There’s a substantial chance that today’s recordable DVDs will be incompatible with playable DVD drives, finds a new study by The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a division of the U.S. Commerce Department’s Technology Administration.
However, the good news is that the situation is improving as new models of drives are being introduced into the marketplace.
The government tests showed DVD media and DVD drives to be compatible only 85 percent of the time.
The study found that although no one disc or drive was universally compatible, newer models of DVD drives did “significantly better” than the older ones.
NIST tested 14 DVD-ROM drive models, which represented about 60 percent of the installed base in the U.S. as of 2002, and more than 50 different kinds of recordable DVDs.
The tests were conducted in association with two industry groups, the DVD Association and the Optical Storage Technology Association.
For more information www.dvda.org and www.osta.org.
