DVD Format Issues

• Recordable DVDs have serious compatibility issues. Southern Stock/Photodisc/Getty Images

  Although the DVD Forum, an industry coalition of over 200 companies, has defined the basic formats for prerecorded DVDs, compatibility issues still arise between different DVD formats. The problem lies with recordable DVDs, or DVD-Rs. None of the recordable DVD formats are fully compatible with each other, and not all DVD players can read home-recorded discs, which leads to headaches for many users.

The Dash Format

• The DVD Forum advocates "dash format" technology for DVDs (DVD-RW). This technology can only support certain recording speeds. Drives based on the dash format can only support recording speeds of 1X or 2X. This makes them incompatible with rewritable DVD-RW discs, which support up to 4X the normal recording speed. Trying to record data on the high-speed disc with an older, dash format DVD writer may result in ejection of the disc from the hardware or damage to the data on the disc.

The Plus Format

• The plus format (DVD+RW) uses a different kind of technology for recordable DVDs. This format is not supported by the DVD forum, but is used by manufacturers such as Hewlett-Packard and Phillips. High-speed DVD-RWs are compatible with early model DVD writers that use plus format technology. It's possible that some older drives will experience compatibility issues with write-once discs rather than re-recordable discs, but most newer drives and players are designed to support both dash and plus formats.

Brand Compatibility Issues

• The biggest and most complicated source of compatibility issues for DVDs lies in the differences between brands. Not all players and drives can read home-recorded discs. Recordable discs have a different reflectivity than prerecorded discs, and not all players have been correctly designed to read them.

  DVD-R and DVD+R discs only work in about 85% of players, while DVD-RW and DVD+RW discs work in about 80% of players. Comprehensive lists of compatibility issues between specific brands and formats are available on many DVD troubleshooting websites.