DVD-r media problems with players

[ebina]

Before I went to purchase cheap media
to write dvd-r disks I searched this forum.
I was suprised at how little information I got,
so I felt I would add my info to the forum.

If you want to do anything other than play
your dvd-r disks on your computer I cannot
recommend buying cheap media. I tried
the cheap disks from meritline. They test
ok, the dvd writing software writes them
ok, and they play fine on your computer,
but most standalone players will not play
them correctly.

After problems with my own Panasonic player
I tried several of my friends players, and all
exibited the same symptoms. dvd-r written
on pioneer or apple disks play fine. Written
on meritline disks they won't play at all.

I read they would play on Apex players, so I
tried the 500 and the 1500. They will at
least start on those players, however you
cannot fast forward greater than 2x speed
without locking up the player, and you
can't search backwards at all. On disks
with long movies that took up most of the
4.7G, a movie would frequently just stop
playing (usually in the last 1/2 hour of
a 2 hour movie), especially with the
Apex 500. With Apple media the Apex
players don't hang, but still fast forward
and reverse hang the player.

Needless to say, none of these players
have any of these problems with
commercial disks.


Has anyone used cheap dvd-r media and
gotten it to play in standalone players?

[lenzar500]

I have tried the purple dvd-r’s 25 for $39
I have tested and seem to play fine, on my pioneer 434
I’m looking forward to purchase more dvd-r, now I’m not sure which ones, since the cheaper don’t work so good.

Did anyone tried PRINCO brand, please post you results

Thanks

[SlyDog]

I've used Meritline, and they work fine on my Toshiba DVD player.

I have also used DVD Pro, and have had my share of duds. Most of the time, they have worked fine.


At 1.79 a piece, your bound to have some compatibility problems. But if they work for that price, why not.

[ebina]

Verbatim and Apple have worked on all the players I've tried them on. The Meritline disks worked on the Apex and Pioneer players, not Panasonic or Sony. The hang on the Apex was fixed by burning another Meritline DVD, I guess the first one was just bad.

Now I have to decide if I buy a new DVD player, or use the $5.95 media instead of the $1.55 media.

[drmpadilla]

please see related issues with regard to the topic of playing DVD-R's in standalone units in the lengthy post i wrote at the thread below:

http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=26398#post26398

the info (hopefully) should be interesting if not also helpful :)

[ebina]

Status of Meritline media.

I've burned 9 discs so far, and had three of those be bad and need to be discarded.

I am filling these disks, using almost all of the 4.7G of space. Sign of a "bad" disk is that near
the end of the movie, which I assume is near the center of the disk where sectors are closer together, there start to be lots of read errors that choke the DVD player.

Still cheaper per disk than using the quality branded media, but not worth the hassle in my opinion.

[floater]

cd's and dvd's are not records, they read from the inside -> out.

and while on the topic they do not spin at a constant speed like a record, for example an audio cd player's laser will cover 1 metre/sec and so will speed up towards the centre.

[ebina]

So is there an explaination for why I always
get read errors near the end of a long movie
if I'm going to get them?