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The first line of the article states that there are four competing DVD rewritable technologies, and then it specifies only three: DVD-RAM, DVD+RW, and DVD-RW. Would someone please clarify the article?
HI, WHICH OF THE 4 DVDs CAN BE BEST SUITED FOR CAMCORDER RECORDING & EDITING? 'CAN ANYONE HELP ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO EDITING? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.142.51.239 ( talk) 21:11, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
Is there any suspicion that the DVD-RAM format will be one of the formats 'lost' when the DVD shakeout ends? Similar to BetaMax and VHS in the early video tape recording saga.
DVD-RAM is to quite a big extent dead, it has mainly been replaced by less capable formats, in the form of Plus and Minus, although it has established itself a market in the 8cm Camcorder disc, but overall this capable format of disc is dead. 172.142.243.19 ( talk) 09:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Requesting an update from somebody who knows about this for sure: why does the capacity drop to less than 4.7GB after formatting, and is this a source of confusion.
Yes, the abreviations of G (billions) usually take a different meaning when applied to bytes, in wich case they are based on powers of 2 instead of powers of 10. Common use Gig, like in SI, are 10 power9, but computuer Gig is 2 power30. (2 because there is 2 options 0 or 1). So 4.7 GB is in fact 4.38 computer GB.
The DVD-RW page says that DVD-RWs are compatible in 75% of the world's DVD players, unlike DVD-RAM. What is the compatibility rate for DVD-RAM?
Will there ever be DVD-RAM Dual Layer -technology? Henri Tapani Heinonen 16:53, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
(From main page) "Unlike the competing formats DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW and DVD-RW, you do not need special DVD burning software to write or read DVD-RAMs on a computer. DVD-RAMs can be accessed like a usual floppy disk or hard drive". "No DVD burning software required in computers – discs can be used and accessed like a removable hard disk; MS Windows requires a special DVDRAM driver or InCD program, although Windows XP can write to FAT32 formatted discs directly."
I found this confusing. The 2nd sentence seems to contradict the 1st one (IMO a special driver *is* DVD burning software) at least for MS Windows. And XP also comes with built-in support for burning to standard CDs (and so, I'd assume DVDs?): hence I'd see XPs support of DVD-RAM as being due to XP having had an InCD-like driver added, rather than of any property of DVD-RAM (AFAIK XP licenced some burning api off some company, and the next version of windows will licence something from http://www.sonic.com/). Also the article in general implies I could unplug a HDD, plug in a DVD-RAM, and to my operating system they'd appear the same. AFAIK this is not the case - if the OS has support built into it, then *to the user* they may appear the same, but the hardware interface itself *is* different ( http://groups.google.co.uk/group/microsoft.public.windowsce/browse_thread/thread/11e2b0f13bd2f1ad/15518136cbf6e170?lnk=st&q=dvd+ram+windows+ce&rnum=2&hl=en#15518136cbf6e170). Hence I'd assume in other OSs support is prebuilt into them, rather than no additional support over that for a HDD being required.
I don't feel confident enough to edit the article itself (this is not my field but I have been looking into it for work) but I thought I'd raise it for discussion in the hope that someone who knows will edit it if editing is required.
New DVD-rams used in external dvd-ram drives must be formated before use (FAT 32), right click the drive and click format,no indication that the ram is being formated will be seen until (format complete) pops up.Turn off (Allow CD burning) in the properties of the drive.DVD-Rams can be used as ordinary DVDs.A ram burnt as a normal DVD or before formating MUST be erased or reformated to use as a ram again.No special software is required with XP.
The article states that DVD-RAM is directly supported by Mac OS 8.6-9.2, but not by Mac OS X. But I plugged an LG DVD-RAM drive into my Power Mac G5 running OS X 10.3, was able to format it as HFS+ using the OS's disk utility, and use it. It just worked! Please explain how Mac OS X does not support DVD-RAM! - Paul Oct. 22, 2007.
I'm curious about this particular sentence in the article:
The term DVD-RAM is a misnomer; the name is based on the (erroneous) abbreviation for RAM, meaning "read-and-write memory" - the opposite of ROM (Read-Only Memory). However, RAM actually stands for Random Access Memory (computer chips) and DVDs inherently cannot use the random access method.
What does the writer mean by "DVDs inherently cannot use the random access method"? The way I understood it, DVD-RAM differs from regular RW media in the sense that it really does allow random access writing, in the sense that you can change a single byte in a single file, just like you can on a floppy, without having to erase and rewrite sequentially, as is the case with regular RW media. Is that not random access in its true sense? How is it different from floppies or hard disk? I'm eagerly waiting for comments and explanations.
