what distinguishes Rsync-type backups from other backups?

This link classifies incremental backups into Rsync-type and other type:

Rsync-type backups

The main characteristic of this type of backups is that they maintain a copy of the directory you want to keep a backup of, in a traditional "mirror" fashion.

Certain rsync-type packages also do snapshot backups by storing files which describe how the contents of files and folders changed from the last backup (so-called 'diffs'). Hence, they are inherently incremental, but usually they do not have compression or encryption. On the other hand, a working copy of everything is immediately available, no decompression/decryption needed. A downside to rsync-type programs is that they cannot be easily burned and restored from a CD or DVD.

Other backups

Most other backup applications tend to create (big) archive files and (of course) keep track of what's been archived. Creating .tar.bz2 or .tar.gz archives has the advantage that you can extract the backups with just tar/bzip2/gzip, so you do not need to have the backup program around.

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  what distinguishes Rsync-type backups from other backups?

  
  


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  When restoring from "other backups", you do not need to have the backup program around but tar/bzip2/gzip. When restoring from "rsync-type backups", do we need to have the backup program around?