Many computers now come with hardware and software that allow you to "burn" (write) your own CDs. That is now quite straight forward to do. So why not buy a DVD writer and burn your own DVDs? In concept that should also be straight forward to do but there are a bunch of pitfalls that may not be obvious.

First, DVDs that you can write will typically only hold about 1/2 of that a commercial movie DVD will hold. That is because most commercial DVDs are written on two levels on a single side of the DVD. The retail DVD burners will only burn on one level and this is why they have half the capacity of the movie DVDs.

You weren't thinking of copying a commercial movie DVD were you? That is usually illegal and even if you were to do you would need two DVDs to store it and a lot of time copying it -- it really would not be worth the trouble.

But wait there are dual layer DVD writers coming to the retail market now so why not just buy those? The problem is that they look different to DVD players than the commercially manufactured DVDs since they use very different technologies. In the future, DVD players will be available to recognize the burn-your-own dual layer DVDs so it is better to wait a while yet. Meanwhile the price of single-layer DVD writers will likely drop quite a bit so they will become more affordable.

Confused about buying or using DVD-R vs. DVD+R? Use the DVD-R format. It is the most compatible format.

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