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Re: [OT] DVD Burners -- there are 2 ways to record in any OS ...



On Mon, 2005-07-18 at 09:09 -0500, Kara Pritchard wrote:
> As far as "why" we stock those, it's because they've been very solid, no 
> matter what OS you're using.

And that's good.  But just know there are 2 ways to burn in any OS.

Sony/Philips +R/+RW drives (even if they also do -R/-RW) don't do one of
them.  There is a long history to why, but they never have full DVD-R
compatibility.  Jorg has added some "emulation" to CDRecord-ProDVD's
byte-by-byte (character) record for DVD+R/+RW drives, but it's not the
same as a true byte-by-byte (character) Disc-at-Once (DaO) to a DVD-R/-
RW firmware drive.

Long story short is that +R/+RW was designed for data, not player/
embedded compatibility.  That didn't come until late 2003, largely
because most players are now "intelligent" and can handle the physical
media differences.  I.e., if you read the +R/+RW docs out there,
including the dvd+rw-tools, they will always reference it as the same
"logical" organization.  "Logical" is the key phrase.

Only -R/-RW with DaO (which dvd+rw-tools downplays, wrongly IMHO, and
gets some other facts wrong) is the way to guarantee player and embedded
compatibility, physically.  Especially with pre-2004 models.  It's one
of the reasons HP, Sony and Philips have had litigation against them
(not delivering compatibility, support as expected, etc...) in the past.
There's even a much longer, and very political, history to that, but
it's not really relevant here.

> We have only had one RMA (knock on wood) in the past 2 years since
> we've been using that line of product.  We started using the
> Samsung/Toshiba drives as our primary model after the Lite-on 
> ones kept having problems.

I've never had good luck with Lite-on.  So I'll see you there.

I fairly certain Samsung has only make +R/+RW drives, along with HP and
most other Sony/Philips licensees.

As far as Toshiba, they make both -R/-RW (and even -RAM) firmware
drives, as well as +R/+RW firmware drives.  I assume you only stocked
the latter, but some of them might do all.

LG's GSA-408x and 416x series seems to have a winner in that they:  
A)  Support every format (DVD-R/-RW, +R/+RW, and even DVD-RAM)
B)  Support both DaO and more "logical" block recording/rewriting
    (as well as even 8 year-old DVD-RAM packet write in Linux ;-)

AnandTech found not only the performance outstanding at _both_ DVD-R and
DVD+R, but the error rates fairly competitive (except for one media
brand):  
  http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2470  


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                     b.j.smith@ieee.org 
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 
It is mathematically impossible for someone who makes more than you
to be anything but richer than you.  Any tax rate that penalizes them
will also penalize you similarly (to those below you, and then below
them).  Linear algebra, let alone differential calculus or even ele-
mentary concepts of limits, is mutually exclusive with US journalism.
So forget even attempting to explain how tax cuts work.  ;->



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