Industry Divided Over DVDs
from the because-we-need-another-standards-war dept
Just because life in the technology world doesn’t seem like fun unless there’s some sort of standards war going on, here’s an article about the latest battle between competing recordable DVD standards. Basically, if you buy a recordable DVD system now, it might not work with a future system, depending on the final results of the standards battles. Of course, from a technical standpoint, there’s little difference between the two, so it kind of makes you wonder why they don’t just work out their differences for the good of the overall market.
Comments on “Industry Divided Over DVDs”
Wait till blue laser DVD's come out
to fuck shit up even more. And maybe someone will come out with tape or cartridge formats to store DVD data, given the physical vulnerabilities of a flat disc. Better yet, why not tape reel DVD’s?
Appreciate the irony
I love how the people at Dell and HP claim that the multi-format drives are a waste and that they are pushing towards a single format… it’s ironic because there was already a single format (DVD-R/RW) that was developed by the DVD standards forum. Dell, HP and others struck out on their own to create a proprietary non-compatible format, the DVD+R/RW format.
The +R/RW format has one benefit over the -R/RW format:
* You can delete files on a +RW disc and reclaim space, on a -RW disc you must delete everything to reuse the space (I never use RW discs so this doesn’t affect me at all).
For that one benefit, you will pay significantly more per disc than for the -R/RW format and lose some compatibility with DVD players. What a deal!
I’ve had my Pioneer -R/RW drive for 1 year now and have had virtually zero problems with compatability. Some of the early, cheap 1x (v1.0) DVD-R media wasn’t as compatible with some DVD players, however the new 2x (v2.0) rated discs are almost 100% compatible. I have yet to find a DVD player or DVD-ROM drive that can’t read a name brand v2.0 DVD-R disc.
who cares
This “issue” matters to tech journalists but probably not a whole lot of others. Removable media is on its way out anyway.