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| A Hollywood ending for the DVD battle? It may still be too early to declare a winner, but here's why I'm betting on DVD+RW to overtake the competition. |
By John Morris
Executive editor, CNET Hardware and Software
(5/6/02)
Nevertheless, we're starting to see signs of an eventual winner in this category. If you were to guess that the victor was the format that was first on the market, comes with most high-end PCs, or is currently compatible with the most DVD players and drives, well, you'd probably be wrong. Instead, it now looks like DVD+RW could come from behind to overtake the competition.
And down the stretch they come
Hewlett-Packard has been leading the charge. It was first to release a DVD+RW drive, the DVD100i, late last year. And the company just shipped a follow-on that adds support for write-once DVD+R. I recently had a chance to try out the aptly-named DVD200i. Sony and Philips, the other two key DVD+RW players, have also released similar drives. Each of these three drives costs about $500.
The key advantage of DVD+R over DVD+RW is compatibility, since it's widely recognized that DVD+RW discs are not compatible with as many players and drives as DVD-R and DVD-RW discs. No one will give out numbers, so it's hard to verify these claims, but I burned a short test movie to a DVD+R and was able to play it in several PCs. The DVD+RW Alliance also offers a list of players and drives that are compatible with DVD+RW; presumably, the list for DVD+R would be even longer.
| It now looks like DVD+RW could come from behind to overtake the competition. |  |
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Despite all this, there are several reasons why DVD+RW is gaining ground. It will eventually let you drag and drop files onto rewritable discs just as you can with a floppy or a CD-RW now. Microsoft recently announced that this technology, known as Mt. Rainier for reasons unclear to me, would be built in to its next operating system--a big psychological boost for the DVD+RW camp.
One drive for data backup and movie burning
With the increased compatibility of DVD+R and easy rewrite capabilities, DVD+RW could take the place of both DVD-R and DVD-RW for making your own movies and DVD-RAM for data backup. The DVD Forum is pushing its own plan for a unified format called DVD Multi, but so far, no drives support it, and it doesn't appear to be backwards-compatible with existing DVD drives and players.
| DVD+RW could take the place of both DVD-R and DVD-RW for making your own movies and DVD-RAM for data backup. | |
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Most PCs still come with DVD-RW drives, thanks largely to Apple and Compaq, and a new version of the popular Pioneer drive, the DVR-A04, is now available. But DVD+RW drives are already outselling them as add-ons this year. And once Compaq and HP merge, Presario PCs could switch sides and join Dell, which already includes DVD+RW with some configurations of its Dimension 8200. Combine all this with the fact that prices on drives and media are dropping fast, and this could be the year we finally get a practical, widespread format for making DVDs--and not a moment too soon.
| See the previous Digital Domain | The Digital Domain archive  |
John Morris is the executive editor for CNET Hardware and Software. Have a question for him? Let us know!
