h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I just bought a DVD recorder with a built in hard drive . It can burn DVD-RAM , DVD-R , DVD-R DL , DVD-RW , DVD+R , DVD+R DL , DVD+RW . I shall be using it mainly for burning discs to watch on various DVD players , is there a format that is more likely to be compatable than others ? Its a bit confusing has anybody got any thoughts on this ?

That is an interesting question.
Before I bought my Panasonic DVD recorder with bult in hard drive around 2 years ago I had a Phillips DVD recorder for 5 years that only used DVD+RW so I have always bought those even though the Panasonic I have now is more universal.
I suspect that if you can still buy DVD players that aren't universal it would be one of the more common and basic formats.I really don;t know the answer to your question but wait replies to it with interest..
The only thing I would say though is I thought DVD-RAM discs were really expensive?

Yes I have just got a Panasonic , I have to say I find the software menu system a bit anti-logic . But then most techy things are difficult to suss out when you first get them . [ or they are for me anyway ] .

Details below, but basically I would recommend DVD-R or DVD+R for most cases, I don't know of any significant difference between the two.

Don't bother with DVD-Ram.

Now that's out of the way, RW means re-writeable: you can burn over the top of it. R means readonly: you can burn it once. In practice I find that, since R are much cheaper, it is better to get those.

DL means dual layer, that means it has more capacity. Again, it is more expensive and for sheer capacity you are better off buying plain Rs. However, there is a twist: most feature-length films come on sets dual-layer DVDs, so if you wish to backup those onto normal Rs then you may have to split them up further (often you can have the film on one DVD and the extras on another).

+ and - are competing standards, but are basically inter-compatible in most cases. There may be minor price or compatibility differences, but I'm out of your depth there.

At a guess, I would suspect that if you can still buy non universal DVD players then they would be DVD-R or DVD+R simply due to pre-recorded DVDs being, I would imagin those formats.
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I would suggest though that even if you know the format of machins you want your recordings to play on, before you buy loads of discs you do a trial run as somtimes machines and compatability don't always work as you expect!

I managed to burn a DVD-RW and finalise it . [ whats that all about ? ] It played on my PS2 so I took it to work and tried it on another player . Nope , it would not have it . Even though it said on the front that it would play DVD-RW It has to be said that the player in question was the cheapest of the cheapies and also a bit knackered . So more experimentation required .