If Sony weren't constantly being Sony I wouldn't have to keep making jokes about how Sony they are. Also, quick note! The whole DVD+VR and DVD-VR thing in DVD recorders is _extra_ petty because there was absolutely no reason you couldn't have adapted the DVD+VR format to DVD-R media. Except... licensing. Sony and Philips apparently kept that to themselves so that DVD-R media would always have this limitation in DVD recorders; but it has nothing to do with the physical differences between the formats. And it appears some later Pioneer DVD recorders did, in fact, get around this limitation in one way or another.
Technology Connections When the American movie studios sued the Japanese VHS manufactures the Japanese decided that it is cheaper to just buy the studios out. That is how Sony ended up owning movie studios. They bought the ones that had sued them. After that it has been downhill for Sony because now it has incentive to invent different kind of DRMs to protect their studio and gaming businesses.
14:34 Ok. So almost 15 years later I find out why my "RW" disc would not be rewritten or recognized as an DVD+RW by any software, even after hours of trying. Thanks
@@ivann198765 I never stopped using them, I still burn DVDs and even CD-Rs, although I burn less of them then 10 years ago. DVD+/-R for secondary backup of my PC, and CD-R for audio CDs.
Actually the DVD+R had one unique ability known as bitsetting. The "book type" is a single byte in the DVD lead-in area that describes the media type (ROM, RAM, -R, -RW, +R, +RW). On DVD-R/RW that area was pre-recorded but on DVD+R/RW it wasn't, and some writers would allow you to change that byte, specifically to write the DVD-ROM book type instead of DVD+R. This was useful with early standalone DVD players and game consoles, which refused to play burned media. Changing the book type often allowed you to fool those devices into thinking it's a pressed disc and playing it.
Another advantage of the +R was that they were the first to come up with dual-layer writable discs, allowing for 1:1 backups of commercial DVD movies. With the DVD Forum being in bed with Hollywood studios, it's highly debatable whether DVD-R DL would've been a thing if the +R camp hadn't done dual-layer recording first. Also, I have never experienced incompatibilities with DVD+R DL discs on DVD players but had with DVD-R DL discs, and even fairly recent ones. So maybe the whole +R thing was for the best after all.
I remember when my dad bought his DVD recorder, which he was going to use to transfer our massive recorded-from-tv VHS movie collection. Didn't work at all. Complained about the discs being faulty or incompatible, even though they were brand new. Dad threw me, a 12-year old, the 200 page manual to find the problem, while he continued to orangutan the buttons (yes that's a verb now, deal with it). Eventually by some miracle, I discovered the teeny tiny warning saying something to the effect of "Machine is only compatible with DVD+R and DVD+RW discs. "WUDDA YOU MEAN PLUS?!!!" The orangutan was not amused.
Good Lord, "orangutan the [device]" perfectly describes how my stepdad would operate computerized equipment, whether it was a desktop PC, a VCR, DVD player or a game console. Thank you for giving me that beautiful new euphemism to add to my lexicon.
I always wondered exactly what the difference was. However, I think pretty much every DVD I burned of either format became unreadable within just a few years. Only my DVD-RAMs continued to work reliably. In fact, I can still read those today just fine.
The organic dye in DVDs has always been its weak point. DVD-RAM, BluRay* and MDisc don't have an organic dye and last much longer. *just don't buy the cheaper BluRay LTH discs, they have an organic dye like DVDs
@@maximilianmustermann5763 That makes me wonder if DVD+/-RW is more durable than DVD+/-R, because the burnable layer in a DVD+/-RW is a metal alloy, rather than an organic dye.
I have a bunch of CD-R and DVD-/+R backups from the 2000s and early 2010s, and some of those have suffered deterioration over the years. However, I think that was due solely to the manner of storage, namely those booklet type storage cases full of "pages" of plastic+nylon holders. Not sure if it's a chemical reaction or simply the tightness and friction, but something about them has kind of melted the front coloration on some of the discs, making those areas relatively translucent and consequently unreadable.
15:35 - old programmer's tip: whenever you have to pick an arbitrary number, always make it a power of two. That way it seems like an architectural limitation, not a number you just pulled out of your ass (even though it probably is)...
Statistician's tip: if the result of a complex calculation is an unbelievably round number, such as 13000, add or remove a couple from it, or no one will believe it and think you pulled that result out of your ass.
The main advantage of the + type was that you could change the “book” type so that a DVD player that would not play recorded disks would play them. The book type for those that do not know is information on the disk that describes what type of disk it is such as DVD R/W, DVD R , DVD RAM etc
Exactly! Changing the book type to "DVD-ROM" allowed the disc to be played in DVD players that didn't support DVD-R or DVD+R. DVD-R didn't have this capability so you couldn't play those discs in some of the DVD players. I never had issue with the DVD+R discs with the book type set to DVD-ROM.
Honestly, I feel like people keep missing this information because DVD+R is actually so much superior compared to DVD-R. That being said, DVD-RAM should have never died and should be the golden standard for rewritable DVDs.
And how do you do that? I normally use -R, but I brought a brand new unopened 100 disk spindle of TDK +R for $3.00 at a thrift store. I haven't tried them yet for burning and don't know if they will play back in my players.
The part where drive vendors just ponied up for both formats makes the whole thing come across as "Sony did all of this just so they could get their hands on some of that sweet, sweet licensing money -- and it worked."
Just a small innocent licensing racket which goodfellas Sonny and Philly came up with to make some extra dough on the side. It starts with "Hey, nice format you've got here. You don't want anything bad happen to it, do you?"
@@huck6453 In EU where I live I remember before 2000 we were buying "special" type of Verbatim CDs for use in car CD changers. They were the best for longevity, less skipping, "better sound" and scratches weren't so detrimental. I think we in this part of EU got different quality CDs - so Sony or other brands weren't as good. Then when DVDs came it was the same. If you got recorded DVD and was Verbatim you could be sure it would probably work. I remember for scratched CDs and then DVDs we were using some program for data recovery. It was reading the data at the slowest speed possible and re-read multiple types. For CD you could wait up to 4 hours. For DVDs recovery running it overnight was the norm. And again Verbatim was "the one" with the best success.
I'm 64 years old. I started in the wonderful world of computers in 1983, when I became a repairer for such. I was previously a TV/audio equipment repairman. I've seen the rise and fall of many formats. I witnessed Beta vs. VHS firsthand, and even cast a vote in that short, sharp conflict (my side won). I saw the birth of the compact disc. Some of my contemporaries said it would never replace vinyl, but how could they know that the compact disc itself would fall not many years from its inception? I own a Laserdisc player. It is in the Museum of Obsolescence in my attic. I plan to bring it forth someday to a place of honor in my office, where I may proudly show the grandkids history that deserves to be remembered ($1 to another youtube channel). My wife and I also own many, many DVDs. Being a tech nut and a fan of a major college football team, I have scores of DVD-R and DVD +R media with college football games preserved upon them. I never much cared about the difference, but I often wondered. Now I know. I did not see your video until more than two years after you published it. Two years isn't long to a 64 year old man, but in tech years it might as well have been 1789. Still, it is history that deserves to be...remembered. Thanks. I guess I owe that guy with the bowtie another dollar.
I work at a place that processes items for disposal / resale, and we had a few CD + laserdisc players! Weirdly enough, we even got some media, so I could test them. Weird to think it was "state of the art" at some point ("they're vinyl records, but... CDS?") and now is absolutely nowhere.
I was indeed one of those people who spent time comparing comparing between the formats. DVD+R had nearly 30% fewer failed writes in our tests. DVD-R's pre-pit scanning precision made them far more sensitive to things like vibrations and dust. That also significantly lowered the speed at which DVD-Rs could be written. Where this mattered greatly was in attempting to use DVDs as a backup medium. Magnetic mediums were a known failure risk and optical storage was intended to help eliminate that risk. When you need to backup the dictations for 400 doctors across 30+ hospitals in an area, you need something reliable upon which to store them(because patient records don't expire like patients do). All of this, and more, made DVD+R an objectively superior format. I think, however, that it was actually Phillips' innovation and Sony just bankrolled it because they knew they could make better money off it(like always). I do not have fond memories of the months that had to be spent writing data from tape drives to optical discs, though.
Surely though if something was that sensitive no matter what you would burn at lowest speeds? Even when I had like I think 16x burners and discs I burned at 2x which was lowest I could do. The only coasters I got were in early days i.e 2003-2006 after that the only time I got "failed" burns is when I did something like had a small finger print on part of disc and it would only be that part of disc that was unreadable, or the disc had a scratch on before I burned it.
@@gentarofourze When I stated that the speed was lower, I meant below 1x. Our equipment didn't have a 2x or 4x option. We weren't using standard PCs for handling nor transferring the data, so our flexibility was relatively low. Our DVDs came in boxes of 50 jewel cases(not spools) and we had to -- one at a time -- pull it out, label it(archive record number), prep the tape, begin the read(tape data as stream to archive file via 'tar' command), verify the data, prep next tape, and repeat the whole process until we'd reached the directory quota at which point we could finally burn to disc, and then verify again. The process took so long that it made no sense to just wait for it to burn before starting the next one so we had to keep going. We had 5 people working on the same machine at the same time and had to alternate what data was burned based on who was ready(since we could read multiple tapes but only had one burner). It was painful, but we eventually got through it. The DVD-R sensitivity issues were so bad that when changing tapes or even just the fans speeding up to cool the system down, it caused misreads and made it more difficult for the laser to figure out where it could write the data. That meant it had to spend longer letting the disc just rotate a few extra times to make sure it had the correct location to write. Every single file on every single disc had to be verified so if there was a single problem on the disc, the whole batch had to be burned again...at 1x(or lower, if it was being moody). We were very close to just going to CDs instead but there was a very significant cost difference(7x the media expenditures + the time & labor for each of us as employees) so that wasn't a great option. So, a few of us spent a weekend at work off the clock to make sure we could nail down the process to come up with a fool-proof system; that happened to be DVD+R. If there was a single file that failed to write correctly, that could mean that their patient history was lost and if they went into the ER unconscious without something to document their drug allergies... well, it could be bad. So we had to have a zero-tolerance policy. DVD-R simply could not deliver.
@@gentarofourze Contrary to what the video states, anyone whose business or livelihood involved using to DVDs, can tell you that DVD+R was infinitely better, but the issue early on was because older existing DVD devices could not read them. So people who did things like make videos were forced to use the very inferior DVD-Rs or risk their customers not being able to view the videos. This was an issue even after the DVD was finalized.
This finally explained to me why: - DVD drives from 2008 onwards were called "multi-drives" - There were "RW" DVDs which were not actually rewritable (yes I was frustrated after trying to wipe them)
I've also tried to grap on, while leaving hope, just to realize that i couldn't rewrite on that disk... Also, not more than a few years ago, i made the same error, while trying to burn and old DVD from a scholl-project, back in the days. That damn RW marking 😂...
Omg I was so angry because I bought pack of 10 more expensive than usual discs and ... couldn't wipe them ! I was like "why is that burned as DVD+R".....
You left out a discussion of "chapters". This was a vital thing to me as a producer. I was using chapters in product videos, so that I could build a menu a little like an interactive web page. This let a customer or salesperson a quick way to navigate products by categories. Well when you hit 99 you ran out, the manufacturers told me the "factory pre-programming" was my limitation. After about $600 of long distance calls and "fees" ( I contacted Sony and several others ) TDK engineers helped me find a solution. ( It was a complex routine in Adobe's burning software, that allowed me to create more timelines and combine them in one burn by automatically compressing as needed to fit disc, ) I believe this is what game producers were doing to make "interactive" games.
When I read the first time about DVDs (I think in Popular Mechanics Mexico), I got hiper exited about the posibility of making the same DVD with two versions: Adult and children. The children version would take advantage of one "alternative track" to discard the sex scenes and later it woult re-take the main trak in the DVD so you would have many versions of the same movie re-using the same audio and video but with "alternative paths"... Short history-long, the discs (CD, DVD, BR, etc.) have dissapeared from market and I never saw a DVD that used that marvelous technology of the "divergent tracks".