All DVD types allow random access. No DVD (or harddrive or floppy) allows changing a single byte. xerces8 -- 90.157.129.176 13:27, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Access times for any optical media is absolutely horrible when compared to all other storage mediums. It's on the order of milliseconds due to the mechanical parts. True random-access mediums (such as RAM) are on the order of 5-10 ns. Thus random single-byte reads on optical media is not really feasible. DVD's and CD's, like the old record players they replace are built for sequential reads and writes, this is why the gentlemen above states that it is inherently a non-random access method. Yes, technically you can do it, but it is utterly too slow to be considered.
Well. DVD-RAM's are formatted like hard disks - in sectors that can be accessed in a random manner. Other DVD formats are like old vinyl discs or CD disks - data is in a long spiral. See e.g. http://www.optodisc.com/q&a.html. "RAM" does not refer to speed but the way the memory access is arranged. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.181.181.176 ( talk) 20:45, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
"Long life — without physical damage, data is retained for 30 years minimum."
I wonder if it is just a theoretical claim. There're some theoretical claims about the lifespans of different DVDs:
- Expected longevity of dye-based DVD-R and DVD+R discs is anywhere from 20 to 250 years
- The phase-change erasable formats (DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW) have an expected lifetime of 25 to 100 years.
However some evidence shows the claims may be wrong. Some DVD discs may go off just after a few years or even less.
DVD-RAM has been around for somewhat less than thirty years so time travel notwithstanding the data is theoretical.
I removed the following from the article:
The statement is true, but we should be comparing DVD-RAM to other types of DVD media, not to hard disks, or video cards, or pregnancy pills.
If you are considering using DVD-RAM as additional primary storage you should consider the overall performance compared to other types of storage. I agree however that a comparison of access time is not much use.
The article uses this phrase several times without defining it. It might be that 'VR' stands for "video recording", but I'm not sure what that has to do with DVD+-RW... and if so, the phrase is doubly redundant: 'video recording mode recording mode'?! So it needs to be explained the first time it's used, or if it's that redundant thing it should get cleaned up. 70.231.133.38 14:07, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Its not clear whether DVD-RAMs are played in their cartridges or have to be removed from these out of these to do so. Are drives that support them specially constructed to accept the cartridges (or bare disks)?-- ChrisJMoor 19:04, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Just found a small part of the article that mentions this, but it should be more prominent and better explained because the cartridge represents a significant departure from the bare disk format of CDs and DVDs
I believe that initially cartridges were required for the early players, which is part of the reason that dvd-ram never caught on (discs were too expensive to purchase). Newer recorders do not have this restriction.
"It is even possible to use the ext3 file system on a DVD-RAM disc. " - This sentence comes after a sentence about MacOS, but I think it refers to the Linux part two sentences earlier. Anyone to verify in the edit history or with a citation? -- 132.231.54.1 19:57, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Just curious as to why a cartridge is needed (or even offered) with DVD-RAM, but not with other media such as CD-RW/DVD+-RW ?
Davez621 ( talk) 12:00, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I can remember around the year 2000 we had a system at my school with a drive that only took cartridges. To load a CD/DVD you would need to put it inside a cartridge and load it. Newer DVD-RAM discs (notably verbatim) have a hard coat that is very scratch resistant, much like BD discs have. 98.221.227.111 ( talk) 19:52, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
I do not understand. What is DVD-RAM2? There is already DVD-RAM version 2.x. Can you put some info about DVD-RAM2 to the main article? Urvabara ( talk) 17:46, 27 February 2008 (UTC) dtc meni
Ist this Spare Area only used when UDF formated or is it used trasparently internal of the device for any filesystem?
Is this Spare Area only used when UDF formated or is it used trasparently internal of the device for any filesystem? -> SSA (supplementary spare area) can be defined when formatting a DVD-RAM, but before partitioning them (see the dvd+rw-format and mkudffs commands in Linux systems - dvd+rw-format allows setting SSA and has to be executed first, whereas UDF appears to have no concept of SSA) I'm not confident enough about my sources to add this information to the article though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CrisisCorEzz ( talk • contribs) 12:31, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
After suffering three DVD-R data coasters for whatever reason, I remembered I had some DVD-RAM from 2006, and I read about the format. Seems cool...the disc worked, and I have Panasonic 2-3x discs. Supposedly there should be 5x, 6x, 8x, and 12x discs and I thought for a second, "Wow, this is cool and I can buy a new faster disc for backups."
Not so - 5x discs are almost unavailable and as far I see, development on DVD-RAM ended in 2004 with the release of the 5x discs by Maxell and Panasonic. All you can buy anywhere are 10 year old packages of 3x discs. The low low price of solid state storage and high cost of DVD-RAM means that this format has been abandoned.
Optical drives in general have been slow and less than fully reliable storage, only the physical distribution of movies and software on discs prevents the whole technology from being abandoned. 76.105.131.18 ( talk) 02:26, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 September 2020 and 12 December 2020. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Dxnc20.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 18:58, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
The first line of the article states that there are four competing DVD rewritable technologies, and then it specifies only three: DVD-RAM, DVD+RW, and DVD-RW. Would someone please clarify the article?
