I have bought a spindle of DVD-R discs. My Toshiba DVD player's manual (SD-330ESB)states that it will play DVD-R discs. I have copied some movies to these discs, (from a friends DVD+RW discs). My copy discs will then play on my second (cheap) DVD player and on my PC, but not on the Toshiba. Does anyone have any idea why this should be and how I can solve it? Thank You...........
There could be a couple of different factors here. First, we will need to know what type of DVD-R media you are using. Get a tool like DVD Identifier or DVD Decrypter that will give you your DVD-R media code. Second, what speed are you burning at? Some DVD players are picky about burn speed. Generally the slower you burn the more compatible the disc. I burn at 4x, this is a very reliable speed. Third, there is a very good chance the Toshiba does not actually support DVD-R. Toshiba does not really support anything except originals. I have only had luck with DVD+R Taiyo Yuden with my Toshiba, but it only recognizes the disc a DVD and takes too long to load it (I do not feel like waiting to see if it actually works). If you are using good media and burning at a reasonable spped, you should contact Toshiba about it. They may have a firmware update or something to enable higher compatibility.
What is your burner's brand name/model#/and firmware version? You can use dvd decrypter/dvdinfopro/dvdidentifier/and nero info tool to gather this info. The toshiba manual says it supports dash format. Some burners vary,meaning some players may or may not play them. I've got 5 burners. The dash works decently from my benqs/excellent in my I/O magic/and mediocre in my HP 640c. There's quite a bit of variation among all those burners.Some are strong/quality burners-Play in many drives.Other burners are weeker-Errors on backups/ and/or stand alones have a harder time recognizing them.It all comes down to compatability on those stand alones. Burners can even favor a certain format like my I/O Magic 16x empa drive: Those dash backups played in a heck of a lot more stand alones than my benqs.That I/O booktyped plus backups had horrible compability on those same stand alones. My booktyped Plus media on my benqs play vertually everywhere,those dash backups don't even come close to those benqs,performance and compatability. You've got to get some quality media like jaguargod posted.That can help on many issues. Try another burning program. Keep that burn speed under 4x No multi-tasking Defrag your hard drive. Keep pc free of virus's/spyware. If your burner is dual format,definitely try some quality plus media,preferable something made in japan.Just look on the wrappers.Try a few plus backups in those stand alones and pc drives and see if they favor them over your dash backups.
Hi angus999, Unfortunately, I know of no standalone player that has any way to upload a new firmware upgrade. Many players over 1 and ½ years old cannot sea many of the newer discs. I.E. When those players were made, there weren’t any discs mfgred over 4X. Now there are discs that burn at 8X and higher. Plainly put, older standalone players cannot sea that which wasn’t in existence when they were born. The same holds true on discs made by newer companies OR for that matters newer dye apps such as “Advanced Metal AZO” which are relative new comers to the media scene. You can try to use discs that have been around for a long time such as Ritek, RICOH or Verbatim –R, 4X. Failing that, you have 2 choices: 1. Consider retiring your old Toshiba, sometimes that’s all you can do with electronics that are outdated. Look to purchase a new, “el Cheapo” DVD player that will play anything you throw at it like your current one OR a Cyber-Home which can be had for as little as $29.00 or regularly $39.00. 2. If you have a higher end DVD burner that’s capable of converting a +R DVD into a DVD-ROM you can use that. DVD-ROM’s will play on more players than any other type of discs, especially older players. Best of luck, Pete
Hi angus999, For starters, your Toshiba SD330E DVD Player was made way, way back in 2003. Unfortunately, I know of no standalone player that has any way to upload a new firmware upgrade. Many players over a 1 year old cannot sea many of the newer discs. I.E. When those players were made, there weren’t any discs mfgred over 4X. Now there are discs that burn at 8X and higher. Plainly put, older standalone players cannot sea that which wasn’t in existence when they were born. The same holds true on discs made by newer companies OR for that matters newer dye apps such as “Advanced Metal AZO” which are relative new comers to the media scene. You can try to use discs that have been around for a long time such as Ritek, RICOH or Verbatim –R, 4X. Failing that, you have 2 choices: 1. Consider retiring your old Toshiba SD330E, it’s given you a lot of good service and sometimes that’s all you can do with electronics that are outdated. Look to purchase a new, “el Cheapo” DVD player that will play anything you throw at it like your current one like a Cyber-Home which can be had for as little as $29.00 or regularly $39.00. 2. If you have a higher end DVD burner that’s capable of converting a +R DVD into a DVD-ROM you can use that. DVD-ROM’s will play on more players than any other type of discs, especially older players. Best of luck, Pete
Thanx for your reply. For your info' my burner is a Pioneer DVR-106D. It is only a 2x speed. The discs I am using are Ritek Full Surface Inkjet Printable DVD-R 8x Made by Ritek, Tiawan. I used Clone DVD Ver 3.0.2.5 Can I make any DVD I burn into a 'CD-ROM' so it will play on any standalone DVD player?. What's this booktyping thing. Thank you in anticipation
I hope you meant dvd-rom instead of cd-rom. Some burners don't support booktyping to dvd-rom. Pioneer is one of them,but some peeps have used hacked firmware to achieve booktyping in some pioneers from what I have read about. Booktyping: It's the ability to alter the plus format and change it into the dvd-rom format,the more universal format. I booktype all my backups. The compatability on standalones is phenomenal compared to my dash backups from both my benqs.
