The enormous 4.7GB capacity of DVDs--enough to hold an entire feature-length movie--combined with their compact size and affordable price have made them must-have items in the entertainment and computer markets. So it comes as no surprise that many users want to put their own content on these silver slivers of plastic, whether it's to distribute home movies, create week-long MP3 collections, or archive important files from their hard disks. But the alphabet soup of rewritable DVD standards--DVD-R, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW--point to the fundamental problem with this category: the various rewritable discs are often incompatible with each other, and they offer varying compatibility with other devices such as home DVD players or computer DVD-ROM drives. As yet, there's no single best choice among the standards, but our tests of a Panasonic DVD-RAM/R drive and a Philips DVD+RW drive demonstrate the benefits and drawbacks of each.
