I've got a Samsung DVD player / recorder. I recorded my son's football game on our Sony 8mm camera and then plugged the camera into the DVD recorder's front input jacks. After fiddling for a while w/ getting the right inputs set up I recorded the game on DVD+R. The DVD plays fine on the Samsung unit that I used to burn it and I was pretty proud of myself for getting it to work. I made 2 other copies, gave them to other people, and neither of them work. Their players apparently just don't find anything on the DVD. Any ideas where to start? Thanks - Jason.
Your friends have old made DVD-Players that do not recognize the DVD+R DVD Disc you give to them at all. They need to upgrade to a new DVD players that play DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+R DL, DVD-R DL, and others kinds of CD's Media's.
Is there a different kind of media I could use that would be compatible with their "older" DVD players?
One problem may be that the disc needs to be finalized. That process is simply the writing of the table of contents to the disc and closing the disc so that it can no longer be recorded. Unfinalized discs can be played on the recorder that originally recorded it, but they cannot be played on any other players or recorders. Check your manual to find out how to finalize the disc. As for another medium, DVD-R discs are more likely to play on all DVD players. Older Panasonic DVD players and some others refused to play DVD+R discs because "they violated the DVD Forum specifications." If your friends have older Panasonic models, those DVD players will not play DVD+R discs, even if they are finalized.
cornej1: "Maybe" DVD-R. DVD 1996, DVD-R 2002, DVD+R 2003, DVD+R DL 2004, DVD+-RW.....etc. Usually the first DVD Player made on the 90's only play Retails or Rentals DVD's, but not recordables or others. Today's DVD Players play all kind of Media, even CD's, upgrade to a higer def. and also record too, etc. DVD+R is the most popular use by most electronics Brand's today, but in 2002 DVD-R was the most popular.
The DVD-R conforms to the DVD Forum specifications, specifications to which even the original DVD players conform. There were two original DVD-R discs, the 3.95GB authoring version (which had better success on more players when it was introduced) and the 4.7 GB general purpose disc. This was followed by the sequentially written DVD-RW disc that could be used for both video and only appended data. At this point HP, Sony, and Philips broke ranks and introduced the DVD+RW (2003). This was intended to replace both DVD-R and DVD-RW because its design allowed editable video and data recording with quick formatting and erasure. (A DVD-RW disc took 96 minutes for full erasure at that time.) The DVD+RW Alliance soon learned that people preferred a dye-based disc to a more expensive rewritable disc, so they had to introduce the DVD+R within a year after the introduction of the DVD+RW. The popularity of DVD+R versus DVD-R varies by both country and continent, even today. For "universal" playback, DVD-R is a better choice only because of the early Panasonic DVD players. Cornej1's problem, however, is more likely one of an unfinalized disc or perhaps the DVD+VR format if that format was used to record the disc. DVD+VR is an "open-ended" format used by set-top recorders to record programs of an undefined length such as a TV program. Computer drives know the length of the program before recording, but set-top recorders do not, and this +VR format can cause some problems in older DVD players. An unfinalized disc is the most likey culprit.
