A couple of days ago, I burned my first DVD-Rs in Nero. I burned three discs and none of them turned out well. The problem I'm having is when I play the discs in my DVD player. Every now and then, for no reason, in the middle of an episode (I burned 4 episodes of my favorite soap, B&B, on each disc), the picture will suddenly stutter, jump a bit, or even half stop. A couple of times, the picture (or disc) has "crashed" (meaning it stops in the middle of a scene and nothing happens when I try to rewind or fast forward, so then I have to jump back to the menu and start over again). Usually, these problems occur in different places on the disc each time I play it. The discs I used were of some generic brand. They were cheap. The discs read 8x. Then, I tried my Sony DVD-R. It read 1x-4x (I haven't figured out yet what all of these Xs mean, but I'm sure it's of some importance!). The result of the Sony DVD was perfect! I have watched approximately 2 and a half B&B episodes on the Sony disc on my DVD player and so far there have been no stuttering, jumping, or "crashes". I have even tried rewinding and fast forwarding and the disc still plays beautifully. What the #!?#ยค!# is up with that?? I thought it didn't matter what kind of DVDs you buy. I thought you'd get the same result no matter what disc you use. Sort of like with video tapes. Is it really the discs that are the problem here? Can you give some insight into this matter? I hope someone can help me because right now I'm feeling really depressed about this! Thanks for any help you can give me! Heni
All I can say is stay away from "Memorex" and other "unknown brands" DVD-R/+R blank medias. I recommend you to get these highly famous medias or also known as FUJI/TY, Verbatim, Maxell and SONY (make sure it says "Made In Japan" on the cover). You won't regret getting them in the near future. The majority of members at afterdawn.com will say the same thing. Hope this help you a little about DVD-R/+R media technologies now-a-days.
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/193298 hi here is a thread regarding cheap media which would be helpful to you. Yes crap media is the cause of many burning issues. Generic blank dvd media has problems with the dye not being even on the disks resulting in bad sectors. Some media known for being crap are princo, memorex, and store branded media (i.e. compusa) to name a few. Try reputable media such as taiyo yuden, verbatims (at your local comuter retailer) and sony. Fuji is a good brand as well as long as you get the ones made in japan. Also see the second link in my signature as it has a nice list of media codes for blank dvd media which if you chose to read the whole thread you will see why the chice of media is important. Some of the generic will burn good from time to time but also remember to factor in after a short period of time they may start to deteriorate. I can say from experience i am a reformed crap media user and now only use taiyo yuden and verbatims with a smidgen of fuji in there. Hope you find the plain information in this reply helpful. You can also download a program called dvdinfo (do a google search) as it will identify the actual manufacturer of your disks and check for errors as well.
alkohol and matt72: Thanks so much for your quick responses! It's much appreciated and your answers have been most helpful to me. I understand what the problem is now. I also appreciated the link. That was great! Thanks again! You've made my day! Heni
