Bought some Philip's DVD+R's and package says I need to upgrade to a high speed driver

[Leros]

I bought some DVD+R blank media from Philips. I've never used +R so I gave the package a quick lookover and found this:

Before using this disc in a 2.4x 4x or 8x data drive you need the required firmware upgrade. Full details can be found at http://www.dvdrwservices.com

Is this necessary at all? I always burn my dvd's at 2x or 4x because I always get coasters if I burn any faster. I never thought I would need a special driver for it.

 

[MustISO]

Firmware upgrade isn't the same thing as needing a driver. Not sure why in the world you'd need to update your firmware for DVD+R unless you had a REALLY old DVDR drive.

 

[Zepper]

I generally do upgrade the firmware on my drives once a new firmware has been out a month or so (let the pioneers catch the arrows). Generally new versions of firmware contain upgraded burn protocols for newer media as well as any bug fixes that had needed to be done. Sometimes software updates for the burning software can be found to support newer drives, but the media support is built into the drive's firmware. I don't think one of my drives has had a firmware update for a my excellent compatriot's age and I haven't looked to the other drive's site in a long time. After a while the firmware updates just stop coming for older model drives, so it is probably unwise and wasteful of money to buy the latest-greatest-highest speed media to burn on them.

If you are burning DVDs to be used on a consumer level player, it is better to use DVD -R media as you have to change the "book type" on +R discs to -R for best compatibiltiy with consumer players unless they specifically state they are compatible with +R burned discs. Some drives aren't capable of changing the book type and your burning software needs to support the feature on your drive as well. The top burning software keeps up with that quite well.

.bh.

 

[DarkRogue]

That's about the only reason I can think of for having to use -R's.
I think I read that +R's are better everywhere else though.
But yeah, firmware updates are usually good, they're basically driver updates for your hardware so why not?

Whatever the case, Newegg currently has a nice sale going on for the DVD media, so I grabbed both types.
100-pack of Verbatim 16x DVD+R and -R both for about 20 bucks each and free shipping, that's about as close as it can get I think to the old $20 100-pack CD-R spindles back in the day.