HI, WHICH OF THE 4 DVDs CAN BE BEST SUITED FOR CAMCORDER RECORDING & EDITING? 'CAN ANYONE HELP ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO EDITING? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.142.51.239 ( talk) 21:11, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
Is there any suspicion that the DVD-RAM format will be one of the formats 'lost' when the DVD shakeout ends? Similar to BetaMax and VHS in the early video tape recording saga.
DVD-RAM is to quite a big extent dead, it has mainly been replaced by less capable formats, in the form of Plus and Minus, although it has established itself a market in the 8cm Camcorder disc, but overall this capable format of disc is dead. 172.142.243.19 ( talk) 09:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Requesting an update from somebody who knows about this for sure: why does the capacity drop to less than 4.7GB after formatting, and is this a source of confusion.
Yes, the abreviations of G (billions) usually take a different meaning when applied to bytes, in wich case they are based on powers of 2 instead of powers of 10. Common use Gig, like in SI, are 10 power9, but computuer Gig is 2 power30. (2 because there is 2 options 0 or 1). So 4.7 GB is in fact 4.38 computer GB.
The DVD-RW page says that DVD-RWs are compatible in 75% of the world's DVD players, unlike DVD-RAM. What is the compatibility rate for DVD-RAM?
Will there ever be DVD-RAM Dual Layer -technology? Henri Tapani Heinonen 16:53, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
(From main page) "Unlike the competing formats DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW and DVD-RW, you do not need special DVD burning software to write or read DVD-RAMs on a computer. DVD-RAMs can be accessed like a usual floppy disk or hard drive". "No DVD burning software required in computers – discs can be used and accessed like a removable hard disk; MS Windows requires a special DVDRAM driver or InCD program, although Windows XP can write to FAT32 formatted discs directly."
I found this confusing. The 2nd sentence seems to contradict the 1st one (IMO a special driver *is* DVD burning software) at least for MS Windows. And XP also comes with built-in support for burning to standard CDs (and so, I'd assume DVDs?): hence I'd see XPs support of DVD-RAM as being due to XP having had an InCD-like driver added, rather than of any property of DVD-RAM (AFAIK XP licenced some burning api off some company, and the next version of windows will licence something from http://www.sonic.com/). Also the article in general implies I could unplug a HDD, plug in a DVD-RAM, and to my operating system they'd appear the same. AFAIK this is not the case - if the OS has support built into it, then *to the user* they may appear the same, but the hardware interface itself *is* different ( http://groups.google.co.uk/group/microsoft.public.windowsce/browse_thread/thread/11e2b0f13bd2f1ad/15518136cbf6e170?lnk=st&q=dvd+ram+windows+ce&rnum=2&hl=en#15518136cbf6e170). Hence I'd assume in other OSs support is prebuilt into them, rather than no additional support over that for a HDD being required.
I don't feel confident enough to edit the article itself (this is not my field but I have been looking into it for work) but I thought I'd raise it for discussion in the hope that someone who knows will edit it if editing is required.
New DVD-rams used in external dvd-ram drives must be formated before use (FAT 32), right click the drive and click format,no indication that the ram is being formated will be seen until (format complete) pops up.Turn off (Allow CD burning) in the properties of the drive.DVD-Rams can be used as ordinary DVDs.A ram burnt as a normal DVD or before formating MUST be erased or reformated to use as a ram again.No special software is required with XP.
The article states that DVD-RAM is directly supported by Mac OS 8.6-9.2, but not by Mac OS X. But I plugged an LG DVD-RAM drive into my Power Mac G5 running OS X 10.3, was able to format it as HFS+ using the OS's disk utility, and use it. It just worked! Please explain how Mac OS X does not support DVD-RAM! - Paul Oct. 22, 2007.
I'm curious about this particular sentence in the article:
The term DVD-RAM is a misnomer; the name is based on the (erroneous) abbreviation for RAM, meaning "read-and-write memory" - the opposite of ROM (Read-Only Memory). However, RAM actually stands for Random Access Memory (computer chips) and DVDs inherently cannot use the random access method.
What does the writer mean by "DVDs inherently cannot use the random access method"? The way I understood it, DVD-RAM differs from regular RW media in the sense that it really does allow random access writing, in the sense that you can change a single byte in a single file, just like you can on a floppy, without having to erase and rewrite sequentially, as is the case with regular RW media. Is that not random access in its true sense? How is it different from floppies or hard disk? I'm eagerly waiting for comments and explanations.
