Utility reveals hard-to-get DVD data

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Not all writeable DVD media is the same, and sometimes it's difficult to know what the differences are.

For example, some DVD media manufacturers merely resell another manufacturer's discs in new wrapping and labels, making it hard to tell what exactly you are buying. You can find out, however. Although most people don't realize it, blank DVD media has pre-recorded information on it that describes the disc's manufacturer, its allowed write speeds and a number of other useful bits of metadata. The challenge is how to get that information in the first place. DVD Identifier is a freeware tool written to help read and analyze the media information present on blank DVDs. It supports all varieties of writeable and rewriteable DVD media: DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, dual-layer DVD+-R/W media, DVD-RAM and Sony's Blu-ray format (also known as BD-R/-RE). The pro

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grammer, Kris Schoofs, is also working on support for the as-yet-unfinished HD-DVD standard (this is still very experimental work).

When you launch DVD Identifier it iterates through all available DVD drives in the system and lists them in a drop-down selector. Select a drive, and that drive's read/write capabilities are marked in a chart below it. If you insert a writeable/re-writeable disc in the drive and press "Identify," the program attempts to retrieve and display all of the available metadata for that media. Some of the retrieved data includes the following:

The program can also return extended information about the capabilities of the current drive (such as its read and write functions and raw performance) and the Media Code block of the currently read media, which is a dump of the raw data used to compile the information listed here.