They Lied About Those DVD+RW Discs

[J]

Word is that full discs do not need to be erased. In other words, you can record a TV program over the contents of a full +RW disc.

Didn't work for me.

So how *do* your erase a +RW disc? Thanks

[Alric Knebel]

If you're talking about for a DVD recorder, somewhere there's an erase function, that'll erase the entire disc, without your having to record something over it.

[Dave]

It's called "initialize". Essentially, the disk needs to be formatted. But they call it initialize, as sometimes you can choose more than one format option. Somewhere in the menus for the dvd recorder, there will be an option to initialize the disk. There SHOULD be an option to finalize the disk, also. -Dave

[Mark Lloyd]

I know that on my DVD recorder (Phillips) "erase" is something different from "format", as it is in computer CD/DVD burning software.

[DerbyDad03]

I don't have a DVD recorder, so I'm jumping in cold here...

What I'm hearing is that you can't erase an hour of a crappy basketball game and replace it with a CSI re-run, right?

You would have to format the entire DVD and start over?

[Dave]

I don't have a DVD recorder, so I'm jumping in cold here...

What I'm hearing is that you can't erase an hour of a crappy basketball game and replace it with a CSI re-run, right?

You would have to format the entire DVD and start over?

(snip)

Ummmm, if you are talking about a stand-alone DVD recorder box, then the answer is yes.

On a computer you can burn a DVD "multisession" so that if you had leftover space you could use that space later.

If they make a DVD recorder that can do multisession, I haven't seen it. That function would best be DISABLED on stand-alone consumer boxes anyway. Otherwise, the only player you could use the disk on would have to be one that is in a personal computer. What good is that?

But this isn't a big deal. DVD +/-RW media can be "burnt" something like a thousand times, and I think I paid like a buck a piece for my last pack of

10, which I thought was expensive, at the time. :)

I've had some disks that have been recorded every week or two and are about

18 months old now, still going strong.

So if you have to erase the entire disk and start over, who cares? :) -Dave

[gfretwell]

Every one I have seen does multisession. You can keep adding stuff until the disk is full or you "finalize" it. That is a setup option.

[DerbyDad03]

re: So if you have to erase the entire disk and start over, who cares?

I guess where I was going with this is that I might have 1 hour of programming that I want to save and another hour that I want to delete on the same DVD. Say I recorded CSI and then Without a Trace on the same DVD. Later I want to delete Without a Trace and add another episode of CSI, just to keep things organized.

I'm sensing that this can't be done, right?

(This is all hypothetical - I'm just trying to understand the technology)

[David Nebenzahl]

On 5/13/2008 6:48 AM DerbyDad03 spake thus:

Each time you record something (like CSI and WaT in your example), you create a new "session". When recording something new to a disc, you have two, and only two, choices (so far as I know, unless there's some

*really* fancy software or recorders out there):

1. Overwrite all existing sessions (essentially "erasing" them, although they may not need to be physically erased).
2. Add a new session to the existing ones.

So no, you can't choose to keep some sessions and delete others.