opinion wrt my DVR throwing errors with DVD+R as
well as requiring a format by the DVR even though neither has ever
occurred with my PC? After reading the wikepedia article, I think I
can see why the DVR wants to format the disc, perhaps back to -R
that it may like better for some reason. The manual is pretty ****
poor, even though it appears to be quite comprehensive and claims
to support both single and dual-layer -R and +R discs but not in my
experience.

I am hardly disputing you or wikepedia or anyone, I am just
confused. Would not a modern DVR understand advanced error control
or is the burning software very unsophisticated compared to what
Roxio, Nero and other major optical utilities can do?

Of course, I've long known that on PCs occasionally and certainly
on the 2 different models with similar specs of the Panasonic DVR I
talked about are sensitive to media type because of the color of
the dye layer "confusing" the burning laser.

John, would I be correct in assuming that you have experienced
errors with -R discs that burn OK with +R? I will add one more
comment about my method of insuring or at least trying to insure a
truly error-free burn: no matter what the file type whether it be
JPEG, RAW, MS Office, downloaded app updates, MP3 files, just about
any common graphics or non-graphics file formats, I ALWAYS do a
number of sample reads/opens on the just burned disc even though no
errors have been reported. Now THAT has shown an occasional
problem. e.g., an entire folder full of MS 97 Word .doc files
burned correctly but none could be opened.

Perhaps I should add one more piece of info to this puzzle of mine:
for many reasons, I use ultra-long file names for my downloaded car
pictures, the ones I take with one of the 3 digital cameras I have
owned over the years, scans, family pictures, etc. I do this so as
to easily pack in as much data about the picture files so that it
is easily searchable by Windows Search rather than use a utility
such as Exifer and I use a really neat free utility called Long
File Name Finder to scan my folders for the total length of the
file names. Thus with my desire for max meta data embedded in the
file name, I long ago ran into the 64-character name limit imposed
by the Joliet file system and now use it very seldom, e.g., to
create MP3 CDs for my car. I almost exclusively use UDF. I have
never found a need for an ISO disc yet so have never tried that.

Do you have any comments about Joliet vs. UDF? UDF theoretically
allows up to 125 character names, including the extension. I use
120. Occasionally, very occasionally, the entire CD or DVD will
burn without error but all the files and folder names were zero
length. I haven't had this happen in some time, but it occurred
somewhat more frequently when I was using Roxio 5 for just CD-R.

Thanks again for your insights.

--
HP, aka Jerry

"Never complain, never explain" - Henry Ford II