DVD discs

[mostoften]

What is the meaning of the following:-

DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, & DVD-RAM

[WoWo]

While a DVD format standard was agreed early in the development process the format for writting wasn't this meant that a number of hardware manufacturers did one thing and another lot did another. This left 2 broad groups the + and the - (not sure of the exact significance).

Most current DVD writters support both formats but some are limited to only - or +

DVD-R are disks which are capable of being written to once.
DVD-RW can be written to multiple times
DVD-RAM are used for Data storage.

Effectively a DVD writer will display which format it will support, and DVD disks will do this also. You need to make sure if your DVD writer only supports DVD-R that you purchase DVD-R disks.

[vehelpfulguy]

Just to confirm what WoWo says:

There are three different DVD formats (all slightly different)

- (minus), + (plus) and RAM

(RAM is not used very much and can be mostly ignored)

and there are two different types of disk, R and RW.

R is write once (once written cannot overwrite), RW is write a number of times.

So you can have five type of DVD disk:

DVD-R (minus format, write once)

DVD+R (plus format, write once)

DVD-RW (minus format, write a number of times)

DVD+RW (plus format, write a number of times)

DVD-RAM

As Wowo says, most DVD writers will support at least + or -, as do most DVD players, but not all do so check your equipment before buying anything.