DVD Recorder won't play recorded programme

[James Glennon]

I bought a DVD Recorder recently, everything seemed fine until I recorded a programme from the TV for my son on a DVD +RW 2-hour disc.

When he tried to play it back on the DVD Recorder it stopped at 59 minutes.

No amount of skipping forward, scanning forward, cleaning the disc would shift it beyond 59 minutes.

We then got a brainwave and tried it on my son's new DVD Player. It worked perfectly.


Anybody got any ideas?
JG

[SVL]

If this has only happened once, and the recorder is able to record/play other programs, then the problem has likely been caused by a damaged/defective DVD +RW blank. Some DVD drives are better than others at handling damaged blanks; in general, I would avoid using any DVD recorder too heavily for playing duties, because their optical systems seem to be more delicate.

To see if the blank was the culprit here, you can try erasing it, and burning a new program with the same recording quality; if the blank is defective, it should freeze at the same approximate spot.

Something else you can do is analyze the blank on a PC using a DVD media testing utility, e.g. whatever comes with Nero Burning ROM (the exach name of the utility escapes me right now). If the blank is defective, it is likely to show during the tests.

[James Glennon]

Thanks Sergei,

That was my conclusion as well. Are there 'good' brands to look out for and brands 'to avoid'.

The machine records using the following discs

DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, for rewritables is there a preference for '-' or '+'?

Many thanks for your contribution.
JG

[SVL]

If the machine can handle all types of blanks, which type to use would be more a question of convenience for a particular recorder, i.e. depending on whether you want to use a DVD-VR or DVD+VR (Video Recorder) format or just DVD-Video, need additional editing features, would rather have the recorder finalize the recorded disc by default instead of doing that manually etc.

From the brands I have used (-RW and +RW), I never had a problem with TDK, Sony, Fuji and Samsung. For some reason, I was less successful with Verbatim blanks using two different standalone recorders and a PC recorder, but I am not sure if those Verbatims were the real deal, and not some cheap fake, so again this may vary.

[James Glennon]

I tried the DVD +RW recorded programme on the pc and it worked perfectly.

I deleted everything on the disk, changed the quality from SQ (2 hours) to EQ (4 hours), recorded past the place it stopped (59 minutes) and it recorded perfectly. Don't know if it will happen again though?
JG

[SVL]

I have seen many strange things happening on different DVD machines even with factory-pressed discs - studio releases and not-so-studio releases :D ...

Basically you should only worry when your DVD recorder is failing regularly with different brands of blank media.

[James Glennon]

I have seen many strange things happening on different DVD machines even with factory-pressed discs - studio releases and not-so-studio releases :D ...

Basically you should only worry when your DVD recorder is failing regularly with different brands of blank media.


Another funny thing! I burned photographs (jpegs) onto a CD, when I insert it into the DVD recorder it shows them as a slideshow but they come up REALLY SLOWLY (about 30 seconds per picture) on the screen, again when I put them into another dvd player, it was REALLY FAST (about 5 seconds)!

I can choose slow, normal or fast on the slideshow, but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Any ideas!
JG

[SVL]

I haven't had much experience with JPG on DVD... sounds like it is doing some kind of image conversion, and that can take a long time, depending on image parameters and the way the chipset used by a specific DVD model/brand is handling these images.

[James Glennon]

i thought it might be just the way the particular dvd handles jpegs and not a fault in the DVD recorder.
JG

[stypee]

i thought it might be just the way the particular dvd handles jpegs and not a fault in the DVD recorder.
JG

The player you own wouldn't be a cyberhome by chance would it?

[BradOlson]

I hope the player you own isn't a Cyberhome