Recordable DVD Formats Emerge

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October 02, 1998 (5:05 PM EDT)

By Andy Patrizio,

BURLINGAME, Calif. -- The battle between digital versatile disc and Divx has left more than a few consumers confused, and the multiple rewritable DVD formats are only going to make things worse.

Fortunately, a clear picture emerged from various working groups at the DVD Conference 1998 on Friday.

By the end of the year DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM all should be able to write 4.7 gigabytes of data to a disk. Now, DVD-R and DVD-RW can only save 3.9 GBs of content, while DVD-RAM holds just 2.6 GBs.

DVD-RAM is a purely consumer medium meant to compete with high-capacity removable storage like Iomega's ZIP and Jaz drives, according to Dana Berzin, marketing manager for DVD-RAM products at Panasonic, a division of Matsushita.

DVD-R is a write-once form of DVD, whereas DVD-RW is rewritable. Neither disc format is intended for consumer release. Rather, they are for content authors who want to write a sample disc and test it before stamping a final DVD-ROM, since DVD-R and -RW both use a similar method of storing data as the DVD-ROM discs, according to Robert Duncan, senior project engineer with Matsushita.

A DVD-RW disc can be rewritten about 1,000 times over the course of its life, whereas a DVD-RAM disc can handle more than 100,000 rewrites. DVD-R and DVD-RW drives are expected to cost between $5,000 and $15,000, and DVD-RAM drives on the market cost between $500 and $600, said Berzin.

DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM have the backing of the DVD Forum. But Sony and Philips broke from the Forum last year and introduced a competitive format, DVD+RW, which stores 3 GBs of content. Sony and Philips plan to release a DVD+RW drive in 1999.

Later this year, vendors including Panasonic will introduce newer DVD-ROM drives that read all versions of recordable DVD: DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM.