Hi all,
I was wondering…what type of media do new DVD’s (movies) ship on…meaning if I buy a movie on DVD at Bestbuy etc. what media is used R+, R- something else?
What is it technically that allows new movies to play on almost any stand alone player yet copies that are burned to store bought media can be so picky about what machines they will play on. Is it just the cost of the technology used to master the original is prohibitive to port to pc or?
Commercial DVD’s are pressed discs and neither -R or +R
They are not -R or +R, they are whats called “pressed” instead of burned, so they work on any DVD player.
Ben 
edit: hastey got there first!
The pressed discs have a higher reflectivity than burned discs. This makes them easier for drives to read.
Creating a pressed disc required the creation of a ‘glass master’ which is stamped into aluminium. The creation of this glass master and the stamping process require very expensive and precise equipment running in specially climate controlled factories. That’s why you can’t make a pressed disc with a normal burner.
The pressed disc is also much lower in error as well compared to the burned disc, and conforms to the DVD standard exactly.
It is not necessarily lower in errors. For example I have been able to burn a TY-T02 DVD+R 8X with lower PI rates than disc 1 of my brand new Return of the King EE set.
This, however, is a very extreme case.
LOL - but isn’t that a dual layer source disc - you can’t expect the same error rate on a dual layer source disc because the second layer is bound to be affecting the first and vice versa - meaning the error rate of a DL usually will be higher than any SL disc