@@eduardodiaz5459 This WAS done my man, your idea was good, your application was not. Parents would demand more security, a child would bypass that too easily. One of the applications I saw was a "Dating Game" where if you chose (A-B-C-D) answer or choice of action, it would play the girls response, until you "scored" with the right combo of answers
There was definitely one positive about the DVD+R that affected me as a consumer. The booktype could be set on +Rs to have them be recognized as DVD-ROM. One of my dvd players refused to play any DVD+R/DVD-R disks unless I set the booktype to DVD-ROM... which was only possible to do on +R.
I had that same trouble w/ my old Apex AD-660. But then after the laser started going bad (gradually stopped reading anything), I shoehorned in a PC-type ROM & that problem went away (it could even read +R DL). The stock transport used an IDE/ATAPI interface.
Not only that, but Dual Layer recordables were almost always +R (at least in Brazil, anyways). I wonder if the actual specs have anything to do with this
OK, this is just creepy. Just this morning, someone emailed me asking if I had any blank DVDs, and I said I had DVD+Rs, and they emailed me back to ask the difference, which I then had to look up online...... and then this is released two hours later. O.o
It also happens to me! Its like one day i hear a weird word i didnt know nor ever heard of on the internet or somewhere and the next day something happens which happens to be connected to that word! Its like this is a game and the script is throwing hints at you in preparation for whats coming!
Well the actual format war is display port or hdmi and display port really isn't trying to replace HDMI. It's more trying to extend it. And allow you to link your things together
How about HDMI vs DisplayPort? It's the same licensing garbage that computer equipment manufacturers rarely wanted to mess with because, for regular computer applications, you're not going to need to meet 75% of the specifications for remote appliance control or copy protecting the entire stream if all you want is to send a basic video signal a few feet from the back of your PC to a display.
I like the established continuity with the percolator at the beginning. Like, it is all part of the same, interconnected Technology Connections Universe (TCU) and the videos do not only exist in a vacuum, besides the frequent mentions and links to previous videos of course.
Every single upload, past, present, and future were shot continuously in 1 take as a single episode, but they had to cut it down and split the segments up into episodes to fit within a generation.
"In 1996 the DVD Consortium was formed...and everything was good with the world ALLLL the way until 1997" ...Dammit! The amount of snark in this video is at ultra-rich chocolate syrup dessert -levels. I love it, Alec! :)
Oh my god, I was today years old when I found out why the hell the DVD labeled RW wouldn’t burn more than once. I thought it was just windows vista being windows vista. Man 12 year old me would have loved to have this info...
@@junkiejackflash It doesn't taste like it, though! Wait does this mean kids should convince their folks to allow them a glass of chocolate syrup for breakfast?
@@christinaandwena8917: Easy way to tell with any disc: Look at the underside. If it's silver, it's read-only (duh!). If it's dark-grey, it's rewritable because it uses a magnetic layer that is melted by the laser and re-oriented using an electromagnet right next to the laser. If it's _any other color_ (green, blue, purple, etc.), it's write-once because it uses dye that is physically damaged by heat from the laser.
2 роки тому+30
for me, dvd-r disks from a particular manufacturer were the best. all other brands were failing while writing at varying rates, whereas verbatim dvd-r blank disks had 3 failed writings out of 50 pack at most. but seriously, i believe the actual manufacturing quality of the disk mattered more than the format to the success rate of writing a disk
Man, you are one of the best channels on UA-cam. Absolutely loving the content, dedication, research, style you present all that info in and your humour. Fantastic and thank you.
When I worked at CompUSA in the early 2000's, we were told to tell customers that DVD+R wrote from the outside in, and DVD-R wrote from the inside out; that was the difference. If you put the wrong one in, the data would be backwards and that's why they weren't compatible
@Jeremy H I remember someone at some electronics store (long forgotten which) told me that DVD-R had "valleys" while DVD+R had "hills" on them. No further explanation. Your comment explains why that was all they said.
It was probably your mechanical hdd getting overworked and not being able to keep up causing a buffer underrun that triggered most failed burns. I always had to burn at 2x on DVD and 4x on CD if I for sure wanted a good disc.
Wrong. Everybody know it was cosmic radiation and also the alignement of the disc in the drive had something to do with it. If the disc was horizontal, it better worked with DVD-R. But vertically placed drives, especially with the sides of the disc pointing to the South and north, had big problems. Many ruined burns just because I forgot to turn my big ugly tower PC sideways when burning DVD+R.
Omg, that used to be me, literally years like that. Until my boss was scrapping his pickup he'd just put a brand new stereo in with all the features, so I just swapped it out into mine. Still using it 5 years later
@@borstenpinsel good god I'm glad we don't have to deal with that shit anymore.... we finally threw away a bunch of old cds and dvds last year, and donated all of the standard (movies and series) DVDs and yeah VHS.
Thank You for making the distinction between DvD-R and DvD+R (Dash and Plus). I recall being admonished for calling the “-“ a “minus” by someone who failed to tell me what instead to call it! Now I know “dash” is acceptable and saying DvD-/+R as dash/plus is just as distinguishable as my incorrect pronunciation. I did have problems with one or the other format playing in my standard DvD player at the time after recording on them, but a “failed” burn was never introduced as the possible underlying culprit. I am SO glad someone has a channel explaining the differences of what I was experiencing at the time. I still have blank discs of both varieties laying about in the recesses of my closets, not ever finding the time to attempt to burn my parents’ VHS recording onto either format. The only difference I could see at the time was one was more expensive than the other for some reason; now I have some idea as to why: greed. Now please make a video explaining how a “cheap flash media” as you so eloquently put it works in comparison to how the DvD+/-R/RW/RAM discs work. I was (amazingly) able to follow along with your explanation of the differences of the Dash and Plus discs work but wondered all the while how the “cheap flash media” was different. Now I just need to save up enough money to buy yet another computer that I can use to easily transfer my data from/to flash drives. I still have all of the older, lamer, computers that use these outdated technologies. Have you ever noticed that manufacturers’ DvDs (movies/Tv shows) that “skip” in standard DvD players don’t skip in a computer’s DvD drive? I Have! This is why I have these older computers: if while watching a DvD the show freezes or skips, I fire up the computer and watch that episode on my computer screen….
Just like most new color and thick paper magazines that are sealed. When you open them they have these glue mixed with paint etc smell to it and it lasts couple of months then it's gone. But then again depends where you keep it what is the climate.
Sony was smart when naming the medium. They saw that the dash looked like a minus and purposely tried to confuse the consumer with the plus sign. "Hmm. I don't know what the 'R' is but I'm pretty sure I want the disc that has it"
Yes, it was a stroke of marketing genius to use a plus sign. However, the spec is also legitimately better, as Sony's physical media specs always are. They just don't like sharing, which is why their superior physical media loses so many format wars.
Always? I can think of many Sony standards that are inferior. Like Betamax that only holds 3 hours per tape vs VHS 9 hours. Minidisc was lossy format, so inferior to CD-R. The PS1 and 2 formats both ran slower with poorer graphics than N64, Gamecube, and Xbox
@@electrictroy2010 Um no? the PS1 can pump out way more polygons than the N64. So in some merets it is more powerful. Let's also not forget that you can have textures bigger than 16 x 16 pixels (yes you can fake it by using more textures to simulate a higher resolution texture but nobody did that in it's lifetime).
@@Shotblur Like Linkin Park's In the End, it doesn't really matter. Had bought both standards, but I found my local +R stocks being better overall, so I bought those only at the end.
Thanks for this video, kinda late since people don't "burn" stuff that much anymore. Having said that, here's my take on the topic: As someone who has probably burned thousands of discs from the old CD-R to the latest Dual Layer DVD's, I could say that DVD+R were less prone to errors while burning. With DVD-R media, it was hit or miss. To think we were already using the latest DVD burners that supported both formats including Dual Layer. In a tumbler of 100 DVD-Rs, 10 to 15 would have burn errors. For the same number in DVD+Rs I remember the burn errors were my own mistake. Oh well, im glad those days are behind us, I store my media now on removable hard drives. 4tb and up. ❤
Man, I remember when DVD formats were a real important thing in my life, because I was making around 15 bucks a month from selling DVDs with definitely not pirated movies to friends and teachers at my school. That and finding the DVD labels with the best adhesive. That RW logo for the DVD+R definitely screwed me out of a batch of DVDs that I thought I could rewrite and then couldn't.
Crungle McBungley Yes! This channel rewards loyal viewers, the more I watch, the more I enjoy each video. It is hard to imagine how much work and thought goes into producing these. My fave channel on UA-cam. 🙂
"What's a percolator?" "Oh! Thanks for asking!" That was a missed opportunity for another "i" video. That for sure would have been a record... or vinyl... or DVD+... Whatever
@@fargeeks Yes, it was a thing. My dad had a player he rescued from a local TV station, and the quality was actually really impressive. The only tapes he had were commercials from the TV station, but it was still interesting to see.
TiL, even as a kid of the 90s who used cd burners and eventually dvd burners in the 2000s, I never knew that DVD+R and DVD-R were two different competing formats backed by different companies.. I thought they were just two different types of DVD for certain types of players or computer playback compatibility (one newer/improved and one older/legacy).
In a way that was true since some drives worked better with DVD-R discs while others (especially DVD players) worked better with DVD+R discs. The first DVD player of my parents (it was a Panasonic model) had problems reading DVD+R discs however my trusty Philips DVD-710 did read both format perfectly.
I just assumed they were two different types as well. LIteOn DVD burners didn't care, and I had better luck with DVD-R on DVD players so I stuck with that. (Plus, usually DVD-R was cheaper)
I always found that if you wanted to burn a disc that would play back on a regular DVD player, then DVD-R usually had better compatibility. In general, all the formats played back better on cheap Chinese DVD players than top-brand models though. Years ago when I was regularly shooting wedding videos and putting them on DVD (+R or -R), every single time that a customer complained that the disc wouldn't play, they turned out to have a Sony DVD player. I contacted Sony's UK office about this and I was told that recordable DVDs were a pirate medium and that their players blocked them intentionally. While I don't doubt that Sony are likely to be petty about this sort of thing (It's Sony, after all) my own feeling was that it was more to do with the kind of lasers that Sony were using back then (early 2000s). Later Sony DVD players don't seem to have this problem.
@@countzero1136 It wasnt just Sony that had that issue, I remember having a sharp DVD player round 2001 that once it had outgrown its usefulness in my living room (it just was so slow ) i put it in my bedroom, and i used to write DVD "backups" of some movies, the samsung player i had in my living room had no trouble, but the sharp unit just couldnt seem to get over the hump and would complain and carry on making angry laser noises before just telling me the disc was unreadable, though for some reason my PS2 Which i fully hated playing dvds on cause i had been told that playing dvds would wear the machine out faster since the playstation only reads when it needs to load a game Sounds dumb i know but what the hell did i know at the time. But it had no issues reading any burned DVD i threw at it I just chocked it up to the Sharp unit being a first generation player and maybe it just didnt have a strong enough laser
Thank you for confirming that I was *not* crazy and that there was never a CD+R format. Also, who else used to use DVDinfo.exe (later: DVD Identifier) to check whether your blank disc dealer in the late 90s and early 00s was honestly selling you genuinely what you ordered? Overburn and highest speeds in Nero Burning ROM, baby!
I remember using some program (I think part of Nero) to make sure my burner could write to the disc I wanted to write to. I do remember having to throw some discs away that weren't able to be written to.
Microsoft thought they were funny preventing people from burning Xbox 360 games but then people just obtained DVD burners that could overburn the discs all the way to the edge practically. I myself bought a Sony optiarc burner that can overburn and burn at higher speeds than the disc technically supports.
I remember getting my first CD burner in 5th grade. I made a lot of money selling CD’s in school. Once day I was called down to principals office for it, and to my shock, the only thing they were upset about were the curse words in the music. Blanks were like $2 a piece. Being able to make my own cd’s at that age seemed a little something like magic.
