Is it my media or my DVD player problem

[plasmannc]

I finally got a DVD burner recently. Been using Svcd's until now with great success. I have a Mintek 1600 stand alone DVD player that has handled everything I threw at it until now.

I just burned some DVD's (all at 4X speed) and went to view them on my player. The DVD's used were +R and 4X rated. They played fine for about 60% or more of the disk and then began sticking and freezing. This type of behavior happened always in the last 40% or so. Checked several other burns with similar results.

I took the same DVD's and played them on several different PC's DVD drives and they played without incident. I was also able to copy alll of the date from each disk back to my HDD (used DVD decrypter) without a single error.

Based on the above it appears to me that the DVD's were burned successfully, no coasters or anything else.

I have read much about media quality on various forums and in general believed that poor quality media would lead primarily to coasters. ie they should play badly irrespective of the DVD drive. Does this seem to be a correct interpetation?

According to info on VCD help the Mintek 1600 plays both + and - R media. Is it possible that despite this one type is prefered over another?

Finally even if a disk is perfectly burned do DVD players have problems reading different media based on Mfg or dyes used?

Thanks for any ideas that can be offered.

[jman98]

Your interpretation about media quality is not correct. Poor quality media may lead to playback problems, just like you are having. Since you didn't mention the name of your media (are you ashamed to tell us?), I can only guess that you are using the cheapest discs you can buy. With DVD, I learned a long time ago that you get what you pay for.
Yes it is possible that your player may prefer one type over another. I have an old Apex DVD player that will play both DVD+R and DVD-R, but it was really fussy about which brands of DVD+R I used and didn't care which brand of DVD-R I used.
Yes, even if you have a perfect burn, some players may refuse to play the disc based on the dye being used or the manufacturer. I usually will only buy Verbatim burnable DVD discs, with Fuji being my 2nd choice if I can't find Verbatim. I bought Memorex once and I think 4 out of 25 discs were coasters, so I never bought them again.