Blank DVD R Media List Review

Each type of media may only be recorded using its corresponding type of recorder drive, as follows-
DVD-R "Authoring" media: DVD-R Authoring drive1
DVD-R "General" media: DVD-R General drive1
DVD-RW media: DVD-R/RW drive
DVD+RW media: DVD+RW Player/Recorder set
DVD-RAM media: DVD-RAM drive
CD-R media: CD-R, CD-R/RW, or DVD-R/RW/CD-R/RW drive
CD-RW media: CD-RW, CD-R/RW or DVD-R/RW/CD-R/RW drive
Example of Ricoh DVD+RW media.

Most Common Question regarding DVD R Blanks: Why are DVD Blanks labeled as 4.7GB when in actuality they only hold 4.38 GB of data?
  The 4.7 "GIG" that is calculated is actually 4.7 billion bytes. But in computer terms, it takes 1024 bytes, not 1000, to make up a full MB. 
 
 The 4.7 GB discs = 4.38 GB which is 4489 MB (for DVD-R) and 4483 (for DVD+R)  
 

Note on DVD-R General Purpose & Authoring Version:

Media Differences: Although DVD-R Authoring and General drives will only record on their respective DVD-R media types, both media types will play or be read in the same category of player and reader devices.
For DVD-R Authoring and General drives, and media, the non-interchangability is due to different color write lasers and thus a different composition in the recording layers on the discs. The two types of media will both play on DVD Video player sets and be read by DVD-ROM drives, however.


Drive Differences: The reason that the DVR-S201 is referred to as the "Authoring" drive, is that the Authoring media has an available track for CMF (Cut Master Format) encoding, whereas the General Purpose media does not. CMF encoding is necessary for a replication plant to make a glass master disc for pressing DVD disc replications. Without the CMF track on a DVD-R disc, you must record your disc image onto a DLT (Digital Linear Tape), to send to a replication plant, if you want high quantities replicated. As of early 2001, however, there are very few DVD replication plants which are equipped to handle the CMF format when on a DVD-R disc, and even fewer DVD authoring or recording applications which will record onto the CMF track on a DVD-R Authoring disc. Recording CMF onto a DVD-R Authoring disc should become more common in the future, so if you are planning on replicating your DVDs in large quantities in the future, you may still want to consider the DVR-S201 Authoring drive. Submitting a DVD-R disc, rather than a DLT tape to a replication plant would assure that exactly what you have playback-tested is what the replication plant gets, bit-for-bit.

For Other Types of Optical Drives & Media:
There are two reasons for non-interchangeability of media types and recorder types-

Materials
Recordable and rewritable media are made of different materials. Recorders (burners) use a laser to burn pits into recordable media, which are composed of material designed for this purpose. Burning the media results in the "write once" limitation of recordable media, but also provides safety for valuable recordings, in that these discs cannot be accidently erased.
Rewritable drives use a different laser power to cause phase shifts in the same areas that the recorders burn pits. By reversing this phase shift, rewritable media may be erased, and thus rewritten onto again.

The phase shifted regions of rewritable media have a lower reflectivity than the recordable media's burned pits, and thus require slightly different hardware to read them. This is why rewritable media cannot be read by older CD-ROM drives. To ensure that a prospective CD-ROM drive will read CD-RW discs, the drive must state "Multiread" as one of its capabilities.

Form
The second reason for non-interchangeability is the physical form of the discs surfaces. Optical recordable and rewritable media are manufactured with microscopic, "pre-groove" spiral tracks formed onto their surfaces. These grooves are used by recordable and rewritable drives to guide the recording laser beam during the writing process, and they also contain recorded information after writing is completed. The difference in the capacities of CD, DVD, and the 2.6GB DVD-RAM/PD (Photo-optical Disc) media are directly related to the accompanying differences in track size and layout density. The vast differences in these, of course, make interchangeability among media types and recorder types impossible. Although the 4.7GB per side capacity of DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and the new, full capacity DVD-RAM media are the same, it is assumed that pre-existing on-disc ID tracks will prevent any attempt at interchangability for recording purposes, even if it were possible.