I lived on a small college campus. Started selling dvds. After about 3 weeks I just started selling blanks as whatever movie they asked for. 2 days later I retired
@@charlesvaughan3517 It never ceases to amaze me how people can be so non-chalant about being a complete scamming douchebags, without a hint of remorse. What a sociopath.
When I was a kid, my reasoning was: "+" is "positive" so it's "good", and "-" is "negative" so it's "bad", so I'm gonna burn everything on DVD+R. I was stupid back then.
The great thing about these videos is that they combine history and technology, plus a little bit of problem-solving (how did they do that?) and a little bit of mystery (why did they do it that way?)
@@23RaySan He takes those seven minutes to explain valuable context and additional information. It's not his fault that you fail to understand how these things are related.
I'm totally new here, but after watching this upload, I hit subscribe so hard I had to go and find my backup mouse. Now pipe down, please; I've got some binge-catching-up to do!
The Max Headroom reference is even more relevant, since the 1980s TV show Max Headroom was all about Japanese megacorps jockeying for position over who gets to rule the cyberpunk world of tomorrow (which is actually about now, I think). You know, like Sony. G-g-g-groovy!
You gotta hand it to Sony and Philips, though: calling their standard DVD+R was marketing genius. 😁 It automatically made most people call the other standard "DVD minus R" to make the distinction, thus almost naturally giving the competing standard a negative connotation. After all, no company would ever willingly use the word "minus" in any of their brands, because that word can never be used in a favorable context. You have a choice between two products: the one is a plus, the other is (perceived as) a minus. Which one would you pick? By the way, I was working in a computer store during the time of that format war, around the turn of the millennium. I remember DVD-R having the reputation (at least among my colleagues at the time and our more tech-savvy customers who saw through the "plus/minus" marketing trick) of being more reliable and more compatible with standalone DVD players as well. Perhaps we just believed that because DVD-R was the standard that was "blessed" by the DVD Forum. Also, I remember trusting the long-term reliability of DVD-R media more than that of DVD+R discs. But that may have been simply because more disc manufacturers (including cheap no-name junk brands) making DVD+R media, leaving the more "niche" and somewhat more expensive DVD-R media to be manufactured only by fewer and more upscale brands. We ended up selling way more DVD+R/RW writers, though, before the standards were consolidated. Most PC component manufacturers sided with DVD+R/RW. Perhaps because of lower royalties. I'm not sure if I remember this correctly, but didn't some manufacturers eventually release firmware updates on their websites, that enabled support for both formats in some existing writers and recorders?
Yeah, I was never quite sure which type to go for, although I think I tended towards DVD-R because of knowing it was the one that was around first (so assumed it would be more widely compatible), and it sounded more like it was the proper standard (like CD-R), whereas DVD+R sounded like something totally different and outside of the standards. But I always had Sony laptops, so I probably did the wrong thing there (not knowing DVD+R had anything to do with Sony, or any companies in particular), and I do remember having some DVD-Rs which I couldn't get my laptop to play nicely with at all, but worked fine in my desktop PC. So it's nice to finally have a proper explanation of the differences... even if it is at least a decade too late to be of any use to me
I was an early adopter of DVD writing and bought a Pioneer DVR-A04 drive. I have at least two models now that are -R only. I also saw it as the more legitimate version, and was vaguely annoyed at the clearly pointless market coup of +R. We weren’t all that far off the heels of DVD vs DIVX at the time - the last thing we needed was another round of vendor fragmentation. Luckily the universal drives came out quickly and put a lid on that whole grease fire. I sided with -R for a while, then made sure to have a spindle of each, as there always seemed to be tales of one DVD player or RO drive that could read one or the other but not both.
Hey, there's some food for thought, "After all, no company would ever willingly use the word 'minus' in any of their brands, because that word can never be used in a favorable context." I looked up the use of "minus" in branding, hoping for some sort of diet cola, but only ended up finding a clothing company. The folks at Minus Fashion really don't play on their company's name in any of their products, however.
I remember the reasons why, and they were super-dumb. +RW came out before +R did, and was subsequently backported to a write-once format. When they chose their logo, there was no intent to make a write-once version. To my recollection, there was no -RW when +RW came out. The DVD Forum figured DVD-RAM was going to be THE rewritable DVD format. And then Sony and Philips were all "Actually, DVD-RAM is kind of weird. We'd like a rewritable disk that looks and works like a normal friggin' disk." But the DVD Forum was "No, DVD-RW is a stupid idea, use DVD-RAM or GTFO." Hence +RW was born. Then it took off, and the DVD Forum was "Well, shit. No one's buying DVD-RAM disks anymore. Guess we should extend DVD-R into DVD-RW". And THEN the RW Association was all "Hell naw. You gonna come pick a fight after tellin' us you didn't want our shit? Two can play that game." and they released +R mostly out of spite. None of this helps confusion at all, and I'm glad my first DVD writer was a multi-format one.
I randomly bumped into this channel a little while ago, and I am really glad I did. Instantly subscribed. The way he explains everything. Really enjoyable to watch. Keep up the great work
Not sure I realized what it meant back then, but rewriting discs wasn't a feature I found useful. Still, I assume it was quite convenient considering flash drives were quite expensive and offered far less capacity in those days. Though there's also DVD-RAM, which makes that entire market sector ostensibly more confusing than plain recordable DVDs.
Wow, I never even realised that was their logo. Either I never actually bought any +R discs (I can't remember for sure) or the ones I bought omitted the logo for anti-confusion purposes
That was super confusing back in the day. I was a kid and I'm not from english speaking country, so it took me some trial and error to figure out that "RW" logo was just pure bullshit... So confusing...
@@YoungCorruption Haha, I misread that, and thought you said 70% success rate. Was about to say you were very lucky, but actually I had exactly the same experience.
11:40 there were some players (mostly the cheaper ones and game consoles) that would have more trouble with one over the other. I remember buying "unoffical" copies of movies that would work fine in some players but not others.
Why isn't this show on TV? So much more informative than most of anything on Discovery. (even compared to old actual Discovery Channel) Actually I'm glad it's on UA-cam, but seriously, clearly you put a lot of research and work in your videos. And that together with your style of humor, it's excellent! Thanks for all you do
My first (and only) DVD writer was an internal drive that billed itself as a "DVD±R". Before I watched this video, all I ever knew about the difference between the formats was that I didn't need to know about the difference between the formats.
I think the original intent was that the "-" in "DVD-R" be silent. Like, you don't say "MS hyphen DOS" or "MS dash DOS" for "MS-DOS", do you? But the introduction of "plus R" created "minus R" as a retronym, reinterpreting the meaning of the "-" character.
@@danielbishop1863 yes the original intent was supposed to have the dash silent, like in CD-ROM, but when there was a separate rewritable format called "DVD+R", the obvious comparison was to call it minus R, because we humans like things easily quantifiable, and don't gave time for subtlety. If you walk up to a random clerk tell him to go in the back and get some recordable DVD Rs, if you specified verbally "minus R" they know you're not talking about the "plus R". It gets the job done. Besides minus doesn't have to be a bad thing, like if RC wanted to name their zero calorie Ace K cola RC Minus, their slogan could be "the same RC, minus the calories.". See I made the ninus a good thing.
I've burned literally thousands of CDs, and I think less than a thousand DVDs. Never could find the real difference between -R and +R, maybe because there wasn't a real difference after all. Thank you very much for the information 👍
@@null643 That's not why it's kept that way. They already have something that works for their needs, while the costs aren't outweighed by benefits of upgrading. Once they are, things are improved. You don't see old computers in every government building, you tend to see rather new ones. Service contracts with OEMs are how purchasing is maintained, and, honestly, there's quite a bit of innovation where it's useful. It's just not useful to throw away working things.
Just reached to thank you for the incredible subtitles - I'm not deaf at all, but I like to watch your videos as I'm getting ready to go to sleep and bring able to rely on your excellent subtitles to continue watching as I'm brushing my teeth or washing my face is great.
*0:23** this stutter gag reminded me of another ancient funny memory:* We used to have a lot of DVDs (like most people in the 2000's) and one of them was pirates of the carribean 3. The very last scene of the movie always stuttered like this because the disc was scratched (i guess)
I just found your channel today and it’s very quickly turning into one of my favorites. Your in depth explanations and visuals as well as your sense of humor is exactly what I’ve been looking for in UA-cam content. Keep up the awesome work!
I remember when I bought my first CD burner. It was 4X, cost me $200, and it still ranks as one of my best purchases ever. At the time, everyone in college was buying Zip disks. The school was even installing them on every lab computer. I took one look at the media cost, and I thought "This is dead in the water." Burning was a pain compared to today, but back then, my god. You could only get a 10 or 15 GB hard drive. CD-Rs were cheap effectively infinite storage. That's all to say that I remember it fondly, and I still have every document I ever created because of it.
I remember burning DVDs in the mid to late 00's, and here is some feedback. When doing a single burn, there wasn't any real difference between + & - When using a disk over and over, adding small files (think assignments) the + was less likely to fail. The - when adding files after the first burn failed more often, destroying the disk. And the more burns the higher the risk of failure.
@@TechnologyConnections our house is silly with them, too. But I made the move to a Pixel recently and haven't looked back. Now these cables merely make me look cool, as opposed to being required for fast charging. (Speaking of... Any chance you have "Fast Charging Format Wars" or "How OnePlus tried to Sony everybody else" as a future video idea where you explore Qi and all that jazz?)
A USB PD vs Qualcom QC would be very interesting, even if it's a significantly newer topic than most of the tech you cover. I've seen a few boards on ebay that allow you to press a button to negotiate a different voltage. I wasn't aware there was any other standard than Qi for wireless transfer, just a bunch of schmucks trying to reinvent it so you have to buy their charger.
I worked at Frys Electronic for nine years starting in 2003. I of course worked in the computer dept and can't count the number of times I was asked this question. Goes to figure it'd be some 20 years later that I actually learned the answer.
I sorta miss when we had to burn CD/DVD's to back up music, movies, and other files. It sorta forced you to manually go through everything you were storing every so often. Now it all just sits on an external or flash drive, not having been organized or seen in half a decade+, or is it -.
And whenever we switch to a larger drive, the stuff from the drive being obsoleted gets brushed away into consecutively more recursive folders named "Old" …
Well, there was also the short time when CD-RW was introduced but drives didn't yet fully support both so you had to check to make sure you were buying the right kind of disc. It's also possible people are remembering the CD-R and CD-RW situation as being somewhat similar to DVD-R vs DVD+R one and just overwriting the former in their memory with the latter since it is more recent. And lasted a bit longer.
I work with a charity assisting disabled people with IT - We started using CDs and DVDs again after we gave someone a USB stick with data on it - They put it in a Windows 10 machine which decided to move the contents to . . . somewhere. The person didn't (knowingly) have a 'Microsoft account' so the data disappeared (the stick was wiped clean in the process). Fortunately the majority of our clients now use Linux, but we still use the CDs and DVDs for distributing stuff.
@@rawrrrer Yes but it can be un-protected just as easily and as it was a Windows machine I wouldn't trust it not to un-lock it just so it could do what it wanted to (not been a fan of windows since ME and its fondness for throwing away the TCP/IP stack and trashing the network, XP seemed okay, didn't get on with Vista and it's been downhill since then). Anything on a computer should be regarded as ephemeral, even if you employ Big Tech to do the storage (ask the My Space users). Baaed on personal experience home-burned DVDs can die in as little as ten years, CDs a little longer, but neither seem suitable for archiving, so print everything you want to keep (preferably on papyrus, that lasts for ever if it's kept dry and it's easier to handle that lead sheet scrolls and clay tablets). Spinning rust disk have proved remarkably reliable for long term storage, we have 20 year old drives that are still fine. Solid state drives including SSDs and thumb drives need regular refreshing to keep the data live, we have had them fail after two years in a drawer.
