A DVD-RW disc is a rewritable optical disc with equal storage capacity to a DVD-R, typically 4.7 GB (4,700,000,000 bytes). The format was developed by Pioneer in November 1999 and has been approved by the DVD Forum. The smaller Mini DVD-RW holds 1.46 GB, with a diameter of 8 cm.

DVD+RW is a physical format for rewritable DVDs and can hold up to 4.7 GB. DVD+RW was created by the DVD+RW Alliance, an industry consortium of drive and disc manufacturers. Additionally, DVD+RW supports a method of writing called "lossless linking", which makes it suitable for random access and improves compatibility with DVD players.

DVD±R (also DVD+/-R, or "DVD plus/dash R") is not a separate DVD format, but rather is a shorthand term for a DVD drive that can accept both of the common recordable DVD formats (i.e. DVD-R and DVD+R). Likewise, DVD±RW (also written as DVD±R/W, DVD±R/RW, DVD±R/±RW, DVD+/-RW, and other arbitrary ways) handles both common rewritable disc types (i.e. DVD-RW and DVD+RW, but not usually DVD-RAM).