Well this was quite a read! Good to know some folks know how to find Wiki and learned to copy/paste information into a blog (snore), some give info that looks like they opened a web page, took 5 steps back from their monitor and threw a dart at it, while a few laid down some worthy opinions and facts, but heaven help anyone who was hoping to find an answer to the question they could hang their hat on and filter the "inaccuracies". I don't have all the answers either, but have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours ripping, decrypting, editing, shrinking and burning in most every format with most every disc brand, I have some experience. Still humble enough to consider myself a novice though, it's a complex topic. The answers are in here, but with many questionable additions. First, the plus or minus have no relevancy on what's been oft stated here, that plus is better for data, minus for video. The only reason minus is better is it's more widely accepted by dvd players PERIOD! That's what we're really after in this topic, all things being equal (and for all intents and purposes they are) minus R is better because it plays on almost all name brand players manufactured in recent years. Someone also said players that don't play DVD plus are really old ones and you should ditch your player?, well I have a $700 Denon to tell you that's hogwash. Also, whoever said you can't burn movies (commercial or otherwise) on these discs hasn't tried to rip and burn a movie for about 8 years! There are literally dozens of software programs, almost all free shareware or 30 day trial that will copy a movie you bought yesterday from Walmart. I could teach a Chimp to do it with a few bananas. Decrypting a Disney movie can be a challenge for the inexperienced, but all can be done, it's only complicated when you edit menus and compress them, stuff like that. Got VHS? My 3 year old could decrypt them, rip them to a DVD- and chuck the tape with a device called an Easycap, about $12 on Ebay. Go to Afterdawn.com and use the search engine, you'll learn things LucasFilm probably just figured out. Remember guys, everything is hard to do till you know how, then it's a walk in the park. DVD- owns the "Lions Share" of the market, the "War" has been waged and the battle won years ago. Don't forget not to buy cheap discs, taiyo Yuden or Verbatim if you don't want skipping, pausing, failed burns, quality is everything and cheap discs give you bad burns. Just my 1.5 cents
Comments
Biggest difference between -R and +R nowadays is that +R has much better error correction. Which also makes them better suited for data backup than -R. Errors/bad burns in toc of -R can make it impossible to retrieve data from the whole disc.
by Genaugmen on November 5th, 2009
saju paul wrote:~
'Once recorded, a DVD-R can be played on most home DVD players.' (Advertised as compatible with 90%+ of home DVD players.)
In my experience this statement is an opinion rather than a fact.
Unless the DVD-R is finalized, it will not play on any player other than the original. I learnt this the hard way, having to bin 100 discs when my first recorder needed replacing. Ouch!
by Puss_Cat on November 12th, 2009