The only time this ever made a difference in my life was when forced to specifically use DVD-R to burn XBOX games onto. DVD+R didn't work. Piracy foiled for a day :/
To add to that, some xbox drives were perfectly fine with DVD+R. I had a Phillips that had no issues with +R. Wait, Phillips and Sony created the +R... it all makes sense now.
@@MaxStrike1988 Ah good times . I remember at one point I used to just leave my PS2 out of its shell due to how often I would have to jiggle and poke its insides to get it to work.
Not sure why you're saying that the +or- of the blank disc doesn't effect consumers because back when I use to burn a lot of movies (I'm not sure if it was + or the -) that if I didn't use the right one it wouldn't work for me so I had to just throw them all out and re-buy the other dvd'd and re-burn all over again. They just wouldn't work in whatever I put them in, could never get them to work for me, not even once. For years after that, I'd get someone to pick me up some blank disc's or I got some as a gift, and at times I'g get the wrong ones and be stuck with them and needing to go out of my way to get the right ones, and at times without having the person who got the wrong ones for me to not feel bad about it. Also there were times when I had argued with people because they thought "what's the difference" and just thought I was just being picky and no way would they believe me.
I probably got into the burning game too late (late 90s) because I literally never had that happen. It wasn't until 15 years later that I discovered this used to be a problem.
@@nemo-x - because they are for the most part. 4.7gb is nothing now. That, and they're slow, and mostly write-once. Flash memory has put them in the past with VHS and vinyl. When new computers aren't even coming with optical drives, you know it's over.
You just *had* to make me remember the time when it was advisable to reboot before burning and do nothing else while burning. Some even claimed that moving the mouse was dangerous... But wasn't that mostly a problem with CD-R?
My first programming job in the very early 90s was on the OS/2 operating system. We had something called a WORM drive - Write Once Read Many. It was an optical disk, but different from CD format (you couldn't use CD disks and you had to have a WORM drive to read the disks).
Sadly I still experience that today. People at my church still want CDs of sermons. Would be so much easier if we could just put it on a flash drive! Not to mention faster.
Yeah! And I only found out today why the hell the DVD labeled RW wouldn’t burn more than once. I thought it was just windows vista being windows vista. Man 12 year old me would have loved to have this info...
I’m skeptical of the longevity of flash drives. Electron dissipation from the underlying structures apparently is a thing. Doesn’t matter much if you somewhat regularly “refresh” the drive via write leveling. But long term storage seems, undetermined
My experience burning DVDs gave me the sense that the -R discs were more likely to have successful burns. The +R ones seemed more prone to failed burns. I didn't actually run tests but out of the hundreds of discs I made, the -R seemed more reliable. Most of the time it was one full burn and I rarely used any for multiple recordings. I did use DVD RAM discs for that and they were awesome. A bit pricey, but so cool that it was practically like having hot swappable hard drives.
Agree. Also I found -R media was more compatible with some devices like DVD players, Playstations or even some DVD Drives didn't recognise DVD+R was a boot disc but they did with -.
@@HyperVectra But when it comes to dual-layer media, I have found DVD+R DL to be more compatible than DVD-R DL. For me, DVD-R DL failed even on fairly recent DVD players (with Divx support and everything), and even on PC DVD drives. So... use -R for single layer and +R for dual layer, I guess.
If Sony weren't constantly being Sony I wouldn't have to keep making jokes about how Sony they are.
Also, quick note! The whole DVD+VR and DVD-VR thing in DVD recorders is _extra_ petty because there was absolutely no reason you couldn't have adapted the DVD+VR format to DVD-R media. Except... licensing. Sony and Philips apparently kept that to themselves so that DVD-R media would always have this limitation in DVD recorders; but it has nothing to do with the physical differences between the formats. And it appears some later Pioneer DVD recorders did, in fact, get around this limitation in one way or another.
Thanks for ruining my sleep schedule. I appreciate it :)
@@scj643 Yeah I noticed that too: 6:36am... but it was worth it!
I feel like this channel is upgrading to Video Encyclopedia status. I can see it now, "Technology Connections Video Encyclopedia" or TCVE
Breathe Alec, breathe
Technology Connections When the American movie studios sued the Japanese VHS manufactures the Japanese decided that it is cheaper to just buy the studios out. That is how Sony ended up owning movie studios. They bought the ones that had sued them. After that it has been downhill for Sony because now it has incentive to invent different kind of DRMs to protect their studio and gaming businesses.
Clearly DVD÷R is the best option
I am partial to DVD×R.
DVD=R all the way!
DVD^®
Somebody who writes such a thing also eats puppies 😇
DVD±R or DVD∓R?
My ex sent me a break-up video burned on DVD+R. All our home movies were burned on DVD-R. That last one...just hertz so much more.
F.
😦
When it comes to ex's and DVD's we all pay for the privilege of being "burned!" 😂😂
The ULTIMATE BETRAYAL! also breaking up by DVD is pretty harsh too
The Inquisition wants to know your fucking location
14:34 Ok. So almost 15 years later I find out why my "RW" disc would not be rewritten or recognized as an DVD+RW by any software, even after hours of trying.
Thanks
I stopped using optical disks because of the "RW" bullshit.
Now you can finally burn that disc!
:D
@@pills- ...with fire...
@@Dark.Shingo a microwave is more entertaining
@@ivann198765 I never stopped using them, I still burn DVDs and even CD-Rs, although I burn less of them then 10 years ago. DVD+/-R for secondary backup of my PC, and CD-R for audio CDs.
Actually the DVD+R had one unique ability known as bitsetting. The "book type" is a single byte in the DVD lead-in area that describes the media type (ROM, RAM, -R, -RW, +R, +RW). On DVD-R/RW that area was pre-recorded but on DVD+R/RW it wasn't, and some writers would allow you to change that byte, specifically to write the DVD-ROM book type instead of DVD+R. This was useful with early standalone DVD players and game consoles, which refused to play burned media. Changing the book type often allowed you to fool those devices into thinking it's a pressed disc and playing it.
Cool!
I completely forgot about that!!! IF you set your system up correctly you could write ALMOST any type of disk.... IE use Linux for the OS.
nerd
@@Tunkkis nerd
Another advantage of the +R was that they were the first to come up with dual-layer writable discs, allowing for 1:1 backups of commercial DVD movies. With the DVD Forum being in bed with Hollywood studios, it's highly debatable whether DVD-R DL would've been a thing if the +R camp hadn't done dual-layer recording first. Also, I have never experienced incompatibilities with DVD+R DL discs on DVD players but had with DVD-R DL discs, and even fairly recent ones. So maybe the whole +R thing was for the best after all.
I remember when my dad bought his DVD recorder, which he was going to use to transfer our massive recorded-from-tv VHS movie collection. Didn't work at all. Complained about the discs being faulty or incompatible, even though they were brand new. Dad threw me, a 12-year old, the 200 page manual to find the problem, while he continued to orangutan the buttons (yes that's a verb now, deal with it). Eventually by some miracle, I discovered the teeny tiny warning saying something to the effect of "Machine is only compatible with DVD+R and DVD+RW discs.
"WUDDA YOU MEAN PLUS?!!!"
The orangutan was not amused.
JETZcorp I miss my orangutan, try not to give him to hard a time 🤪
So..?
Good Lord, "orangutan the [device]" perfectly describes how my stepdad would operate computerized equipment, whether it was a desktop PC, a VCR, DVD player or a game console.
Thank you for giving me that beautiful new euphemism to add to my lexicon.
Hahaha funny story.
It's what happens when dumbasses want to mess with tech they have no knowledge about. Lmao. And then they yell at you. Lmao.
I always wondered exactly what the difference was. However, I think pretty much every DVD I burned of either format became unreadable within just a few years. Only my DVD-RAMs continued to work reliably. In fact, I can still read those today just fine.
Didn't think I'd find you here. Hi!
The organic dye in DVDs has always been its weak point. DVD-RAM, BluRay* and MDisc don't have an organic dye and last much longer.
*just don't buy the cheaper BluRay LTH discs, they have an organic dye like DVDs
@@maximilianmustermann5763 That makes me wonder if DVD+/-RW is more durable than DVD+/-R, because the burnable layer in a DVD+/-RW is a metal alloy, rather than an organic dye.
Hi!
I have a bunch of CD-R and DVD-/+R backups from the 2000s and early 2010s, and some of those have suffered deterioration over the years. However, I think that was due solely to the manner of storage, namely those booklet type storage cases full of "pages" of plastic+nylon holders. Not sure if it's a chemical reaction or simply the tightness and friction, but something about them has kind of melted the front coloration on some of the discs, making those areas relatively translucent and consequently unreadable.
15:35 - old programmer's tip: whenever you have to pick an arbitrary number, always make it a power of two. That way it seems like an architectural limitation, not a number you just pulled out of your ass (even though it probably is)...
Gonna remember that !
Statistician's tip: if the result of a complex calculation is an unbelievably round number, such as 13000, add or remove a couple from it, or no one will believe it and think you pulled that result out of your ass.
Windows 16 would then be better than windows 10
@@BaghaShams What happens if someone else runs the numbers and gets 13000 anyway? Do they just automatically understand why you put 12998 instead?
@@jasonblalock4429 theres errors involved, the numbers arent exact anyways
The main advantage of the + type was that you could change the “book” type so that a DVD player that would not play recorded disks would play them.
The book type for those that do not know is information on the disk that describes what type of disk it is such as DVD R/W, DVD R , DVD RAM etc
Exactly! Changing the book type to "DVD-ROM" allowed the disc to be played in DVD players that didn't support DVD-R or DVD+R. DVD-R didn't have this capability so you couldn't play those discs in some of the DVD players. I never had issue with the DVD+R discs with the book type set to DVD-ROM.
This needs upvotes
Needs pinning tbh, this information is still very much relevant today.
Honestly, I feel like people keep missing this information because DVD+R is actually so much superior compared to DVD-R.
That being said, DVD-RAM should have never died and should be the golden standard for rewritable DVDs.
And how do you do that? I normally use -R, but I brought a brand new unopened 100 disk spindle of TDK +R for $3.00 at a thrift store. I haven't tried them yet for burning and don't know if they will play back in my players.
The part where drive vendors just ponied up for both formats makes the whole thing come across as "Sony did all of this just so they could get their hands on some of that sweet, sweet licensing money -- and it worked."
That sounds about right, and like a much better reason than “your spec isn’t good enough for us“.
@@JonasDAtlas
" like a much better reason than “your spec isn’t good enough for us“.'
Only it WAS good enough and they agreed to it.
Just a small innocent licensing racket which goodfellas Sonny and Philly came up with to make some extra dough on the side. It starts with "Hey, nice format you've got here. You don't want anything bad happen to it, do you?"
Capitalism working as intended
I don't agree with it but the "+" in place of the dash was pure evil genius.
that naming scheme exists long before DVD+. We had B-tree then B+tree en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%2B_tree
And blood types - and +?
Liggliluff + blood types are a conspiracy by sony
Absolutely insidious, and a total marketing coup, that they got consumers to call their competitor "minus" without saying a word about them.
Absolute evil marketing genius.
soooo....#cancelsony
Can’t believe I waited for this information 20 years.
You didn't wait, you were just too lazy too check this (as well as I was)
@@huck6453 joooooooooke
I remember googling this back in the day and I could not get a straight answer as to the difference.
FU FFS
@@huck6453 In EU where I live I remember before 2000 we were buying "special" type of Verbatim CDs for use in car CD changers. They were the best for longevity, less skipping, "better sound" and scratches weren't so detrimental. I think we in this part of EU got different quality CDs - so Sony or other brands weren't as good. Then when DVDs came it was the same. If you got recorded DVD and was Verbatim you could be sure it would probably work. I remember for scratched CDs and then DVDs we were using some program for data recovery. It was reading the data at the slowest speed possible and re-read multiple types. For CD you could wait up to 4 hours. For DVDs recovery running it overnight was the norm. And again Verbatim was "the one" with the best success.
