Home > Support > FAQs: Mobile / Mobile II / Zebra Blu-ray / HD DVD / DVD-R/RW

Blu-ray HD DVD

Q. Will I be able to play Blu-ray media with different region codes?
A. Yes, the bundled Cyberlink Power DVD software should, when opening a Blu-ray disc of a different region, allow you to change region code up to 5 times. The default region code setting after installation would be Region A.

Blu-ray Region Codes are as follows:

• Region A/1 - North America, Central America, South America, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia
• Region B/2 - Europe (EU), Africa, Middle East, New Zealand, Australia
• Region C/3 - China, India, Russia, Rest of the world
  
  

DVD-R/RW

Q. Why do my DVD-Rs only play on some DVD players and not others?
A. While the DVD Movie and Game discs you buy or rent in the stores appear to be "silver" or "gold", they are usually made from aluminum coatings, over a clear layer that has been mechanically pressed with pits or holes to encode the data that the lasers in the DVD players decode into music and video signals. DVD Video discs that are made this way do not require the light sensitive dye layer used in DVD-R discs, and so they appear clear on the bottom, or nearly so. They never have to be "burned".

By contrast, the recordable DVD-R discs use a dark dye layer to absorb the higher powered laser in DVD burners to create the tiny pits or holes that encode the disc's data. This dye layer causes problems for some cheaper and older DVD players, but it is none-the-less required to "burn" the DVD-R. Most of today's DVD Players now are able to read both the clear-bottomed DVD movie and game discs, and also the colored dye bottomed DVD-R discs. We have a page that lists over 200 DVD players now in the market, rating their DVD-R playing compatibility. Approximately 76% of today's DVD players can play DVD-R type discs.

Q. What is the difference between DVD-R and DVD-RW?
A. Both DVD-R and DVD-RW types generally come in the single-sided, single layer 4.7 GB capacities, which is roughly equal to 120-minutes of standard playing time.

You can also now find 9.4 GB double-sided discs entering the market, although there are no players, which will automatically play both sides of the disc without ejecting it and turning it over. Eventually, there will be DVD-R discs available that will hold around 20 GB of data, recorded into two layers on each side of the disc. At this time, these 20gb discs are not yet available.

The most common DVD-R is a write-once 4.7gb disc that comes in two sub-types -- "general purpose" and "authoring". The general-purpose discs are part of the industry's copy-protection scheme, which employ CES scrambling to protect movies and music and game discs from being copied. General-purpose type DVD writers such as the Addonics Mobile DVD-R/RW Super Combo can only burn these discs. Such machines cannot copy the playback descrambling codes on DVD movies or game discs, so they cannot be easily copied.

By contrast to the write-once DVD-R types, the DVD-RW is fully re-writable or erasable up to 1,000 times. However, unlike the older DVD-RAM format, these particular erasable are NOT "random access", meaning that you cannot erase bits and pieces of them. Instead, you have to completely erase the whole disc to reuse it. The DVD-RW can be played on many DVD players, but not quite as many as the DVD-Rs. Of course,

Most DVD-R burners like the Addonics Mobile DVD-R/RW Super Combo and compatibles can also burn DVD-RW discs. DVD-R is the most popular format for most Windows users, and is almost universally accepted by Mac users as their standard DVD recordable format.

Q. Will paper DVD labels hurt my recorded DVDs?
A. For many years, CD-R manufacturers recommended that users NOT apply paper labels to their newly recorded CDs. They felt that the labels' adhesive would harm the sensitive silver reflector by tarnishing it, or that off-center labels might cause the disc to wobble, making it unreadable.

These factors are much more important today for DVD recordable discs than they ever were for CD-Rs. On DVD-Rs, the tiny data bubbles that encode the video and audio data are 8-times closer together than on CDs. Even the slightest degradation of the edges of the bubbles due to UV or heat exposure can ruin a DVD-R. Also, even the slightest wobbling during playback can make video tracks unreadable, or produce "jitters" or blinking, horizontal lines, and so on. In some cases, the discs can become completely unplayable.