I'm always confused by DVD terminology when buying media to write on.
There's DVD / DVD+R / DVD-R / DVDRW and I'm not even sure which more!

Are these all really distinct technologies and formats? Or are some subsets
/ supersets of others? Or maybe its only backward compatibility issues?
What's the best way to figure out what format my Laptop supports? Do they
have varied sizes? Does it matter whether I'm writing data or movies etc.?
I faintly remember there being lead-in / lead-out issues....

I've never faced the problem that I bought some commercial movie etc. on a
DVD and my Dell Laptop ( Inspirion E1505)'s inbuilt DVD reader /writer
couldn't read it. Its a dual boot so are there any Linux-vs-Win issues
too?

Are these distinctions only relevant when writing disks at home as opposed
to commercially stamped disks? Or maybe when reading on hardware other than
"computers" (etc. DVD players etc.)


Just looking for some tips to lead me out of this technology morass.

--
Rahul