I'm 64 years old. I started in the wonderful world of computers in 1983, when I became a repairer for such. I was previously a TV/audio equipment repairman. I've seen the rise and fall of many formats. I witnessed Beta vs. VHS firsthand, and even cast a vote in that short, sharp conflict (my side won). I saw the birth of the compact disc. Some of my contemporaries said it would never replace vinyl, but how could they know that the compact disc itself would fall not many years from its inception? I own a Laserdisc player. It is in the Museum of Obsolescence in my attic. I plan to bring it forth someday to a place of honor in my office, where I may proudly show the grandkids history that deserves to be remembered ($1 to another youtube channel). My wife and I also own many, many DVDs. Being a tech nut and a fan of a major college football team, I have scores of DVD-R and DVD +R media with college football games preserved upon them. I never much cared about the difference, but I often wondered. Now I know. I did not see your video until more than two years after you published it. Two years isn't long to a 64 year old man, but in tech years it might as well have been 1789. Still, it is history that deserves to be...remembered. Thanks.
I guess I owe that guy with the bowtie another dollar.
I work at a place that processes items for disposal / resale, and we had a few CD + laserdisc players! Weirdly enough, we even got some media, so I could test them. Weird to think it was "state of the art" at some point ("they're vinyl records, but... CDS?") and now is absolutely nowhere.
I was indeed one of those people who spent time comparing comparing between the formats. DVD+R had nearly 30% fewer failed writes in our tests. DVD-R's pre-pit scanning precision made them far more sensitive to things like vibrations and dust. That also significantly lowered the speed at which DVD-Rs could be written. Where this mattered greatly was in attempting to use DVDs as a backup medium. Magnetic mediums were a known failure risk and optical storage was intended to help eliminate that risk. When you need to backup the dictations for 400 doctors across 30+ hospitals in an area, you need something reliable upon which to store them(because patient records don't expire like patients do). All of this, and more, made DVD+R an objectively superior format. I think, however, that it was actually Phillips' innovation and Sony just bankrolled it because they knew they could make better money off it(like always). I do not have fond memories of the months that had to be spent writing data from tape drives to optical discs, though.
Surely though if something was that sensitive no matter what you would burn at lowest speeds? Even when I had like I think 16x burners and discs I burned at 2x which was lowest I could do. The only coasters I got were in early days i.e 2003-2006 after that the only time I got "failed" burns is when I did something like had a small finger print on part of disc and it would only be that part of disc that was unreadable, or the disc had a scratch on before I burned it.
@@gentarofourze When I stated that the speed was lower, I meant below 1x. Our equipment didn't have a 2x or 4x option. We weren't using standard PCs for handling nor transferring the data, so our flexibility was relatively low. Our DVDs came in boxes of 50 jewel cases(not spools) and we had to -- one at a time -- pull it out, label it(archive record number), prep the tape, begin the read(tape data as stream to archive file via 'tar' command), verify the data, prep next tape, and repeat the whole process until we'd reached the directory quota at which point we could finally burn to disc, and then verify again. The process took so long that it made no sense to just wait for it to burn before starting the next one so we had to keep going. We had 5 people working on the same machine at the same time and had to alternate what data was burned based on who was ready(since we could read multiple tapes but only had one burner). It was painful, but we eventually got through it. The DVD-R sensitivity issues were so bad that when changing tapes or even just the fans speeding up to cool the system down, it caused misreads and made it more difficult for the laser to figure out where it could write the data. That meant it had to spend longer letting the disc just rotate a few extra times to make sure it had the correct location to write. Every single file on every single disc had to be verified so if there was a single problem on the disc, the whole batch had to be burned again...at 1x(or lower, if it was being moody). We were very close to just going to CDs instead but there was a very significant cost difference(7x the media expenditures + the time & labor for each of us as employees) so that wasn't a great option. So, a few of us spent a weekend at work off the clock to make sure we could nail down the process to come up with a fool-proof system; that happened to be DVD+R. If there was a single file that failed to write correctly, that could mean that their patient history was lost and if they went into the ER unconscious without something to document their drug allergies... well, it could be bad. So we had to have a zero-tolerance policy. DVD-R simply could not deliver.
@@gentarofourze Contrary to what the video states, anyone whose business or livelihood involved using to DVDs, can tell you that DVD+R was infinitely better, but the issue early on was because older existing DVD devices could not read them. So people who did things like make videos were forced to use the very inferior DVD-Rs or risk their customers not being able to view the videos. This was an issue even after the DVD was finalized.
@@GeraldOSteen I am not entirely sure how, but I am going to somehow port this to my tabletop, just because I think it would be weird.
I also remember fewer glitches using DVD+R when burning discs.
This finally explained to me why:
- DVD drives from 2008 onwards were called "multi-drives"
- There were "RW" DVDs which were not actually rewritable (yes I was frustrated after trying to wipe them)
I've also tried to grap on, while leaving hope, just to realize that i couldn't rewrite on that disk... Also, not more than a few years ago, i made the same error, while trying to burn and old DVD from a scholl-project, back in the days. That damn RW marking 😂...
Yes, the designer of that RW logo...😠
I learned so much!!! Thanks
Omg I was so angry because I bought pack of 10 more expensive than usual discs and ... couldn't wipe them ! I was like "why is that burned as DVD+R".....
I thought they were called multi drives because they burned to CD as well.
"That’s the third plug this video, must be a record!"
No, records were in an entirely different video of yours
Alexandre Brault 🤣🤣🤣
As I'm sure were plugs. Wait, did he ever do a video on plugs? I think he did one on an outlet (the GFCI), but I don't recall the plugs
Yeah I thought the same thing.
"nah that's a DVD"
And included, of course, more Format Wars!! About 100 years ago! 💯✔🆗😒👿🎱🎶
You left out a discussion of "chapters". This was a vital thing to me as a producer. I was using chapters in product videos, so that I could build a menu a little like an interactive web page. This let a customer or salesperson a quick way to navigate products by categories. Well when you hit 99 you ran out, the manufacturers told me the "factory pre-programming" was my limitation. After about $600 of long distance calls and "fees" ( I contacted Sony and several others ) TDK engineers helped me find a solution. ( It was a complex routine in Adobe's burning software, that allowed me to create more timelines and combine them in one burn by automatically compressing as needed to fit disc, ) I believe this is what game producers were doing to make "interactive" games.
When I read the first time about DVDs (I think in Popular Mechanics Mexico), I got hiper exited about the posibility of making the same DVD with two versions: Adult and children. The children version would take advantage of one "alternative track" to discard the sex scenes and later it woult re-take the main trak in the DVD so you would have many versions of the same movie re-using the same audio and video but with "alternative paths"... Short history-long, the discs (CD, DVD, BR, etc.) have dissapeared from market and I never saw a DVD that used that marvelous technology of the "divergent tracks".
@@eduardodiaz5459 This WAS done my man, your idea was good, your application was not. Parents would demand more security, a child would bypass that too easily. One of the applications I saw was a "Dating Game" where if you chose (A-B-C-D) answer or choice of action, it would play the girls response, until you "scored" with the right combo of answers
Who gets to say "in addition to being OBJECTIVELY wobblier" with a straight face lmao
@Omne Obstat and I respect him for that
Is his face ever straight?
There was definitely one positive about the DVD+R that affected me as a consumer. The booktype could be set on +Rs to have them be recognized as DVD-ROM. One of my dvd players refused to play any DVD+R/DVD-R disks unless I set the booktype to DVD-ROM... which was only possible to do on +R.
ha i remember having to do that for something....can't remember what it was for though
I had that same trouble w/ my old Apex AD-660. But then after the laser started going bad (gradually stopped reading anything), I shoehorned in a PC-type ROM & that problem went away (it could even read +R DL). The stock transport used an IDE/ATAPI interface.
@@Madness832 thats actually a known upgrade/repair for some units.
I remember having to set the booktype to dvd-rom when burning og xbox games or most of the time the console would refuse to even recognise them.
Not only that, but Dual Layer recordables were almost always +R (at least in Brazil, anyways). I wonder if the actual specs have anything to do with this
OK, this is just creepy. Just this morning, someone emailed me asking if I had any blank DVDs, and I said I had DVD+Rs, and they emailed me back to ask the difference, which I then had to look up online...... and then this is released two hours later. O.o
This video was prepaed in 12 mins just for you.
There's a name for that creepy feeling of running into things you just learned about. It's called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
Rue oh man this is creepy. I had just learned about Baader-Meinhof and now I read this!
@@moxieman2452 I was just reading a comment about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon right above your comment, and now you comment on the same thing. WTF!
It also happens to me! Its like one day i hear a weird word i didnt know nor ever heard of on the internet or somewhere and the next day something happens which happens to be connected to that word! Its like this is a game and the script is throwing hints at you in preparation for whats coming!
Speaking of format wars within a format, a video on the insanity that is USB or HDMI might make for a fun video.
especially Thuderbolt and USB-4
DisplayPort vs HDMI
History on competition between USB and Firewire would be also interesting.
Well the actual format war is display port or hdmi and display port really isn't trying to replace HDMI. It's more trying to extend it. And allow you to link your things together
How about HDMI vs DisplayPort? It's the same licensing garbage that computer equipment manufacturers rarely wanted to mess with because, for regular computer applications, you're not going to need to meet 75% of the specifications for remote appliance control or copy protecting the entire stream if all you want is to send a basic video signal a few feet from the back of your PC to a display.
I’ve planned to google this for 15 years. Thank you man
Lol. Likewise. Never got around to it. Technically still haven't. 🙂
@@southerncharity7928 lmao true
I like the established continuity with the percolator at the beginning. Like, it is all part of the same, interconnected Technology Connections Universe (TCU) and the videos do not only exist in a vacuum, besides the frequent mentions and links to previous videos of course.
Reminds me of the piece of toast just after that whole kettle of fish.
Every single upload, past, present, and future were shot continuously in 1 take as a single episode, but they had to cut it down and split the segments up into episodes to fit within a generation.
Yes... are your days running together? The continuity bit got me giggling inside a little.
TCU is totally my favorite franchise
I'm waiting for the TC:The Theam Park
"In 1996 the DVD Consortium was formed...and everything was good with the world ALLLL the way until 1997" ...Dammit!
The amount of snark in this video is at ultra-rich chocolate syrup dessert -levels. I love it, Alec! :)
Just remember, technically chocolate is orange
Oh my god, I was today years old when I found out why the hell the DVD labeled RW wouldn’t burn more than once. I thought it was just windows vista being windows vista. Man 12 year old me would have loved to have this info...
@@junkiejackflash It doesn't taste like it, though! Wait does this mean kids should convince their folks to allow them a glass of chocolate syrup for breakfast?
There's so much sarcasm in this video that my sense of humor caught diabetes.
@@christinaandwena8917: Easy way to tell with any disc: Look at the underside. If it's silver, it's read-only (duh!). If it's dark-grey, it's rewritable because it uses a magnetic layer that is melted by the laser and re-oriented using an electromagnet right next to the laser. If it's _any other color_ (green, blue, purple, etc.), it's write-once because it uses dye that is physically damaged by heat from the laser.
for me, dvd-r disks from a particular manufacturer were the best. all other brands were failing while writing at varying rates, whereas verbatim dvd-r blank disks had 3 failed writings out of 50 pack at most. but seriously, i believe the actual manufacturing quality of the disk mattered more than the format to the success rate of writing a disk
Most discs are manufactured by cmc magnetics and rebadged
Man, you are one of the best channels on UA-cam. Absolutely loving the content, dedication, research, style you present all that info in and your humour. Fantastic and thank you.
When I worked at CompUSA in the early 2000's, we were told to tell customers that DVD+R wrote from the outside in, and DVD-R wrote from the inside out; that was the difference. If you put the wrong one in, the data would be backwards and that's why they weren't compatible
Omg
@Jeremy H I remember someone at some electronics store (long forgotten which) told me that DVD-R had "valleys" while DVD+R had "hills" on them. No further explanation. Your comment explains why that was all they said.
How misleading
And perfectly justified. The average consumer was genuinely too ignorant of their media by that point to understand the technology.
Really? 😅😅😅
The day of the week and position of the stars had more to do if the burn failed or succeeded, rather than if it was +/- , or so I seem to recall.
