Understanding your DVDs

It’s a bit confusing nowadays when you go to the nearest media shop and you will buy some optical media disc such as CDs and DVDs and the seller would ask you if you want the “minus” or the “plus” one. The dash in the DVD-R is a dash mark or a hypen so don't get confused with the "plus" of DVD+R. When I buy blank DVDs I always get the “dash or hypen” or DVD-R. I have limited knowledge about the wide variety of DVDs available today so I conduct a tiny research on how those variety of DVDs differ from each other and how significant is their differences.

First I would like to define DVD. DVD originally stands for digital video disc but due to non video support it is now also stands for “digital versatile disc”. DVD formats vary from capacity, rewritability and support group.

Capacity:

It is the maximum data that is allowed to be stored on the DVD.

Rewritability:

It is the number of times you can store data or erase the data stored on the DVD.

Support Group:

Maybe not all are aware about the two major support groups on DVD industry, The DVD Forum and DVD+RW Alliance. Actually these two groups created the “dash” and “plus” DVD format. DVD Forum first introduce the most popular DVD format, “dash/hypen” such as DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RW DL while due to royalty issue DVD+RW Alliance created the “plus” format such as DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD+RW DL. But today some of the members of DVD+RW Alliance are funding DVD forum members.

“Dash” and “plus” format quality is not significantly different and both are compatible with most DVD players and drives.