PCWorld: "Dual DVD Drives Take Over"

[Suhit Gupta]

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,115391,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp

"The days of worrying about whether you need DVD+R or DVD-R discs may soon be over. Eighteen months after Sony announced the first dual DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW drive that handles both formats, virtually every other optical-storage manufacturer is jumping onto the combo +/- (DVD±R/RW) bandwagon.

Even Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard, loyal advocates of the DVD-R/RW and +R/RW standards respectively, have recently announced combo +/- drives for the retail market. Toshiba's Storage Device Division makes drives for its own notebooks, other PC vendors, and for retail under its own brand name and others."

This excellent news as far as I am concerned. It was quite annoying to have to worry about which technology your drive supported and to deal with buying just the right kind of media. This is a good article as it does a quick survey of the market as well as shows the reason for the push to +/- combo drives.

[Suhit Gupta]

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,115391,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp

"The days of worrying about whether you need DVD+R or DVD-R discs may soon be over. Eighteen months after Sony announced the first dual DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW drive that handles both formats, virtually every other optical-storage manufacturer is jumping onto the combo +/- (DVD±R/RW) bandwagon.

Even Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard, loyal advocates of the DVD-R/RW and +R/RW standards respectively, have recently announced combo +/- drives for the retail market. Toshiba's Storage Device Division makes drives for its own notebooks, other PC vendors, and for retail under its own brand name and others."

This excellent news as far as I am concerned. It was quite annoying to have to worry about which technology your drive supported and to deal with buying just the right kind of media. This is a good article as it does a quick survey of the market as well as shows the reason for the push to +/- combo drives.

[Raven]

Now that you don't have to worry about which drive to buy, read this FAQ to decide which media format to invest in. This was written on 16th March, so the data should be pretty accurate.

[Suhit Gupta]

It is interesting to note that there is SO much more -R media that +R. Wow, I am actually quite surprised. And even more so given that +R is going to have the fastest write speeds with 12x (given that Pelxtor's PX-712A, shipping in May, will be able to write at 12x on to 8x media).

Suhit