DVD Burners Hit Prime Time

The Politics of Burning

Rewritable DVD might have reached a wider audience already if it weren't for the logjam of competing standards and the conflicting claims of compatibility with the huge installed base of set-top DVD players. Many prospective buyers have kept their wallets in their pockets rather than face a confusing choice between the competing formats: DVD-RW and DVD-RAM (both from the DVD Forum), and DVD+RW (from the DVD+RW Alliance).

Adding to the confusion, both DVD-RW and DVD+RW have their own corresponding write-once formats: DVD-R and DVD+R, respectively. (The -R and +R media offer greater compatibility, particularly with DVD set-top players.) Fortunately, new drives like our Best Buy, the Sony DRU-500A, support both DVD-RW and DVD+RW. These bet-hedging wonders let buyers migrate to DVD without worrying over which format is more compatible or which one will eventually win out. DVD-RAM adherents can also cover more bases with Panasonic's new LF-D521 or LG's Super-Multi DVD-Writer GMA-4020B, which support DVD-RW as well.

Each format has its strengths, and no single format is best for everything: While DVD-R and +R are good for video, DVD-RW and +RW are good for storing data because they let you reuse the discs. DVD-RAM still has a niche in data storage as well, because the discs are protected in cartridges and can be rewritten a huge number of times.

But as welcome as multiformat drives may be, the DVD format battle has never been the problem that the VHS-versus-Betamax contest was. Whereas the two videotape formats were physically incompatible, all five consumer-level DVD recordable/rewritable formats use discs that are physically similar and will work in some--but not all--devices; see " Plus vs. Dash vs. RAM: Battle of the Formats" for additional details. For more on compatibility, see " DVD Players and Discs: Press Play and Pray?"

Compatibility is certainly a concern, but write speed is another important factor in deciding on one format over another: If you will be writing to a particular type of disc often, choose the drive with the highest speed rating for that type. If you are burning a large number of discs (such as multiple copies of a promotional video for your business), a faster drive can save you a significant amount of time. In our tests, we found that all of the DVD-R drives that supported the 2X write speed could burn a 20-minute movie to disc in just over 10 minutes. But the DVD+R drives we tested (which can write at 2.4X speed) had a slight edge: They all took just over 9 minutes. Sony says that its DRU-500A can write DVD-R at the recently announced 4X speed, but we couldn't evaluate this claim because no production-level 4X-compatible media was available when we conducted our tests. Our informal trials with preproduction 4X media indicate that 4X recording is likely to be about 70 percent faster than 2X.

Consider media cost and availability as well when choosing a format. At this writing, DVD-RW has a small cost advantage in cost per gigabyte and is more widely available, but this may change as one of the formats becomes more popular (see " Burning Cash: The Cost of Media").