Plus or Minus R

When I was in BJ’s today, I wandered through the computer accessories section and noted a sale on blank DVDs.  This means something to me now that I have a DVD burner.  I may as well have them so I know what others go through burning DVDs, I can use them for backups and such, and I can make photo CDs.  Though I believe my mother no longer has her DVD player; she’s who I had in mind particularly.

Anyway, the sale was Memorex, 50 packs for $9.99, versus 100 packs of another brand for $27.99, which still sounded reasonable.

Trouble was, they had blue packs and brown packs with no apparent distinction.  They both said DVD and R.  They both looked the same.  I had to study them at length before I figured out that one was burnable once, and the other was rewritable.  In CD lingo we would have called that CD-R and CD-RW, back in the olden days when DVDs were upstarts trying to displace VHS movies and gaining fast.

It wasn’t until after I’d arrived at that conclusion that I noticed a theoretically overt difference.  The burnable ones were labeled DVD-R and the rewritable ones were labeled DVD+R.  Probably everyone knows that, and where have I been for the past couple years.

What threw me is the fact that the rewritables are presumably more expensive.  Other products on the shelves bore that out, but these were the same price.  Still, I decided I had no use for rewriting, and they are cheap enough, so I got the DVD-R pack.

It should be interesting to try them.  I haven’t touched the Vista machine in a couple days.  That’ll give me a specific purpose.

Speaking of DVDs, I saw episodes of the original Underdog, a big favorite when I was a kid, in sets on three DVDs, so I got them for Sadie.  She declared them “cool.” They’re lacking the usual “play all” feature you get on sets like that, which is a pain, but in addition to Underdog, they have stuff like Go Go Gophers that played along with it.  Did that parody F Troop, or did F Troop come later?

I love being able to rebuild my childhood - and my father’s, for that matter, considering all the stuff I never saw that these kids get to watch that dates to my father being a kid - and expose my kids to classics, politically incorrect or otherwise.

1. The biggest difference, in all practicality, between + and - is DVD playability/ compatibility.  Certain DVD players can only play + or - burned DVDs in addition to the commercial ones (DVD-X).  It was a hell of an education for us when we went to get a DVD recorder.

   Posted by caltechgirl  on  08/16  at  12:39 AM  from 

2. That’s right, I also got the impression that their might be a difference in regional capability for players.

   Posted by Jay Solo  on  08/16  at  07:50 AM  from  Nowhere, Man
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