Andy Stewart wrote:

The message thread about DVD writers makes me think that there are many standards or types of writeable DVD media that not all drives can handle - is this true?

Could somebody compare/contrast the different types?

That PCWorld article I mentioned earlier in this thread has a nice table. The first step is to note that there are three pairs: DVD-R and DVD-RW DVD+R and DVD+RW CD-R and CD-RW plus one single, DVD-RAM which (so far) has no RW sibling. (I include CD's to emphasize the pattern) That article also has a table: Type Can be written to by drives of type DVD-RW DVD+RW DVD-RW/+RW DVD-RAM/-R/-RW DVD-RAM/-R DVD-R yes no yes yes yes DVD+R no yes yes no no CD-R yes yes yes yes no DVD-RW yes no yes yes no DVD+RW no yes yes no no DVD-RAM no no no yes yes CD-RW yes yes yes yes no and with same rows: Capac Cost Cartrige? Quick Format Data verifn 4.7GB $4 no n/a no 4.7 5 no n/a no 700MB 1 no n/a no 4.7 6 no optional no 4.7 7 no yes no 4.7* 15 yes** n/a*** yes 700 1 no no no and still with same rows: Defct Mngmt Max Rewrites Seq/Rand Data/video? no n/a seq video no n/a seq video no n/a seq video & data no 1000 seq data yes**** 1000 seq data yes 100,000 random data no 1000 seq data * double sided gives 9.4 GB ** disks also available w/o cartridges on a spindle *** DVD-RAM disks are preformatted **** only on Mount Ranier writes which are not supported by most drives Hope the formatting survives! :-) doug