I'm not sure if it's frozen or actually writing, just don't touch anything until it completes.
It was probably your mechanical hdd getting overworked and not being able to keep up causing a buffer underrun that triggered most failed burns. I always had to burn at 2x on DVD and 4x on CD if I for sure wanted a good disc.
DVD backups may be performed by means of a sacred rite that can be performed once a century when the moon is in the eighth house of aquarius.
@@svampebob007 Yes, this!
Wrong. Everybody know it was cosmic radiation and also the alignement of the disc in the drive had something to do with it. If the disc was horizontal, it better worked with DVD-R. But vertically placed drives, especially with the sides of the disc pointing to the South and north, had big problems. Many ruined burns just because I forgot to turn my big ugly tower PC sideways when burning DVD+R.
I've learned so much from this channel, most of all that this man has never thrown a single thing away.
TC: "This is a technology used long ago, only living in our memories"
Me, still burning my CDs because my car radio doesn't even support aux: "Sure"
If it had a casette bay you could put one of those casette adapter things in there.
Saaame
Omg, that used to be me, literally years like that. Until my boss was scrapping his pickup he'd just put a brand new stereo in with all the features, so I just swapped it out into mine. Still using it 5 years later
Bluetooth Radio Transmitter was a saver for me. Love the things
@@mikemx55 the problem is finding a reliable one.
I wasted so many +R "RW" discs trying to figure out how to erase the damn things...
had the same issue with my first CD that came with the recorder. 1-12x "rewritable"
You just triggered my PTSD on this subject xD
@@TheDunbartxeen I don't get it 😂
At least I wasn't the only one to be sucked in by this ridiculous naming system. I thought that perhaps I was just stupid.
Yes it explanes... damit.
My favorite error was the dreaded "Buffer Underrun" with Nero
Device: supports x48
Disc: supports x48
You burn in x32 juuust to be sure and then THIS error comes up
@@borstenpinsel good god I'm glad we don't have to deal with that shit anymore.... we finally threw away a bunch of old cds and dvds last year, and donated all of the standard (movies and series) DVDs and yeah VHS.
Did you had IDE or SCSI controller? Early Nero, SCSI and anything less than a 286 made a really bad mix. I'm talking CDs here.
Avoided buffer underun
First Nero versions I had did that. Then it had buffer underrun protection.
Thank You for making the distinction between DvD-R and DvD+R (Dash and Plus). I recall being admonished for calling the “-“ a “minus” by someone who failed to tell me what instead to call it! Now I know “dash” is acceptable and saying DvD-/+R as dash/plus is just as distinguishable as my incorrect pronunciation.
I did have problems with one or the other format playing in my standard DvD player at the time after recording on them, but a “failed” burn was never introduced as the possible underlying culprit.
I am SO glad someone has a channel explaining the differences of what I was experiencing at the time.
I still have blank discs of both varieties laying about in the recesses of my closets, not ever finding the time to attempt to burn my parents’ VHS recording onto either format. The only difference I could see at the time was one was more expensive than the other for some reason; now I have some idea as to why: greed.
Now please make a video explaining how a “cheap flash media” as you so eloquently put it works in comparison to how the DvD+/-R/RW/RAM discs work. I was (amazingly) able to follow along with your explanation of the differences of the Dash and Plus discs work but wondered all the while how the “cheap flash media” was different.
Now I just need to save up enough money to buy yet another computer that I can use to easily transfer my data from/to flash drives. I still have all of the older, lamer, computers that use these outdated technologies.
Have you ever noticed that manufacturers’ DvDs (movies/Tv shows) that “skip” in standard DvD players don’t skip in a computer’s DvD drive? I Have! This is why I have these older computers: if while watching a DvD the show freezes or skips, I fire up the computer and watch that episode on my computer screen….
Does anyone else remember the distinct smell spindles of these things had!!!
they still do for all disks, like a plastic celery
@@mzilber1 "plastic celery" ....band name potential .
@@mr.9931 OMG SO DID I!! I thought I was crazy, I guess now I know I’m not the only one
Yes omg
Just like most new color and thick paper magazines that are sealed. When you open them they have these glue mixed with paint etc smell to it and it lasts couple of months then it's gone. But then again depends where you keep it what is the climate.
Sony was smart when naming the medium. They saw that the dash looked like a minus and purposely tried to confuse the consumer with the plus sign.
"Hmm. I don't know what the 'R' is but I'm pretty sure I want the disc that has it"
Yes, it was a stroke of marketing genius to use a plus sign. However, the spec is also legitimately better, as Sony's physical media specs always are. They just don't like sharing, which is why their superior physical media loses so many format wars.
Always? I can think of many Sony standards that are inferior. Like Betamax that only holds 3 hours per tape vs VHS 9 hours. Minidisc was lossy format, so inferior to CD-R. The PS1 and 2 formats both ran slower with poorer graphics than N64, Gamecube, and Xbox
Oh and Sony UMD which was inferior to the already standard DVD-3 format for smaller sized discs.
@@electrictroy2010 Um no? the PS1 can pump out way more polygons than the N64. So in some merets it is more powerful. Let's also not forget that you can have textures bigger than 16 x 16 pixels (yes you can fake it by using more textures to simulate a higher resolution texture but nobody did that in it's lifetime).
I love how pointless this format war was and in the end no one or everyone won.
Sony won
@@Shotblur Like Linkin Park's In the End, it doesn't really matter.
Had bought both standards, but I found my local +R stocks being better overall, so I bought those only at the end.
Like most war
@@post-leftluddite I don't think we had many + disks in europe, but I love how no one cares anymore.
WRONG! In war there are no winners, only survivors.
Thanks for this video, kinda late since people don't "burn" stuff that much anymore.
Having said that, here's my take on the topic:
As someone who has probably burned thousands of discs from the old CD-R to the latest Dual Layer DVD's, I could say that DVD+R were less prone to errors while burning. With DVD-R media, it was hit or miss. To think we were already using the latest DVD burners that supported both formats including Dual Layer. In a tumbler of 100 DVD-Rs, 10 to 15 would have burn errors. For the same number in DVD+Rs I remember the burn errors were my own mistake.
Oh well, im glad those days are behind us, I store my media now on removable hard drives. 4tb and up. ❤
Man, I remember when DVD formats were a real important thing in my life, because I was making around 15 bucks a month from selling DVDs with definitely not pirated movies to friends and teachers at my school. That and finding the DVD labels with the best adhesive.
That RW logo for the DVD+R definitely screwed me out of a batch of DVDs that I thought I could rewrite and then couldn't.
yeah, fuck that logo
Only 15 a month?
We all got fooled by the RW logo at least once.
@@nafnist I did that once and then gave up on burning discs altogether
@@BellSprout69420 Fyi, with inflation thats actually much closer to $30 a month.
Literally two seconds in and I laughed at the percolator still being on the desk. Subtle comedic genius
Crungle McBungley Yes! This channel rewards loyal viewers, the more I watch, the more I enjoy each video. It is hard to imagine how much work and thought goes into producing these. My fave channel on UA-cam. 🙂
........rinsed
I loved that touch too.
13:10 I’m sure “minus” was a term promoted by the Sony/Philips group just to make the DVD Forum grit their teeth every time they heard it. ;)
Sounds like the "it's a cross, not an 'x' " debacle
@@Terabit3 A cross is something some dude once got famous by getting nailed to it. :P
Also try saying this sentence: "X marks the spot". :)
You are Dr cassette ? You become a young man❤I'm glad you are alive ! And you did not die of COVID-19
I love how he puts away the percolator at the beginning :'D
me to and i just came from that video too
Continuity!
Great catch, I missed it the first time. 👍
@@primtones would have been even better if also at the end he settled a coffee mug on a DVD coaster.
"What's a percolator?"
"Oh! Thanks for asking!"
That was a missed opportunity for another "i" video. That for sure would have been a record... or vinyl... or DVD+... Whatever
I want to see you talk about Blu-ray vs. HD DVD!
I heard that hd vhs existed
@@fargeeks Yes, it was a thing. My dad had a player he rescued from a local TV station, and the quality was actually really impressive. The only tapes he had were commercials from the TV station, but it was still interesting to see.
@@fargeeks Techmoan has a video on it.
Just to fill out my bucket list, someday I want to watch an HD-VHS movie on a cathode ray tube EDTV.
Dont forget double layer 8.5 gb dvd
TiL, even as a kid of the 90s who used cd burners and eventually dvd burners in the 2000s, I never knew that DVD+R and DVD-R were two different competing formats backed by different companies.. I thought they were just two different types of DVD for certain types of players or computer playback compatibility (one newer/improved and one older/legacy).
In a way that was true since some drives worked better with DVD-R discs while others (especially DVD players) worked better with DVD+R discs. The first DVD player of my parents (it was a Panasonic model) had problems reading DVD+R discs however my trusty Philips DVD-710 did read both format perfectly.
Same here
I just assumed they were two different types as well. LIteOn DVD burners didn't care, and I had better luck with DVD-R on DVD players so I stuck with that. (Plus, usually DVD-R was cheaper)
I always found that if you wanted to burn a disc that would play back on a regular DVD player, then DVD-R usually had better compatibility. In general, all the formats played back better on cheap Chinese DVD players than top-brand models though. Years ago when I was regularly shooting wedding videos and putting them on DVD (+R or -R), every single time that a customer complained that the disc wouldn't play, they turned out to have a Sony DVD player. I contacted Sony's UK office about this and I was told that recordable DVDs were a pirate medium and that their players blocked them intentionally. While I don't doubt that Sony are likely to be petty about this sort of thing (It's Sony, after all) my own feeling was that it was more to do with the kind of lasers that Sony were using back then (early 2000s). Later Sony DVD players don't seem to have this problem.
@@countzero1136 It wasnt just Sony that had that issue, I remember having a sharp DVD player round 2001 that once it had outgrown its usefulness in my living room (it just was so slow ) i put it in my bedroom, and i used to write DVD "backups" of some movies, the samsung player i had in my living room had no trouble, but the sharp unit just couldnt seem to get over the hump and would complain and carry on making angry laser noises before just telling me the disc was unreadable, though for some reason my PS2 Which i fully hated playing dvds on cause i had been told that playing dvds would wear the machine out faster since the playstation only reads when it needs to load a game Sounds dumb i know but what the hell did i know at the time. But it had no issues reading any burned DVD i threw at it I just chocked it up to the Sharp unit being a first generation player and maybe it just didnt have a strong enough laser
I am a tech nerd, and just found your channel. I'm hooked, lol. Keep em coming bro
I just found his channel today!
Thank you for confirming that I was *not* crazy and that there was never a CD+R format.
Also, who else used to use DVDinfo.exe (later: DVD Identifier) to check whether your blank disc dealer in the late 90s and early 00s was honestly selling you genuinely what you ordered? Overburn and highest speeds in Nero Burning ROM, baby!
Maybe “CD+R” is a weird mental portmanteau of “CD-R” and “CD+G”?
@@AviDrissman That was my thought; I was sure there was a format that was "CD+something".
I remember using some program (I think part of Nero) to make sure my burner could write to the disc I wanted to write to. I do remember having to throw some discs away that weren't able to be written to.
@@nticompass Nero was awesome... But sometimes you'd have to fire up CDRWin if you had downloaded a BIN/CUE rip
Microsoft thought they were funny preventing people from burning Xbox 360 games but then people just obtained DVD burners that could overburn the discs all the way to the edge practically. I myself bought a Sony optiarc burner that can overburn and burn at higher speeds than the disc technically supports.
I remember getting my first CD burner in 5th grade. I made a lot of money selling CD’s in school. Once day I was called down to principals office for it, and to my shock, the only thing they were upset about were the curse words in the music. Blanks were like $2 a piece. Being able to make my own cd’s at that age seemed a little something like magic.
Elaborate please?
@@JJschannel255 oh what? Thats pretty much it.
