I get a lot of burned copies of old tv shows from various sources. They play fine on all players. When I burn my own copies they only play on some players. I use good media such as Verbatim, Sony etc. I'm using DVD Shrink. Am I doing something wrong?
Are those players brand new or quite old (2 or 3 years old)? If they are old are you're burning DVD+R it's possible they won't recognize that standard.
Media is very important and always burn at low speed (not more than 4x suggested)
Thanks for your quick reply KOKOmO. It's funny, my oldest player is nearly 5 years old and will play anything, even US discs, though according to its manuel it shouldn't. My newest is only a few months and will play hardly anything I burn. It'll play, as you suggested, x4 but not anything else I burn. Yet it'll play nearly everything that other people burn, no matter the speed. It's very frustrating not to know what the problem is.
I'm not familiar with that burner. I do quite a bit of re-ripping backup copies,on the fly usually and between all 5 of my burners,they have considerable variations.Plus I re-rip some buddies backups and they re-rip some of mine. It all comes down to compatability between burners,just like the compatability between stand alone players.
My new hp 460c burner didn't live up to my compatability standards,so I replaced it with my older benq 1620. Now when I try to rip one of those hp backups,both my benq and lite-on dvd-rom couldn't get through all the read errors off that hp writer,using quality media with a 4x burn speed.
Dvd shrink doen't contain a burn engine. It uses programs such as DVD Decrypter and Nero to let it auto-burn. DVD Shrink just rips and compresses only.
I don't know if I can help you much. Is that an external or internal DVD-RW drive?
Use Nero infotools to find the exact model name and firmware version,but seeing as how it is having the problem of recognizing other peoples backups,I can't help you much there.It all depends on what quality of burners they use/media/and how fast they burned them.Even the format that they use can be affected by how your writer will accept them.Maybe they can switch formats to see if your DVD-RW drive can handle them better.
A separate dvd-rom drive may be an option.They are better at recognizing more backups from many different burners.This will give you 2 different drives at trying to rip those backups.
I've got an extra lite-on 167-t dvd-rom that helps me rip through the different backups from all 5 of my pc drives-3 or in boxes.The litey would rip through my buddy's nec 2510 dash backups whereas my benqs wouldn't recognize them.
That litey couldn't rip through a couple of my other drives on a certain format,but it rips through most of them.If it recognizes the backup,it'll rip it.Except for that hp burner-too many read errors.I've got an I/O magic 16x and a Khpermedia +8x still sitting in their boxes,compatability on stand alones and re-ripping their backups are the main issues.Lots of variations between all those burners.
I also have a tv recorder and same applies,just like pc burners.
Thanks again Saugmon for your reply. I'm afraid most of it is too technical for me I'm practically a total beginner. It's an internal burner only a few weeks old. I just can't understand why most stand alone players will play my burned copies but some wont. Is it a media, burner or player problem?
It can be a combination of any of those. That's the hard part. Many members are having issues trying to play their own backups,playing other peoples backups are even harder. I just go by the basics.
Quality media
4x burn speed max
no multi-tasking during the ripping and encoding phases
Up to date firmwares,if you are having issues.
100 more things that can happen.
Media quality is usually the first thing that anybody will ask about. Using the good stuff,helps rule that out as an issue.
Try finding out your actual burner model # and the current firmware.That may need updated and couldn't hurt.
Hi Saugmon,
Tried what you suggested. Total success. I got -R and burned at speed 4. Everything I burned played on all dvd players I tried. Muchas gracias amigo.
