Thread: Difference between DVD-R & DVD+R?

I understand that they are two different formats, but does it make a lick of difference when I use one or the other to burn a dvd on my computer (computer is like 5 or 6 years old)?

Originally Posted by sneakers

I understand that they are two different formats, but does it make a lick of difference when I use one or the other to burn a dvd on my computer (computer is like 5 or 6 years old)?

The most important thing is knowing whether your DVD drive will burn either/or. Most these days burn bot, but back in the day, many only burned -R's and some only burned +R's.

The other major factor is where you will play it. If you are say burning a video of some type and want to play it in a DVD player, again, you have to see what it is capable of reading. These days, most things will read either one (and also RW's), but older ones might only read one or the other.

The main advantage that +R's used to have is that if your software supported it, you could change a bit during the burning process that would make a +R look like a DVD-ROM to the player reading it, and everything reads DVD-ROMs (as opposed to DVD -R and DVD +R).

When I was making some videos for family members (this was about 6 years ago), I found that +R's, with the bit set to make it look like a DVD-ROM, provided almost 100% compatibility.

The main reason they are -R and +R is that one is not re-recordable (the -R) and the other is. With DVD+R you can reformat and re-record over them. Like Tned said most computers don't support them though.