What's My Beef!

I just can't believe that there are so many formats that will eventually become tomorrow's Betamaxes within the next three years. Don't bet your horse on what DVD format will be the one that is the sole survivor. Your guess is as good as mine!

Case in point: rewritable and write-once DVD formats. What's the deal? We have two generations of DVD-R already (the DVD-R for Authoring came out first, then was replaced by the DVD-R for General with copyright protection). If you have the older DVD-R for Authoring, chances are, they may not work in newer DVD drives.

The way I understand it, there are five basic DVD formats, one that can be double-sided in a cartridge. The real bug is that many of the DVD formats do not play in many DVD players or computer drives.

How is the consumer supposed to know that one DVD format does not work in a certain drive? Let's take a look at the five basic DVD formats:

DVD-R - for video or data that's playable and recordable with the widest variety of players and computer drives. It's a write-once medium. It can last 100 years.

DVD-RAM - for data storage like a hard drive. It can be rewritten 100,000 times and can last about 30 years. 85 percent of the DVD players and drives can read DVD-RAM discs, though fewer can write to them. (more on that later).

DVD-RW - like a rewritable version of the DVD-R. Writes 1,000 times, and lasts 30-50 years. Plays in most DVD players and computer drives, but not much of a match for DVD-R in compatability.

DVD+R - is a non-standard competeting format, but has near universal compatability with players and drives. You cannot use a DVD-R drive to record on them, and you can't use a DVD+R drive to record on a DVD-R. Ouch!

DVD+RW - is like a DVD-RW, but better suited for data storage, plus can do video. Compatable with most DVD players and computer drives, and has a 30-50 year life with 1,000 rewrites. You cannot write to them using a DVD-RW drive, and you can't use a DVD+RW drive to write to a DVD-RW disc. One company suggested that there is a DVD+MRW method that uses a Mt. Rainer Defect Management and Physical Formatting System to turn the DVD+RW into a high-capacity floptical disc for data.

The DVD-RAM discs come in TYPE II, which are removable cartridges so that you can use it like an uncartridged DVD-RAM disc where possible.

The DVD-RAM discs also come in TYPE I, which are sealed cartridges with capacities of 2.6 and 4.7 GB for single sided discs, and 5.2 and 9.4 GB for double sided discs. Now this is the disc that should be the model for a standard digital floptical disc medium.

There is also a 3 1/2 inch DVD-RAM disc that is used in some portable digital video recorders, and these are the same size as the now dwarfed magnetic floppy disc. The floppy has stuck to the same old 1.44 MB capacity since the mid 80's, but with today's files for multimedia and other kinds of files taking up hundreds of megabytes, and no more new games and software is coming out on these floppys anymore, isn't it time that the computer industry establish some universal floptical medium that will be the medium of choice for the future?

The 3.5 inch DVD-RAM is about, I'm not sure, about 1.5GB in capacity, whereas the DVD-RAM for the 5.25 inch size is normally 4.7GB. Even at that capacity, that's 1,000 times bigger than the standard floppy. Make it in a cartridge so you can double the capacity to about 3.0 GB, just like the magnetic floppy, and you got yourself a new floptical format that should last you... for a few years...until the new blue laser light technology takes off, which increases the capacity of data storage by ten or higher.

As for the 5.25 inch DVD formats and 3.5 inch DVD format, there should be just two new standars introduced that will make them both capable of storing data, video, audio, Kodak pictures, and movies universally between them: DVDxR and DVDxRW. We have -, and we have +, so let's do a standard x and get rid of all the other RAMs and +R's and -R's altogether!

The xR and xRW standard will have capacities of 3.0 and 9.4 GB for double sided, encased in a non-removable cartridge with a retractable door, just like a floppy, so that you can't mess with it accidentally. You can put a full square label on each side of the cartridge, wheras with the other five DVD formats, you can use only one side of the disc, and with a double-sided DVD-RAM, you can't put a label on the naked disc at all!

So who's behind the formats?

DVD-R, -RW - Panasonic, Pioneer, Toshiba, Hitachi, Samsung, Sharp. You can visit the official dvdforum.org for details. The format is supported by 68 percent of the player and drive manufacturers.

DVD+R, +RW - HP, Philips, Sony, Compaq, Dell, Ricoh, Mitsubishi, Verbatim, Thomson, Yamaha. Visit dvdrw.com for more. It's supported by less than five percent of the player and drive manufacturers, but in a computer store, it seems the opposite as I see stacks of DVD+R computer drives, but not as many as the DVD-R computer drives.

DVDxR, RW: nobody.

DVD-RAM - not as many supporters for this format, though some DVD recorders are accepting these discs as rewritables.

As for compatability with players and disc drives in terms of playback, the lowdown is that DVD-R is the most compatable format with 88 percent, but short of the DVD-Video and DVD-ROM discs (non-writable) with 100 percent compatability. The DVD-RW medium has 65 percent. The DVD+RW has 59 percent. And the DVD+R format is best compatable with newer players and drives, but cannot be used in most older DVD drives and players.

The DVD-ROM discs are best compatable as 4.7 GB single sided non-cartridge medium. The cartridge-based media is playable only in DVD-ROM drives that accept cartridges.

The DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM medium are the official standards. The DVD+R and DVD+RW are not, but that's not stopping the renegade alliance from pushing this medium.

My DVDxR and DVDxRW will use the Mt. Rainer technology that lets computers use it like a floppy or hard disc drive, or use authoring software to make it act like a DVD-Video or DVD-Audio disc when you insert it into the player (that takes cartridges as this format will be in). But the xR and xRW formats will have copyright protection as well as password protection, like the newer Zip 750 disc drives do, as well as the ability to render it unrippable or uncopyable by manufacturers or private home users, or let them make one copy of the disc, with the copy of it uncopyable further like some music audio discs have that feature.

And yes, the DVDxR and xRW formats can be used in both computer drives and home players to record, so there is no need for separate Music and Computer discs, as people use the computer CD-R's instead of the Music CD-R's to record music on their computer drives.

As for MP3 ripping, there's nothing anybody can do about it as far as discs are concerned. Making the discs unrippable isn't going to stop the people from making copies and sharing them on the Internet. People can run the audio through the line out jacks hooked up to the computer's line-in jacks with a patch cord and record the audio with Cooledit. Then the recording quality can be anywhere from too quiet to TOO NOISY, clipping the sounds and making them sound horrible.

Then, there's the DVD/R and DVD/RW format that's being planned, as in, divided by. These formats can hold anything, like the xR and xRW, but can't be copied at all.

Furthermore, you can take DVD to the power of R or RW and call it DVD^R and DVD^RW. These can be like newer high density digital discs that can hold not just 0's and 1's, but also 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, 6's, 7's, 8's, 9's, A's, B's, C's, D's, E's, and F's, by making the valleys a certain depth so that the laser reading it can produce a certain four-digit nibble, which is half-a-byte. The 9.4 GB discs can be over 75GB in capacity! When it comes to the new blue laser technology, get ready for a terabyte disc! That could replace the DVDxR and xRW disc as the format, but the newer drives will have to be able to read all of the older DVD mediums.

And finally, you will have the DVD to the root of R and RW. This works like the opposite of the DVD medium. It refuses to copy known copyrighted audio and video files if it senses a certain watermark inside the audio files. To make it more effective, it has the same capacity as a floppy..1.44MB!

Time to end this DVD confusion for once and for all. Let's get a single floptical DVD standard and get rid of all the other confusing formats right now.

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