Related Articles

- Turtle Beach announces two USB Audio products

- Magic Mouse software now available for existing Macs, mouse not quite yet

- OWC posts memory upgrades for new iMacs

- Iomega intros new NAS solutions for home

- Wacom announces new Bamboo multi-touch surfaces

- Vertical Mac laptop stand BookArc ships

- OWC cuts prices on external Blu-Ray drives

- LaCie introduces LaCinema Rugged HD media player

- LaCie introduces USB hubs

- Iomega announces more droppable eGo portable HDD

DVD+R/RW drives now account for 39.3% of the recordable DVD market, according to world-wide production figures for Q3 2002 collected by Fujiwara Rothchild

Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Henry Norr notes that the Fujiwara Rothchild's figures show DVD-R/RW has a 37.2% share, with DVD-RAM trailing the field with 23.3%.

Apple is the leading supporter of the DVD-R/RW Forum, now that Compaq, a DVD Forum compatriot, has been swallowed by HP, itself a member of the rival DVD Alliance. Meanwhile, Dell and HP are members of the DVD Forum, the DVD+R/+RW support group, while showed its hand earlier this year with the declaration that there would be build-in Windows support for DVD+R/+RW.

Sony, thinking strategically, has hedged its bets and has opted for both standards for now. Sony is currently the only manufacturer with a combination drive which supports both DVD-R and DVD+R.

Both formats are readable on home DVD movie players, although DVD-R enjoys compatibility with a wider range of players currently, whereas DVD+R, being a more recent market entrant, tends to require a newer DVD player to ensure compatibility. Some PC DVD drives more than 12 months' old may also find difficulty reading DVD+R.

Technically, there is little to choose between the two at present, although the race for more and more speed is on. Currently, 4x drives represent the high end. The drives themselves are similarly priced, although DVD-R blank media holds a significant - but not overwhelming - price advantage at present. Scale economies will push DVD+RW media prices down however.

Pioneer and Phillips, purveyors and developers of the discrete formats, are also racing to beat each other in the speed stakes.

Analysis: Will differing standards matter if all DVD discs can be read by home/PC DVD drives? So long as there aren't significant price differentials between DVD-R or +R drives, or their associated media, the consumer won't know and certainly won't care.

Technological leads will make more of a difference, as they have to some extent in the commodified CDRW market. The DVD Forum (Apple and friends, mostly Japanese consumer electronics firms) is moving forward on Blue Laser technology, which has the potential to deliver up to 40GB of storage on DVD-R. Like FireWire v. USB 2.0, the development of 800Mbps FireWire will keep IEEE-1394 in the game, even as USB 2.0 gains critical mass.