Yeah, sorry Saugmon, I meant DVD-ROM. I shall have to look around to see if I can download a booktyping program/firmware upgrade for my Pioneer. Thanks very much for the info........
Thanks again.I have downloaded a firmware upgrade and will install it later. I read on another site that the Pioneer A06 cannot be upgraded to booktype and doesn't support it. Can't find the 106D though. I assume it must be the same drive. Cheers
Your right, Pioneer drives do not support booktyping. I have a Pioneer A09, which is the same as the OEM 109, like yours will be the same as the 106. However, movies I have burned with the Pioneer are more compatible than movies that I burned with a Plextor PX-716A ($130 burner), which were booktyped. You need to make sure you are using the best DVD+/-R (not RW) media. DVD+/-RW tends to be less compatible. I think better players reject lower quality burned discs to maintain the highest quality picture (just a guess on my part). That would explain why Apex and Cyberhome play just about anything, but not Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, etc... Even if your burner is gourmet, which I assume the A06 is, you are bound to have bad burns with bad discs. Also DVD+/-RW discs should be burned slower than the non-rewritable ones. I don't know if this will be your case, but I have noticed that my Pioneer burns almost flawless discs when using Taiyo Yuden DVD+R 8x media. These burned discs play on all of my DVD players, even my older ones. My Toshiba player has problems with them, but I am pretty sure all Toshibas made before mid 2004 do not play any copies well. I remember there being some type of class action lawsuit against Toshiba because of incompatibility with DVD-R discs. As for upgrading your DVD player, I would only suggest this if your other DVD player is not enough and you will need an extra anyways. I would rather get a Samsung than a cheap brand, but that's just me. I know Samsung will play DVD+R discs, but I do not have any good DVD-R discs to test Samsung. Also, Samsung will be less than something like Sony and probably be a lot better too. You could also look at Bravo DVD players. There is one for about $200 to $300 which is supposed to be at a similar level as Denon Players that cost 10 times as much. Do some researching before you actually buy a DVD player. Also, if you go from Best Buy or something like that, take advantage of their 14 day return policy. Make sure everything is good and working with the player and that the picture on your screen is very good (yes, the DVD Player does make a difference in Picture quality).
The only pioneer dvdrw that I know of that is capable of bitsetting is the DVR-109 flashed with buffalo f/w.
Yep, even some burners with the booktyping ability can still fare poor on stand alones. My benqs are awesome-they have had their backups play in 40+ drives among my family/friends/ along with their friends relatives.My last I/O magic 16x drive had it's own booktyping utility. Those I/o dvd-rom backups totally sucked a**! The dash fared much better,but not even close to my benqs. I'm surprised that the plextor booktyped backups didn't fare well. I heard plextor is using benq for their lower budget drives.I love both my 1620s. I've been having freezing issues on my sony dvp-ns325, a cleaning helped. When I slapped in my first verbatim Dual layer backup,that sony wouldn't play the last quarter of that backup. A new $37 magnavox, wal-mart special replaced that sony. It plays everything now and the picture is near perfect. If that sony didn't recognize any of my backups,then it was usually from my tv burner backups that wasn't finalized or damaged discs. You eliminate the media quality,format/verify on as many stand alones as possible/ then figure out if you have to have a burner or stand alone player change. Nowadays,both burners and players are well under the $50 price. I've got 3 burners sitting in a box: Kyhpermedia +8x-30 burns/ I/O Magic 16x-20 burns/ HP 640c lightscribe-15 burns. None of these burner can even come close to stand alone compatability compared to my benqs.
