DVR-R , DVD+R, DVD-RAM: What's the Difference?

Home-burned DVDs are not exotic anymore. In fact, for most professionals shooting weddings and events, DVD is a required distribution format. Some confusion still exists about the various flavors of DVD available to the consumer and how this affects compatibility. The good news is that we can clear things up with one short article.

Before we get into any technical details about the DVD format, let us put your mind at rest with a simple statement: the factors that determine DVD compatibility rest almost entirely with the DVD player. The software you use, the computer platform, the brand of burner, the format of the discs and the brand of media all have less to do with compatibility than the standalone living room player used to play back the disc. In fact, the player effectively overrides any differences we've discovered between DVD-R and DVD+R, for example. In other words, when we've tested a $50 MegaMart DVD player and found that it plays DVD-R discs, we've found that it tends to play DVD+R discs as well.

So what are content producers to do? Of course we should try to make our discs as compatible as possible. That means doing a little research (like you are doing right now) to understand a bit more about the technology.

DVD-RAM was the first recordable and rewritable standard to hit the market and was defined by the DVD Forum (dvdforum.org), which is composed of over 220 companies. DVD-RAM discs can hold 4.7GB per side (for a total of 9.4GB on a dual-sided disc), although other sizes and capacities are available. As a rewritable format for data on a computer, DVD-RAM discs are great. Some come in a plastic cartridge or housing that makes them physically incompatible with many devices, but DVD-RAM discs are not generally compatible with living room DVD players anyhow. You will find standalone living room DVD burners using the DVD-RAM format, and even some camcorders, but you should not consider DVD-RAM to be a general-purpose distribution format for video.

Developed by the DVD Forum, DVD-R was the first write-once format that was compatible with DVD-Video for standalone players. One of the first (relatively) inexpensive burners to burn DVD-R was the Pioneer DVR-103, the next-next-generation of which (the DVR-105) is currently well below $200 on the street. Blank DVD-R discs are also the cheapest and most widely available media format. Home-burned DVD-R discs are not any more, or less, compatible than DVD+R discs.

DVD-RW is a rewritable format that is good for data. You can also use DVD-RW media to create video discs for distribution. We have, however, found that DVD+RW is a more compatible and useful format for video. In the end, more pragmatic concerns will dominate: DVD-RW discs are more expensive (and less compatible) than DVD-R discs and are therefore not really an option for distribution anyhow.