DVD Burner's

[Knoxville]

Right, fill me in guys as this seems to have passed me by entirely. I just ordered a Pioneer 108 dvd-rw. Now whats all this guff about +'s and -'s? is it like the old betamax vs. VHS debate?

Lets say I wanna burn a dvd to watch on the sofa dowstairs...........what media should I be using? or the other side of the card, say I wanna back-up a load of files, which kind then?

Need some help fella's as I keep up with my music, movies and guitars but hardware seems to have passed me by over the last 12 months.

[Agent]

Right, fill me in guys as this seems to have passed me by entirely. I just ordered a Pioneer 108 dvd-rw. Now whats all this guff about +'s and -'s? is it like the old betamax vs. VHS debate?

Basicly, yes, its the same concept. Different people back different formats. Luckily, they are not too different. Nothing like the battle of HD-DVD and blueray that may happen.

Lets say I wanna burn a dvd to watch on the sofa dowstairs...........what media should I be using? or the other side of the card, say I wanna back-up a load of files, which kind then?

I generaly use +R, because it has the ability to use bit-setting. Some DVD players have problems reading -R/+R disks. The "bit-setting" allows the disk to lie about what format its in. So you can get the disk to say to the player "Hey, im a DVD-ROM". The DVD player then trys to read the disk as a normal DVD, which almost every player on the market will do without a problem.
-R media do not support bitsetting, although, more players seem to like -R over +R when you dont have the ability to use bit-setting. It depends on your DVD writer if you can support bit-setting.

For data, i go with whatever i have the most left of.

As for the disks themselfs, ive had good experiences with Ritek and taiyo yuden. Infact, you'll pretty much find that everyone has. They are two respected makers.

Get your disks from http://www.rambox.co.uk/ They are only 10 mins from your house too. I go there often. Pretty much everything they stock is quality stuff.
Dont buy cheap media, it will all go wrong, even if not right away.

Two links i promice you'll need :

http://www.dvdshrink.org/
http://www.dvdinfopro.com/

Feel free to catch me on MSN if you need help on other stuff

[ANZAC_ELITE]

...........I just ordered a Pioneer 108 dvd-rw..........

Is it the Pioneer A108 16x DVD -/+R/RW Dual Layer ???? This is the model I have.

If it is, don't worry about the +/- as it will burn both, the thing you need to investigate is which disks the intended hardware can read. There are some issues with older hardware (DVD players) not reading some burns, also make sure you use good quality DVD's (I would suggest you get a couple of DVD-RW's till you get it sorted then you dont end up with so many coasters lol)

[Knoxville]

Basicly, yes, its the same concept. Different people back different formats. Luckily, they are not too different. Nothing like the battle of HD-DVD and blueray that may happen.

I generaly use +R, because it has the ability to use bit-setting. Some DVD players have problems reading -R/+R disks. The "bit-setting" allows the disk to lie about what format its in. So you can get the disk to say to the player "Hey, im a DVD-ROM". The DVD player then trys to read the disk as a normal DVD, which almost every player on the market will do without a problem.
-R media do not support bitsetting, although, more players seem to like -R over +R when you dont have the ability to use bit-setting. It depends on your DVD writer if you can support bit-setting.

For data, i go with whatever i have the most left of.

As for the disks themselfs, ive had good experiences with Ritek and taiyo yuden. Infact, you'll pretty much find that everyone has. They are two respected makers.

Get your disks from http://www.rambox.co.uk/ They are only 10 mins from your house too. I go there often. Pretty much everything they stock is quality stuff.
Dont buy cheap media, it will all go wrong, even if not right away.

Two links i promice you'll need :

http://www.dvdshrink.org/
http://www.dvdinfopro.com/

Feel free to catch me on MSN if you need help on other stuff

Cheers thats pretty much cleared up everything man, where are Rambox based? may well go over and get some media next week. btw, dual layer, anything different other than the fact that they hold more data?

Is it the Pioneer A108 16x DVD -/+R/RW Dual Layer ???? This is the model I have.

If it is, don't worry about the +/- as it will burn both, the thing you need to investigate is which disks the intended hardware can read. There are some issues with older hardware (DVD players) not reading some burns, also make sure you use good quality DVD's (I would suggest you get a couple of DVD-RW's till you get it sorted then you dont end up with so many coasters lol)

Yeah thats the one, both my dvd players are fairly new (I've got a back-up thats how obsessive i've become over dvd's ) so there shouldn't be a problem.

[tfboy]

Sounds like the guys have answered the +r / -r debate than I could have so

In terms of media, I tend to burn an awful lot and so the price has to be very keen for me. To be honest, there's only one place I ever buy media from (whether dvd or cd) and that's SVP. Whether the postage is too costly or not will depend on how many discs you intend to burn / purchase at once. Their delivery isn't too expensive if you buy at least a few tubs of 25.

They've mucked my order once or twice - they sent the wrong dvd carry case for example. A quick phone call to explain and they apologised, sent the right one for next day delivery FoC and said keep the wrong one at no extra cost. I can't fault their customer services.

edit: some people say even if you have a 16x burner with 8 or 16x compatible media, you're better off burning at a lower speed to maximise compatibility chances. So if you're burning films to be played in a consumer dvd player, it's probably safer to stick to 4x (about 15-16 minutes to burn for a full disc)

[pudds]

I second svp. Only place i buy my media from.

[Knoxville]

Will look into them, tbh though if theres somewhere round the corner I can grab reliable discs from I'd rather do that than pay postage charges.