Standalone recorded DVD playing in a Mac problem

tigerdad · Member Joined: 02 Aug 2008 Location: United States

Hi, and thinks in advance for any help that you can give.

My family hosted an exchange student from Japan this past year. After she returned home, the local PBS station showed her graduation ceremony. I recorded the broadcast using a Philips standalone DVD recorder and a RVD+R disc.

The disc played fine on the Philips recorder, a panasonic DVD player and a Toshiba laptop using both WinDVD and Windows Media Player. I sent the disc to the student in Japan. She tried to play it on a Mac laptop, but it wouldn't play. I'm still trying to get some specific details about what happened when she tried, but for now all I know is that it wouldn't play. When it comes to DVD recording, I'm more of a casual user, so I have a couple of questions.

1) Do Macs typically have any issues playing DVDs recorded on standalone units?
2) Do Macs do better with DVD-R discs?
3) With the skimpy information that I have, does anyone have any ideas about where I should start to troubleshoot the problem?

Again, Thanks for your help.

Tigerdad

terryj · Posted: Aug 02, 2008 21:36

Answers:

1. Not if the discs have been finalized in the Recorder before hand.

2. Yes, but that is more on the recording side, than the playback side.
I use DVD+Rs in my recorders, and once finalized, they playback
fine on my macs.

3. Create another disc, and finalize it. Send it to the friend again,
see what happens.
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AntnyMD · Member Joined: 08 Jun 2001 Location: Silver Spring, MD USA

And one other thing .. To this day, many, many people do not know there is a difference between CD's and DVD's ... They will report in a heartbeat that the "CD" wont play. Lots of folks still stick DVD's in CD players and wonder whats wrong.

tomlee59 · Posted: Aug 05, 2008 14:46

There's always the possibility of a marginal burn/media. Hopefully, you have the original source (i.e., you didn't record directly to the DVD recorder), but if not, have the student send back the disc. Since you are/were able to play it on your home gear, you can always regenerate another disc from that one if you don't have the source. Get some decent media (e.g., Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden), burn it at a notch below top speed, and that should take care of the more common causes of non-playback.

tigerdad · Member Joined: 02 Aug 2008 Location: United States

Great thoughts all ! Thanks for the responses. I've already burned another disc and I used a -R this time just in case. AntnyMD's idea is one I hadn't considered. Maybe I should do a video CD.

Thanks much!

Tigerdad