A DVD+R is a writable optical disc with 4.7 GB (4.37 GiB) of storage capacity (more precisely, 2295104 sectors of 2048 bytes each). The format was developed by a coalition of corporations, known as the DVD+RW Alliance, in mid 2002. Since the DVD+R format is a competing format to the DVD-R format, which is developed by the DVD Forum, it has not been approved by the DVD Forum, which claims that the DVD+R format is not an official DVD format.

In October of 2003, it was demonstrated that double layer technology could be used with a DVD+R disc to nearly double the capacity to 8.5 GB per disc. Manufacturers have incorporated this technology into commercial devices since mid-2004.

Unlike DVD+RW discs, DVD+R discs can only be written to once. Because of this, DVD+R discs are suited to applications such as nonvolatile data storage, audio, or video. This can be very confusing because the DVD+RW Alliance logo is a stylized 'RW' (See photo, below). Thus, a DVD+R disc can have the RW logo, but it is not rewritable.

The DVD+R format is divergent from the DVD-R format. Hybrid drives that can handle both, often labeled 'DVD±RW', are very popular since there is not yet a single standard for recordable DVDs. There are a number of significant technical differences between the dash and plus formats, although most consumers would not notice the difference. One example is the ADIP system of tracking and speed control being less susceptible to interference and error than the LPP system used by DVD-R, which makes the ADIP system more accurate at higher speeds. Also DVD+R(W) has a more robust error management system than DVD-R(W), allowing for more accurate burning to media independent of the quality of the media. Additional session linking methods are quite a bit more accurate with DVD+R(W) versus DVD-R(W), resulting in fewer damaged or unusable discs due to buffer under-run and multi-session disks with fewer PI/PO errors.

Like other plus media, it is possible to use bitsetting to increase the compatibility of DVD+R media.

As of 2006, the market for recordable DVD technology shows little sign of settling down in favor of either the plus or dash formats, which is mostly the result of the increasing numbers of dual-format devices that can record to both formats; it has become very difficult to find new devices that can only record to one of the formats.

Wikipedia information about DVD+R. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License . It uses material from the Wikipedia article 'DVD+R'