Okay guys thanks for the discussion. Now, can you recommend a DVD burner for my PC that, a. doesn't cost the earth, b. will booktype (I take it, that means make reasonably compatible DVD ROMs), and, c. is available in the U.K. Cheers.
I can't help you with the UK sites,but others like creaky can help you.They'll find you a quality booktyping burner for the money! Here's some info you can get from my favorite USA site, newegg.com on the burners I know that can booktype. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827101651 Benq 1620 -if you can find them Benq 1640 -Probably my next burner. Benq 1625 with the lightscribe. Also a candidate for my next burner.I believe this drive should booktype,not 100% though. Not a whole lot of them out there since they are newer technology. Lite-on 1693s. Lite-on has a separate booktyping utility you have to download,but is a quality burner. Some of the newer sony drives are re-badge liteys. Of course,Plextor is the king of burners and has the capability of booktyping.These are a lot more expensive,but they have a low budget drive that is built by benq.
Thanks again Saugmon. The Benq 1640/20 appear to be reliable by all accounts. I will have to scour the UK market for one. Cheers. Angus
I don't know if upgrading your burner will really help. If the Pioneer A06 is anything like my A09, then upgrading will actually be downgrading. My drive loves Taiyo Yuden DVD+R 8x media. When I burn discs on to these, they are more compatible than a factory pressed DVD. I'm not joking. My Samsung DVD-611 rejects about 10% of factory pressed DVDs or has mega playback issues, but loves the TY discs burned with the Pioneer burner. However, the same Samsung does not play the discs that I burned using the Plextor Burner even when booktyping. My DVD players that reject Booktyped DVDs are the PS2 (this one does playback the Plextor burns though), Samsung DVD-611, my RCA (don't feel like finding the model), and my Toshiba DVD/VHS. I was also using pretty good DVD+R (Ritek R03). Out of these players all except the Toshiba and Samsung DVD-611 play the same Ritek discs burned with the non-booktyped Pioneer burner. Why? Because the Pioneer burner burned with about half the errors of the Plextor burner. Now with the Taiyo Yuden DVD+R. Only the Toshiba has problems. It reads the discs, recognizes them as a DVD, but then takes too long to load them. The BenQ and LiteOn burners may be good, but I doubt they can produce burns like the Pioneer can. When you get down to it, DVD-ROM booktyping will increase compatibily on discs burned with the same burner, but overall, it is burn quality that will determine how compatible a disc is. Out of my 25 or so DVD-ROM booktyped DVDs, I have 43% compatibility. With the same brand non-booktyped discs on the Pioneer burner I have 71% compatibility. With the Taiyo Yuden Discs I have 100% compatibility. I would recommend you try different media first. If you can find Genuine Taiyo Yuden try it out. If you can find the Fuji or Sony DVD+R 8x Made in Japan try those out. Regardless of what burner you use, those will be the discs you should get. If they do not work on your Toshiba, then you can go ahead an buy a booktyping burner.
Thanks for the advice Jag' I also own a laptop fitted with a Sony DVD+/-RW DW-D56A drive. Do you have any knowledge of this and it's reliability (good/bad or otherwise). I had never heard of the TY disks you use but I note that quite a few members comment on their reliability. I'm in the U.K. I will have alook around and check out that brand here. Cheers.
I am not familiar with your Sony's drive, but Sony Desktop drives are usually LiteOn, which is good and I am pretty sure your laptop drive is also a LiteOn. When you are looking for DVD+R media, you can also look for Maxell, Sony, or Fuji made in Japan. The "Made in Japan" is the most important part here. It will usually be somewhere on the label near the UPC. The Sony and Fuji will actually be Taiyo Yuden Media and the Maxell will be Hitachi. Verbatim is also good, but I am not sure which ones to recommend. Everyone says MCC-003, but that is hard to tell from looking at the disc. I think for Verbatim Made in Singapore is good. Someone else will have to confirm this though.
