(IDG) -- If you're craving high-capacity storage, you might have your eye on one of the rewritable DVD drives now hitting the market. But hold on to your wallet. The optical storage industry has divided itself into four hostile camps, producing four mutually incompatible disc formats for recordable DVD. The result--a disc using one format won't play on a drive supporting another. Our advice: Wait until the dust settles and one format emerges victorious before you invest.

ALSO:

Be first on your block with DVD for your PC

Toshiba, Hitachi , and Panasonic are all shipping drives supporting DVD-RAM, the first of the four formats to come to market. Ranging in price from $750 to $1000, these drives let users record and re-record data onto discs holding 2.6 GB per side (single-sided discs will cost about $30 each, double-sided about $50). By contrast, writable CD-ROMs hold 650 MB.

MORE COMPUTING INTELLIGENCE

IDG.net home page

PC World home page

FileWorld find free software fast

Make your PC work harder with these tips

Reviews & in-depth info at IDG.net

IDG.net's desktop PC page
IDG.net's portable PC page

IDG.net's Windows software page

IDG.net's personal news page

Questions about computers? Let IDG.net's editors help you

Search IDG.net in 12 languages

News Radio

PC World News Radio

Computerworld Minute audio news for managers

DVD-RAM is just the first recordable DVD format out. By the end of this year, you can expect to see drives supporting a second format: DVD+RW, which stands for DVD+Rewritable. DVD+RW drives should cost about the same as their DVD-RAM counterparts, but their vendors--including Hewlett-Packard, Mitsubishi, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, and Yamaha--claim they'll perform up to 50 percent faster.

While DVD-RAM and DVD+RW are the likeliest candidates for mainstream success, two high-end rewritable DVD formats are waiting in the wings. By the middle of next year, Pioneer plans to ship a product for the company's new DVD-R/W format. The upside: The discs hold 4.5GB per side, and you can play a DVDR/W disc on any DVD-ROM player. The downside: You can expect to see a price tag of $3000 to $5000 for the player.

Meanwhile, NEC is backing the MultiMedia Video Format standard, which will support a voluminous 5.2GB per side. As its name suggests, MMVF is designed specifically for video; 5.2GB can hold two hours of video. It is not yet known when the drives will arrive on U.S. shores or whether they'll be compatible with DVD or CD media.

So which recordable DVD format will prevail? According to analyst Bob Katzive of Disk/Trends, it's too early to tell. He says the format battle will resolve itself in one of two ways: Either optical storage vendors will join together and agree on one universal standard, or the formats will duke it out on the open market. Katzive believes the market battle is more likely.

Thus, our word to the wise: If you need an optical storage recorder now, buy a CD-RW drive. But if you can wait, sit tight for 12 months until the confusion over rewritable DVD clears. If you leap in now, the results could prove as useless as a warehouse full of Betamax tapes.

CNN Programs

Earth Matters
Sunday 1:30pm - 2:00pm ET (10:30am - 11:00am PT)

Science & Technology Week
Saturday 1:30pm - 2:00pm ET (10:30am - 11:00am PT)