I lived on a small college campus. Started selling dvds. After about 3 weeks I just started selling blanks as whatever movie they asked for. 2 days later I retired
@@charlesvaughan3517 It never ceases to amaze me how people can be so non-chalant about being a complete scamming douchebags, without a hint of remorse. What a sociopath.
@@charlesvaughan3517 Well that's really shitty
When I was a kid, my reasoning was: "+" is "positive" so it's "good", and "-" is "negative" so it's "bad", so I'm gonna burn everything on DVD+R. I was stupid back then.
No, you just fell for marketing gimmicks.
Stupid like a fox!!!
And the guy at Sony who came up with that name smiled forevermore.
At least you didn't think they are the same thing
Don't, we all were. The key is improving and not still being stupid when you're 25.
Your videos are wonderful and entertaining. You have a terrific way of making boring topics exciting.
The great thing about these videos is that they combine history and technology, plus a little bit of problem-solving (how did they do that?) and a little bit of mystery (why did they do it that way?)
And dry, goood humour
@@Tearnalte Yes, I love his sense of humor!
this guy takes 7 minutes before he even gets started with the topic. very annoying.
@@23RaySan He takes those seven minutes to explain valuable context and additional information. It's not his fault that you fail to understand how these things are related.
In a world when we’re stuck inside, your channel is a true gift.
also that other one
I'm totally new here, but after watching this upload, I hit subscribe so hard I had to go and find my backup mouse.
Now pipe down, please; I've got some binge-catching-up to do!
just because of people who believe there is a real danger
Right?
Sheeple.
"C-c-c-corrupted ones" -- Max Headroom, probably!
The Max Headroom reference is even more relevant, since the 1980s TV show Max Headroom was all about Japanese megacorps jockeying for position over who gets to rule the cyberpunk world of tomorrow (which is actually about now, I think). You know, like Sony. G-g-g-groovy!
Every time I feel sad, I go and watch ua-cam.com/video/IEIE2q7kvxQ/v-deo.html and it perks me right up rigggggggggggght up.
I've had Max on my mind of late due to watching Eureka with my fiancée recently and Frewer has a recurring role.
0:18 the sound of it spinning up is so good 😂
"Must be a record!"
Uh no, it's a DVD
bazinga
You gotta hand it to Sony and Philips, though: calling their standard DVD+R was marketing genius. 😁 It automatically made most people call the other standard "DVD minus R" to make the distinction, thus almost naturally giving the competing standard a negative connotation. After all, no company would ever willingly use the word "minus" in any of their brands, because that word can never be used in a favorable context. You have a choice between two products: the one is a plus, the other is (perceived as) a minus. Which one would you pick?
By the way, I was working in a computer store during the time of that format war, around the turn of the millennium. I remember DVD-R having the reputation (at least among my colleagues at the time and our more tech-savvy customers who saw through the "plus/minus" marketing trick) of being more reliable and more compatible with standalone DVD players as well. Perhaps we just believed that because DVD-R was the standard that was "blessed" by the DVD Forum. Also, I remember trusting the long-term reliability of DVD-R media more than that of DVD+R discs. But that may have been simply because more disc manufacturers (including cheap no-name junk brands) making DVD+R media, leaving the more "niche" and somewhat more expensive DVD-R media to be manufactured only by fewer and more upscale brands.
We ended up selling way more DVD+R/RW writers, though, before the standards were consolidated. Most PC component manufacturers sided with DVD+R/RW. Perhaps because of lower royalties.
I'm not sure if I remember this correctly, but didn't some manufacturers eventually release firmware updates on their websites, that enabled support for both formats in some existing writers and recorders?
Yeah, I was never quite sure which type to go for, although I think I tended towards DVD-R because of knowing it was the one that was around first (so assumed it would be more widely compatible), and it sounded more like it was the proper standard (like CD-R), whereas DVD+R sounded like something totally different and outside of the standards. But I always had Sony laptops, so I probably did the wrong thing there (not knowing DVD+R had anything to do with Sony, or any companies in particular), and I do remember having some DVD-Rs which I couldn't get my laptop to play nicely with at all, but worked fine in my desktop PC. So it's nice to finally have a proper explanation of the differences... even if it is at least a decade too late to be of any use to me
I was an early adopter of DVD writing and bought a Pioneer DVR-A04 drive. I have at least two models now that are -R only. I also saw it as the more legitimate version, and was vaguely annoyed at the clearly pointless market coup of +R. We weren’t all that far off the heels of DVD vs DIVX at the time - the last thing we needed was another round of vendor fragmentation.
Luckily the universal drives came out quickly and put a lid on that whole grease fire. I sided with -R for a while, then made sure to have a spindle of each, as there always seemed to be tales of one DVD player or RO drive that could read one or the other but not both.
Hey, there's some food for thought, "After all, no company would ever willingly use the word 'minus' in any of their brands, because that word can never be used in a favorable context."
I looked up the use of "minus" in branding, hoping for some sort of diet cola, but only ended up finding a clothing company. The folks at Minus Fashion really don't play on their company's name in any of their products, however.
Can you imagine launching an iPhone 6- along side the 6+?
@@KTSTHofficial I guess "minus" could be used in products where you often see "smth free", "without smth" and so on.
Hi from the UK. I love your humour and mostly informative videos. (Some are US only) . Keep up the good work.
14:28 I know I was confused. "It's not re-writable? But it says RW here!"
Should have been a plus at the center of a disc.
I wonder if any of the manufacturers of those discs got sued for false advertising over confusion from the RW logo.
At the time i usually went by the price- "if it is the price of an R it cant be an RW"
I remember the reasons why, and they were super-dumb. +RW came out before +R did, and was subsequently backported to a write-once format. When they chose their logo, there was no intent to make a write-once version.
To my recollection, there was no -RW when +RW came out. The DVD Forum figured DVD-RAM was going to be THE rewritable DVD format. And then Sony and Philips were all "Actually, DVD-RAM is kind of weird. We'd like a rewritable disk that looks and works like a normal friggin' disk." But the DVD Forum was "No, DVD-RW is a stupid idea, use DVD-RAM or GTFO." Hence +RW was born.
Then it took off, and the DVD Forum was "Well, shit. No one's buying DVD-RAM disks anymore. Guess we should extend DVD-R into DVD-RW". And THEN the RW Association was all "Hell naw. You gonna come pick a fight after tellin' us you didn't want our shit? Two can play that game." and they released +R mostly out of spite.
None of this helps confusion at all, and I'm glad my first DVD writer was a multi-format one.
I randomly bumped into this channel a little while ago, and I am really glad I did. Instantly subscribed. The way he explains everything. Really enjoyable to watch. Keep up the great work
0:01 puts away the percolator
Me: *dead* 😂
Elijah Post im picturing him calming down after the rant and instantly moving on to a new video lol
@@AyedUA-cam If it weren't for different T-shirt, I'd believe that too.
Good catch!
I didn't even notice that, it is indeed a very pleasant chuckle :D
Alilolo Exactly what I was thinking 🤣
That wasn't even that long ago! We're only talking about 15 years.
Yeah stop making us all realize how old we are
That RW Logo had me puzzled back in the Day. I didn't know that was due to licensing. Always thought they were supposed to be Re-Writable
Not sure I realized what it meant back then, but rewriting discs wasn't a feature I found useful. Still, I assume it was quite convenient considering flash drives were quite expensive and offered far less capacity in those days. Though there's also DVD-RAM, which makes that entire market sector ostensibly more confusing than plain recordable DVDs.
I thought that too before I tried rewriting a few of them.
Wow, I never even realised that was their logo. Either I never actually bought any +R discs (I can't remember for sure) or the ones I bought omitted the logo for anti-confusion purposes
Ditto. Thankfully, TIVO stepped in quickly to overshadow both of them and put a stop to all the confusion.
That was super confusing back in the day. I was a kid and I'm not from english speaking country, so it took me some trial and error to figure out that "RW" logo was just pure bullshit... So confusing...
14:33 i REMEMBER BUYING THOSE WITH RW THINKING THEY WERE REWRITABLE OMG WHYYYYYYYY
Pretty sure I've been burned (haha) by that many times myself lol.
Mate what is with the drama. It was not exactly the end of the world. You got had lol
What I can remember I had more failed burns depending on manufacturer/brand of the disk rather than - or +
This is what I remember as well, with the no-name private label discs being far inferior to the branded discs.
For me it was write speed. For burning music I had to do like 4x or 8x otherwise the 16x would fail 70% of the time
media wasn't cheap, and sometimes you found cheap bundle but you paid the price for using it. Usually it was CRAP!
@@YoungCorruption Haha, I misread that, and thought you said 70% success rate. Was about to say you were very lucky, but actually I had exactly the same experience.
Worst discs I ever had were CompUSA's in house brand. Best turned out to be a tie between Verbatim and Memorex.
11:40 there were some players (mostly the cheaper ones and game consoles) that would have more trouble with one over the other. I remember buying "unoffical" copies of movies that would work fine in some players but not others.
I remember the non-rewritable discs having the RW on them! That was indeed confusing as hell.
that is one of the stupidest things to me
Why isn't this show on TV?
So much more informative than most of anything on Discovery. (even compared to old actual Discovery Channel)
Actually I'm glad it's on UA-cam, but seriously, clearly you put a lot of research and work in your videos. And that together with your style of humor, it's excellent!
Thanks for all you do
If it were on actual TV, he would have to add Honey Boo Boo as a co-host in season 3.
Tv is adspam trash for 70iq neets who are bored.
Yeah but TV would have ruined the show anyway...
I've read all the wiki articles, pages and white papers on much of what he covers, and still learn things and its so much more fun
Who cares if it's not on TV? Cable TV is an irrelevant dinosaur, filled with useless junk. I dumped it 9 years ago and never looked back.
I never called it "dash r". Because I knew of the "plus R", I always called it "minus R" to differentiate it from "plus R".
I call them DVDR and DVD+R
My first (and only) DVD writer was an internal drive that billed itself as a "DVD±R". Before I watched this video, all I ever knew about the difference between the formats was that I didn't need to know about the difference between the formats.
I think the original intent was that the "-" in "DVD-R" be silent. Like, you don't say "MS hyphen DOS" or "MS dash DOS" for "MS-DOS", do you?
But the introduction of "plus R" created "minus R" as a retronym, reinterpreting the meaning of the "-" character.
@@danielbishop1863 yes the original intent was supposed to have the dash silent, like in CD-ROM, but when there was a separate rewritable format called "DVD+R", the obvious comparison was to call it minus R, because we humans like things easily quantifiable, and don't gave time for subtlety.
If you walk up to a random clerk tell him to go in the back and get some recordable DVD Rs, if you specified verbally "minus R" they know you're not talking about the "plus R". It gets the job done.
Besides minus doesn't have to be a bad thing, like if RC wanted to name their zero calorie Ace K cola RC Minus, their slogan could be "the same RC, minus the calories.". See I made the ninus a good thing.
I've burned literally thousands of CDs, and I think less than a thousand DVDs.
Never could find the real difference between -R and +R, maybe because there wasn't a real difference after all.
Thank you very much for the information 👍
“That’s way more hertz” i know it’s painful.
It hertz way more.
Ouch. I’ve been vibrated,
DVD+R vibrates 9 times more than DVD-R, so it really hurts.
@@surrodox feel like you missed the pun
"The use of discs in computers is over."
You... You don't work in government, I see.
@@jbird4478 Or a special version of Windows XP.
@@null643 That's not why it's kept that way. They already have something that works for their needs, while the costs aren't outweighed by benefits of upgrading. Once they are, things are improved.
You don't see old computers in every government building, you tend to see rather new ones. Service contracts with OEMs are how purchasing is maintained, and, honestly, there's quite a bit of innovation where it's useful. It's just not useful to throw away working things.
Well, in Germany Fax devices still play a major role. Sand I mean the actual devices, not a software version.
So you're finally past punchcards and reel to reel?
"You don't work in government, I see."
Where FORTRAN still lives...
