I'd like to know how you advanced users test for coasters? Do you play the movie on a player and visually look at the last chapter for pixelation, etc? Or, is there a program that will check the integrity of the burn?
Personally I run every newly burned copy through DVD Shrink's initial "Quick Analysis." 99.99% of the time if it passes the quick analysis test it'll play fine in my players. I'm fortunate in having 3 players that will play almost everything thrown in them; a GE 3-disc player, a Sylvania DVD/VCR combo and a Magnavox.
My experience with players is that if it will play on my Pioneer then it will play on just about everything else except two different Sony players that belong to some friends.
The main thing is that it really ought to play in your own player first.
I have burned quite a few movies but have only tried them on maybe six or seven DVD players so don't think I'm flaming Sony. That's just been my experience with these two particular players.
I know my backups work full stop with my method and choice of media, so I only test them when I want to watch them.......
However in the early days, when I was trialing media types I did the following:
Place it in the dvd player
Made sure it was detected ok.
Played the opening credits.
Then jumped to the end chapter and played it ALL the way through - tested the outer circumference of the disc.
Then used the chapter skip button to skip from chapter 1 to the end chapter (repeatedly) - this tested the laser's ability to lock onto the streams (meaning that the media surface/data did not have reflectivity issues).
Method I have found useful is to play burnt DVD through a program such as PowerDVD and then skip through the chapters to ensure that each starts and plays OK. Only takes a couple of minutes - manual job but largely effective. If you have any problems on this skipthrough on DVD ROM you will certainly have playback probems on a standalone sytem.
