DVD formats - what's the story ?

Posted by: Team Reeves on 23 June 2003

Not sure if this should be in the HiFi Corner, but here goes...

My brother tells me that when he is burning DVDs, not only is there a regional DVD format, but there are also other formats, for which you need to buy specific format discs, and you need to know which format player you are burning for so that they will play.

Now .. I find that hard to believe ... for example, when current CDs include video tracks how do they know what format to play in - or this completely different to DVDs ??

TIA for any enlightenment.

Sounds good to me.

Posted on: 23 June 2003 by Tom F

I think your brother is referring to DVD-Audio (DVD-A) discs which are music only carriers. They are designed to deliver music in surroound sound at much higher quality than CD. In order to access this high quality content, a DVD-A enabled DVD player is required.

Note that there are some DVD-A discs available to purchase which contain several layers on music, including 'standard' DVD surround sound in order to play on a non-DVD-A player.

The rival to DVD-A is Super Audio CD (SACD). These discs are available as both surround sound and stereo only, and are often 'hybrid' discs with a standard CD layer. These require SACD players in order for the high quality content to be accessed.

Increasingly there are DVD players being released that are able to access the content of both DVD-A, SACD, CD, video CD, DVD-Video, etc discs. They vary in quality and ability for each format (pretty hopeless with CD, for example), but can be picked up pretty cheap. There is a Sony model available for c£130 wich is apparently very popular.

Whilst DVD-A and SACD seem like a good idea, the problem is availability of software. Many are happy to wait for this neo-VHS/Betamax issue to be reolved before taking the plunge.

Posted on: 23 June 2003 by Martin Payne

Tom,

I think he's referring to DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, etc.

All incompatible formats - each DVD player will only play some subset of the available options.

cheers, Martin

E-mail:- MartinPayne at Dial.Pipex.com

Posted on: 23 June 2003 by Maxi Me

quote:
I think he's referring to DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, etc.

All incompatible formats - each DVD player will only play some subset of the available options.

cheers, Martin

He is. What a mess. You thought Betamax v VHS was bad!

Oh, plus the confusion between DVD-V (video) and DVD-A (audio)!

Seth
Is Naim the only way forward?
Ahh, Ahh! I'm burning!!

Posted on: 24 June 2003 by Chris L

These days, you can pretty much ignore DVD-RAM, virtually none of the new crop of writers handle these (they use a caddy).

The vast majority of domestic players will handle DVD-R (even my rather old player does). Many will also handle DVD+R and one or other of the RW formats.

There's compatibility charts on:
DVD-R Help

Chris

Posted on: 24 June 2003 by Tom F

Ha Ha! LOL. Quite right, what a mess!

Oh well, at least I've only added to the confusion....

Posted on: 24 June 2003 by Team Reeves

Thanks everyone,

At least that gives me something to go on.

Team

Sounds good to me.