Windows support for all major DVD formats

By Simon Aughton

Posted on 9 May 2003 at 12:22

Microsoft has announced that the next version of Windows - codenamed Longhorn - will include support for 'all major writeable DVD formats'.

Understanding the formats used for data storage DVDs (as opposed to movie DVDs which don't have this problem) involves negotiating a minefield of plusses and minuses, Rs and Ws: DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RAM and so on. However when it comes down to working out which drives can read and write to which disks the key is in the plus and minus signs. Until recently minus drives could read and write to minus disks, plus drives to plus disks.

Recently manufacturers began introducing drives that could read and write both plus and minus disks. Longhorn will provide Windows users with the ability to use these drives and access data from any DVD disk.

Longhorn will also support a new format - DVD-MRW. The M stands for Mount Rainier, a technology which, according to its developer Philips, 'is a standard that provides background formatting and defect management for storage on CD-RW and DVD+RW. This makes rewritable discs far easier to use.'

It will, says Philips, allow for the 'replacement of the floppy'.