All DVD types allow random access. No DVD (or harddrive or floppy) allows changing a single byte. xerces8 -- 90.157.129.176 13:27, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Access times for any optical media is absolutely horrible when compared to all other storage mediums. It's on the order of milliseconds due to the mechanical parts. True random-access mediums (such as RAM) are on the order of 5-10 ns. Thus random single-byte reads on optical media is not really feasible. DVD's and CD's, like the old record players they replace are built for sequential reads and writes, this is why the gentlemen above states that it is inherently a non-random access method. Yes, technically you can do it, but it is utterly too slow to be considered.
Well. DVD-RAM's are formatted like hard disks - in sectors that can be accessed in a random manner. Other DVD formats are like old vinyl discs or CD disks - data is in a long spiral. See e.g. http://www.optodisc.com/q&a.html. "RAM" does not refer to speed but the way the memory access is arranged. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.181.181.176 ( talk) 20:45, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
"Long life — without physical damage, data is retained for 30 years minimum."
I wonder if it is just a theoretical claim. There're some theoretical claims about the lifespans of different DVDs:
- Expected longevity of dye-based DVD-R and DVD+R discs is anywhere from 20 to 250 years
- The phase-change erasable formats (DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW) have an expected lifetime of 25 to 100 years.
However some evidence shows the claims may be wrong. Some DVD discs may go off just after a few years or even less.
DVD-RAM has been around for somewhat less than thirty years so time travel notwithstanding the data is theoretical.
I removed the following from the article:
The statement is true, but we should be comparing DVD-RAM to other types of DVD media, not to hard disks, or video cards, or pregnancy pills.
If you are considering using DVD-RAM as additional primary storage you should consider the overall performance compared to other types of storage. I agree however that a comparison of access time is not much use.
The article uses this phrase several times without defining it. It might be that 'VR' stands for "video recording", but I'm not sure what that has to do with DVD+-RW... and if so, the phrase is doubly redundant: 'video recording mode recording mode'?! So it needs to be explained the first time it's used, or if it's that redundant thing it should get cleaned up. 70.231.133.38 14:07, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Its not clear whether DVD-RAMs are played in their cartridges or have to be removed from these out of these to do so. Are drives that support them specially constructed to accept the cartridges (or bare disks)?-- ChrisJMoor 19:04, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Just found a small part of the article that mentions this, but it should be more prominent and better explained because the cartridge represents a significant departure from the bare disk format of CDs and DVDs
I believe that initially cartridges were required for the early players, which is part of the reason that dvd-ram never caught on (discs were too expensive to purchase). Newer recorders do not have this restriction.
"It is even possible to use the ext3 file system on a DVD-RAM disc. " - This sentence comes after a sentence about MacOS, but I think it refers to the Linux part two sentences earlier. Anyone to verify in the edit history or with a citation? -- 132.231.54.1 19:57, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Just curious as to why a cartridge is needed (or even offered) with DVD-RAM, but not with other media such as CD-RW/DVD+-RW ?
Davez621 ( talk) 12:00, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I can remember around the year 2000 we had a system at my school with a drive that only took cartridges. To load a CD/DVD you would need to put it inside a cartridge and load it. Newer DVD-RAM discs (notably verbatim) have a hard coat that is very scratch resistant, much like BD discs have. 98.221.227.111 ( talk) 19:52, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
I do not understand. What is DVD-RAM2? There is already DVD-RAM version 2.x. Can you put some info about DVD-RAM2 to the main article? Urvabara ( talk) 17:46, 27 February 2008 (UTC) dtc meni
Ist this Spare Area only used when UDF formated or is it used trasparently internal of the device for any filesystem?
Is this Spare Area only used when UDF formated or is it used trasparently internal of the device for any filesystem? -> SSA (supplementary spare area) can be defined when formatting a DVD-RAM, but before partitioning them (see the dvd+rw-format and mkudffs commands in Linux systems - dvd+rw-format allows setting SSA and has to be executed first, whereas UDF appears to have no concept of SSA) I'm not confident enough about my sources to add this information to the article though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CrisisCorEzz ( talk • contribs) 12:31, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
After suffering three DVD-R data coasters for whatever reason, I remembered I had some DVD-RAM from 2006, and I read about the format. Seems cool...the disc worked, and I have Panasonic 2-3x discs. Supposedly there should be 5x, 6x, 8x, and 12x discs and I thought for a second, "Wow, this is cool and I can buy a new faster disc for backups."
Not so - 5x discs are almost unavailable and as far I see, development on DVD-RAM ended in 2004 with the release of the 5x discs by Maxell and Panasonic. All you can buy anywhere are 10 year old packages of 3x discs. The low low price of solid state storage and high cost of DVD-RAM means that this format has been abandoned.
Optical drives in general have been slow and less than fully reliable storage, only the physical distribution of movies and software on discs prevents the whole technology from being abandoned. 76.105.131.18 ( talk) 02:26, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on DVD-RAM. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
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have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
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(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 02:45, 3 September 2017 (UTC)