What's the difference between a 16x dvd and 4x dvd

[Darpak]

I want to write a DVD which consists of data and need to send it to my friend when i was having voice communication with my friend he told me to write DVD on 4x instead of 16 x, i was not able to understand what makes the difference i burn data at 16x or 4x. Can anyone explain me what's the difference and at the same time when i try to find it out over internet was not able to get any proper answer for it. Thanks in Advance.

[amit shah]

There is not much difference between 16x dvd and 4x dvd but if you are going to be burning movies, you want to stay at 8x to insure that the burn quality is good but in most of the case i would suggest you to burn all your DVD in 4x because it might happen that the DVD RW/ROM lens would be weak and it won't read your DVD which is being write at 16x.

[Killen]

Normally 4x, 8x, 16x 32x refers to burning speed that the disk will record at the more writing speed has a good quality but if you really want to copy some song onto your computer then dvd writer of 4x speed will take longer time than dvd writer of 8x. So i would recommend you to buy a DVD which has max speed so that while burning it's good for you and when you are copying it on another computer it will read very fast.