I'm not sure if this is the board to ask but i have come to trust the gurus of the 68kMLA to provide me with the correct information/help
if this question does not belong in the nation of 68kMLA the admin here can just zapp it on my behalf
I still do not fully understand when do i use a PLUS and when do i use a MINUS DVD disc ? ( or is it disK ) ?
Well, if all the systems involved are 'modern', then use whichever is cheaper.
If one of the systems is older, then a DVD-R will be more compatible.
Long form: DVD-R is an official specification of the same standards body that created DVD-ROM. DVD-R is designed to have maximum compatibility with DVD-ROM, and some burners and software can even burn a DVD-R in such a way that it claims to be a full DVD-ROM, not a DVD-R. This gives the best compatibility with older DVD-ROM drives that came out before recordable DVDs. (Such as old slot-load iMac G3s.)
DVD+R was a competing format invented not for single-record discs, but actually invented for the DVD+RW rewritable discs. Its +RW format is theoretically better than the -RW format, but nowadays, it's all moot. Unlike HD DVD vs. Blu-ray, the -R and +R people came to an agreement, and effectively merged the two. While older, single-format-only drives won't read the opposite, pretty much any DVD drive made since 2004 will read (and write, if it's a writer,) both.
For older drives, unless the drive is a DVD+R writer, it can almost assuredly read DVD-R discs. (I have an engineering sample DVD-ROM drive from 1995 that can read 2x burned DVD-R discs with no problem, even though DVD-R barely a twinkle in anyone's eye yet.)
