PCWorld: "Dual DVD Drives Take Over"

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,115391,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,115391,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp</a><br /><br /></div>"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.<br /><br />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."<br /><br />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 (http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm) 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