Stand Alone Player issue - any ideas appreciated

[lmills2]

After 2 weeks + of research and testing various things, I am completely stumped.

I have a Sony dru-500AX burner, a Zenith 2550 5-disc stand-alone player (which supports DVD-R and DVD+R), and use Verbatim DVD+R media.

I capture Mpeg2 files with ATI MMC TV and have no problems (rarely ever get a dropped frame)

I edit Mpeg with Tmpgenc Plus (no problems here)

I use Tmpgenc DVD Author to do menus and actually burn the DVDs.

My first two projects went like a dream...absolutely no problems. Both DVD+r's play on my PC as well as in my stand-alone player.

Now...all of a sudden...the stand-alone will not play anything I do, even though I'm doing absolutely nothing different. The first two still play fine, all my bought DVDs are fine, so I know it's not the player. The media is still from the same box. I can't see where anything is different.

I've tried using Nero, RecordNow, just to see if it was the burning software, and I've tried other media just for the heck of it. I've also experimented with using smaller amounts of disc space to see if fuller discs might be the problem. The burns will only work in my computer (at least they're not coasters!)

I just can't figure out why something that was working is no longer working.....

Totally bizarre. If anyone might have any ideas of what is going on, I would be most appreciative.

It has to be me, right? Perhaps, there is some way to compare discs to see if anything is different in how they were burnt (even though I don't see how that's possible)

Thanks!

[Reality]

Don't you just love computers! This is the type of problem I really hate.

Here are some things I would try (not necessarily in order) to narrow down the cause:

Do the discs play on other DVD players? - try a friends.
uninstall all software, defrag and reinstall.
scan for viruses.
Try different media.
Try another authoring and burning program (trial versions?).
Try a different burner - maybe its gone bad.

I had a problem something like this with a CD burner. I was burning MP3s and playing them on my Soulplayer CD MP3 player. One day nothing I burned would work but it would play on the computer. After alot of troubleshooting I got a new burner and presto no more problem!