Recordable DVD: Worth the wait or worth waiting for?

CDs were great while they lasted.

OK, it may be a bit hasty to declare the end of the CD-ROM era, but the signposts are pointing in that direction. Although the CD provides a convenient way for presenters to store multimedia, distribute data and back up hard drives, the medium's space limits in the coming era of 100GB and larger hard drives and ever more ambitious multimedia projects will become increasingly evident.

Indeed, many see the recordable DVD as the next killer app in computing – the one that makes the most compelling use of all that digital horsepower sitting idle on desktops everywhere, at home and at the office. More than a million recordable-DVD drives were sold in 2001, and the market research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) predicts that number will grow to more than 30 million by 2005. Apple, Compaq, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sony and other major computer manufacturers already ship recordable-DVD drives with their top-of-the-line models. Drives supporting the highly anticipated DVD+RW format (a format presenters should like because of its greater flexibility and superior write speed) have finally hit the market. And, as with almost all digital technology, recordable-DVD drives and media, not to mention video camcorders and software, are getting cheaper and more widely available by the day.

DVD-%#$@*&%!

If you are trying to decide which recordable DVD format to invest in, you'd better have plenty of aspirin on hand. The DVD format wars are still raging, the industry itself isn't doing much to clarify the situation for consumers, and exactly which format will prevail five to 10 years from now is anyone's guess.

Still, sorting through the alphabet soup of recordable-DVD standards needn't be a horrifying experience. There may be a number of formats with varying levels of compatibility, but deciding which format is best for you largely depends on how you intend to use it.

In general, DVD discs can hold as much as 6GB of data (CDs hold up to 700MB). At the moment, the most prominent use of DVD technology in a corporate setting has little to do with video or multimedia in presentations – it's primarily used for network storage backup. In this case, the options become simple. However, if you plan to record, edit and distribute video or other types of multimedia, the format choices are a bit more challenging. They're not infinite, mind you, just a little confusing.

The acronym wars

To start with, on the playback side, the DVD-Video format is the basic standard for DVD movies that play on commercial DVD players. DVD-ROM, on the other hand, is the format for reading and storing data on a computer –