Just reached to thank you for the incredible subtitles - I'm not deaf at all, but I like to watch your videos as I'm getting ready to go to sleep and bring able to rely on your excellent subtitles to continue watching as I'm brushing my teeth or washing my face is great.
i love the subtitles to! but... you can read while washing your face?
Accessibility is for everyone!
*0:23** this stutter gag reminded me of another ancient funny memory:*
We used to have a lot of DVDs (like most people in the 2000's) and one of them was pirates of the carribean 3. The very last scene of the movie always stuttered like this because the disc was scratched (i guess)
I just found your channel today and it’s very quickly turning into one of my favorites. Your in depth explanations and visuals as well as your sense of humor is exactly what I’ve been looking for in UA-cam content. Keep up the awesome work!
I remember when I bought my first CD burner. It was 4X, cost me $200, and it still ranks as one of my best purchases ever. At the time, everyone in college was buying Zip disks. The school was even installing them on every lab computer. I took one look at the media cost, and I thought "This is dead in the water." Burning was a pain compared to today, but back then, my god. You could only get a 10 or 15 GB hard drive. CD-Rs were cheap effectively infinite storage.
That's all to say that I remember it fondly, and I still have every document I ever created because of it.
How much did each CD cost?
Can I see document. I’m interested
I completely forgot about Zip disk. I even had one, just because.
@@kevinbullock1814 zip discs are a fun but definitely failed technology.
They served a purpose... for a while. After that better media had come out.
In my world, zip disk is a colloquial term for a thin cutting disk for an angle grinder... never knew there was a computer thing by that name.
2000: What do you want to do with this disc?
2020: What do you want to do with this external drive?
We've come so far!
Many/most new computer cases don't even have an opening for the 5.25" drive!
Offtopic: What about youtube chapters?
2020 Nas 10tb
What do you want to do with the cloud account?
Think you missed out 1980 what do you want to do with Betamax or VHS
The t-shirt you are wearing right now symbolizes this theme. It feels sincere. I enjoyed the good content.
"... that must be a record."
I thought it was a DVD?
I remember burning DVDs in the mid to late 00's, and here is some feedback.
When doing a single burn, there wasn't any real difference between + & -
When using a disk over and over, adding small files (think assignments) the + was less likely to fail.
The - when adding files after the first burn failed more often, destroying the disk. And the more burns the higher the risk of failure.
No wonder I bought more DVD-RW than DVD+RW. Yeah, I have a lot of the Dash to be disposed while the Pluses are still usable until now.
I was burning GAME dvd's back then
13 minutes in and I'm now confident that there may be some very red USB cables in your house. 😉
Several, at this point...
@@TechnologyConnections our house is silly with them, too.
But I made the move to a Pixel recently and haven't looked back. Now these cables merely make me look cool, as opposed to being required for fast charging.
(Speaking of... Any chance you have "Fast Charging Format Wars" or "How OnePlus tried to Sony everybody else" as a future video idea where you explore Qi and all that jazz?)
A USB PD vs Qualcom QC would be very interesting, even if it's a significantly newer topic than most of the tech you cover. I've seen a few boards on ebay that allow you to press a button to negotiate a different voltage.
I wasn't aware there was any other standard than Qi for wireless transfer, just a bunch of schmucks trying to reinvent it so you have to buy their charger.
DeviantOllam I know I have a few...
DeviantOllam i don’t get it, explain please...
I worked at Frys Electronic for nine years starting in 2003. I of course worked in the computer dept and can't count the number of times I was asked this question. Goes to figure it'd be some 20 years later that I actually learned the answer.
"That's the third plug this video, must be a record!"
Actually no, it's an optical disc...
Thought the same thing lmao
I sorta miss when we had to burn CD/DVD's to back up music, movies, and other files. It sorta forced you to manually go through everything you were storing every so often. Now it all just sits on an external or flash drive, not having been organized or seen in half a decade+, or is it -.
Yeah, all the illegally downloaded songs on our mix CDs felt so much more precious back then 😭
And whenever we switch to a larger drive, the stuff from the drive being obsoleted gets brushed away into consecutively more recursive folders named "Old" …
@@kagitsune i still get a kick out of downloading games on my pc
Agree. I still burn audio (music) for my old CD player in my old car.
I look forward to your take on the next format war: HD DVD vs Blu-ray!
Yes! is HD DVD old enough now to get a video!?
@@fordtechchris Probably. 8 bit guy just included it in his 108 rare and bizarre medias video.
Please please please never stop making these wonderfully pointless yet HUGELY satisfying vids. 😁 ♥
Him: "...like a lame old person?"
Me: *sad old person noises*
I still make CDs...
They go great in cars that don't have a usb in the radio or even an aux port.
Yes, I drive old cars.
just wait for a fake CD that integrates a battery, an optical digital transmitter and bluetooth audio... like fake cassettes with the audio jack
But why? A Bluetooth radio transmitter costs less than a stack of CDs.
@@IraFox84 unless those have gotten much better since the last time I tried using one, I'll stick to cassette tapes, the quality is much better
What do you mean my 1958 Dodge has a built in record player
Luckily I have BOTH a cassette AND a CD player.
RE: "CD+R", people might be confusing it with CD+G, because vendors are dumb like that.
Well, there was also the short time when CD-RW was introduced but drives didn't yet fully support both so you had to check to make sure you were buying the right kind of disc. It's also possible people are remembering the CD-R and CD-RW situation as being somewhat similar to DVD-R vs DVD+R one and just overwriting the former in their memory with the latter since it is more recent. And lasted a bit longer.
So I wasn't alone...
I instead remember CD+RW. Was that a thing?
@@DeriDraws Nope it was CD - R (write once) or CD - RW (could be written and rewritten many times) approximately a 1000 times if memory serves
I might've seen a CD-R or CD-RW with a "+" instead of a "-", but I'm not sure.
I work with a charity assisting disabled people with IT - We started using CDs and DVDs again after we gave someone a USB stick with data on it - They put it in a Windows 10 machine which decided to move the contents to . . . somewhere. The person didn't (knowingly) have a 'Microsoft account' so the data disappeared (the stick was wiped clean in the process). Fortunately the majority of our clients now use Linux, but we still use the CDs and DVDs for distributing stuff.
Can't the USB be write-protected?
@@rawrrrer Yes but it can be un-protected just as easily and as it was a Windows machine I wouldn't trust it not to un-lock it just so it could do what it wanted to (not been a fan of windows since ME and its fondness for throwing away the TCP/IP stack and trashing the network, XP seemed okay, didn't get on with Vista and it's been downhill since then). Anything on a computer should be regarded as ephemeral, even if you employ Big Tech to do the storage (ask the My Space users). Baaed on personal experience home-burned DVDs can die in as little as ten years, CDs a little longer, but neither seem suitable for archiving, so print everything you want to keep (preferably on papyrus, that lasts for ever if it's kept dry and it's easier to handle that lead sheet scrolls and clay tablets). Spinning rust disk have proved remarkably reliable for long term storage, we have 20 year old drives that are still fine. Solid state drives including SSDs and thumb drives need regular refreshing to keep the data live, we have had them fail after two years in a drawer.
16:05 "approrpriately"
I didn't use a DVD recorder so most of my use was backup data discs, and a stack of DVD+R happened to be cheaper in the shop.
I'm pretty sure that was intentional :)
Very approrpriate for that situation.
This is by far the most self-aware channel on all of UA-cam.
The only time this ever made a difference in my life was when forced to specifically use DVD-R to burn XBOX games onto. DVD+R didn't work. Piracy foiled for a day :/
To add to that, some xbox drives were perfectly fine with DVD+R. I had a Phillips that had no issues with +R. Wait, Phillips and Sony created the +R... it all makes sense now.
My PS2 with chip never read DVD+R well. Now it doesn't read anything.
@@MaxStrike1988 Ah good times . I remember at one point I used to just leave my PS2 out of its shell due to how often I would have to jiggle and poke its insides to get it to work.
had a dvd player that didn't read DVD-R, had to buy + just for it.
Then you got the Xbox 360 which used a hidden second layer that most DVD players couldn't see, and therefore made it so much harder to burn such disc.
Not sure why you're saying that the +or- of the blank disc doesn't effect consumers because back when I use to burn a lot of movies (I'm not sure if it was + or the -) that if I didn't use the right one it wouldn't work for me so I had to just throw them all out and re-buy the other dvd'd and re-burn all over again. They just wouldn't work in whatever I put them in, could never get them to work for me, not even once. For years after that, I'd get someone to pick me up some blank disc's or I got some as a gift, and at times I'g get the wrong ones and be stuck with them and needing to go out of my way to get the right ones, and at times without having the person who got the wrong ones for me to not feel bad about it. Also there were times when I had argued with people because they thought "what's the difference" and just thought I was just being picky and no way would they believe me.
Two words that were guaranteed to elicit horror in all who read them: "Buffer Underrun/Underflow".
*shudder* Back when blanks were expensive.. making a "coaster" was an ever-present fear. Don't TOUCH the mouse.. it's burning a CD!
I probably got into the burning game too late (late 90s) because I literally never had that happen. It wasn't until 15 years later that I discovered this used to be a problem.
LOL, but first burner on W98 and 56MB RAM ..... yep, hold your breath while burning, dont move, nor blink
@@nemo-x - because they are for the most part. 4.7gb is nothing now. That, and they're slow, and mostly write-once. Flash memory has put them in the past with VHS and vinyl. When new computers aren't even coming with optical drives, you know it's over.
You just *had* to make me remember the time when it was advisable to reboot before burning and do nothing else while burning. Some even claimed that moving the mouse was dangerous...
But wasn't that mostly a problem with CD-R?
14:25 Oh my god. It all makes sense now. Ten years later my confusion is resolved.
My first programming job in the very early 90s was on the OS/2 operating system. We had something called a WORM drive - Write Once Read Many. It was an optical disk, but different from CD format (you couldn't use CD disks and you had to have a WORM drive to read the disks).
Your recent pinball video has me going through your content. I love the way you explain tech. Thank you
Did anyone else have a minor flashback when he said "Disc Write Failed"? lmfao
Another awesome video dude!
Sadly I still experience that today. People at my church still want CDs of sermons. Would be so much easier if we could just put it on a flash drive! Not to mention faster.
Yeah! And I only found out today why the hell the DVD labeled RW wouldn’t burn more than once. I thought it was just windows vista being windows vista. Man 12 year old me would have loved to have this info...
He literally asked "Do you remembering needing physical media" while I was writing MS-DOS (6.22) to a floppy disk.
I'm burning backups to BluRay. Optical media are far from gone.
I’m skeptical of the longevity of flash drives. Electron dissipation from the underlying structures apparently is a thing. Doesn’t matter much if you somewhat regularly “refresh” the drive via write leveling. But long term storage seems, undetermined
I loved dos 6.22 and win 3.11, because I knew what lies to tell them so I could get them to do what I wanted.
@@ericnewton5720 guess which format will survive perfectly when CME hits? lol
Flash Media is not perfect, just widely accepted... like face diapers
Very old school of you 😁 I miss my old 386 :(
My experience burning DVDs gave me the sense that the -R discs were more likely to have successful burns. The +R ones seemed more prone to failed burns. I didn't actually run tests but out of the hundreds of discs I made, the -R seemed more reliable. Most of the time it was one full burn and I rarely used any for multiple recordings. I did use DVD RAM discs for that and they were awesome. A bit pricey, but so cool that it was practically like having hot swappable hard drives.
Agree. My experience too.
Agree. Also I found -R media was more compatible with some devices like DVD players, Playstations or even some DVD Drives didn't recognise DVD+R was a boot disc but they did with -.
I'm pretty sure DVD-R was a lot more common than the + variant, that might help with compatibility
@@HyperVectra But when it comes to dual-layer media, I have found DVD+R DL to be more compatible than DVD-R DL. For me, DVD-R DL failed even on fairly recent DVD players (with Divx support and everything), and even on PC DVD drives. So... use -R for single layer and +R for dual layer, I guess.
My burn successes were based more on the DVD disc manufacturer rather than the format.
Liked this video a while ago but just now seen the outtakes....amused me immensely 🥰