What brand to trust????

[vivisimonvi]

So here's the deal... Bought a batch of Optodiscs, inexpensive media, they should at least be able to do what it's supposed to do, right? Wrong!! They play fine in my DVD player (the disc gets going at least), although it can't seem to handle writing near the 4GB zone with my DVR-104... so I dumped the Opto's...

Next is TDK... RELIABLE from what I hear from everyone, more expensive media (these are the G02000000 ones). They write fine, even at 2X compared to the Opto's that can't seem to handle even 1X without errors (computer reads it fine)... Everything is fine up to this point... WRONG... my Apex player just won't recognize ANY TDK disc I've burned so far, I've done nothing different except use different media. So what's the deal?????? I've tried for nearly an hour to get JUST ONE disc to play with no success whatsoever, yet the Opto's start just fine, even a disc with some errors on it. Why is APEX of all DVD players complain about these discs?????

[jmelan4]

I have burned about 50 TDKs on a pioneer A04 and have had similar problems playing them on APEX players. 1x or 2x all play great on my pioneer DV525, but my brother's APEX only plays 1x burns, and then it freezes up often.

[disturbed1]

If I put enough mustard on a piece of bologna, my Apex 5131 displays Oscar Myer on the TV

Seriously though, can't say any of my Apex players have rejected any media. Even plays Princo 1x past the dreaded 4gig mark. I do have a stack of TDK made TDK 2x DVD-Rs and a stack of Maxell made TDK 2x DVD-Rs, burned in both an A03 and A05 which play just fine.

Scan your discs back for read errors, if none are present, it could be your authoring/burning program(s). Which programs do you use for these chores?

[vivisimonvi]

The discs I'm burning are reading perfectly fine on my computer (I've ran a Scandisk check with DVDRINFOPRO)

It's a bit ironic I've bought an Apex for the sole purpose of compatibility and it rejects even "reliable" media. What's more weird, is that my parent's Samsung seems to reject half the media I throw at it, AND THE TDK'S ARE PLAYING PERFECTLY FINE ON THIS!!!

I've used the same burning steps with the Opto's and TDK, Apex will play the Opto's but NOT the TDK's (the only difference is the burning speed that I'm testing this very moment at 1X instead of 2X). I've been using RecordNOW DX, also Ulead DVD MovieFactory at 2X burn speed. I'm now trying CopytoDVD at 1X that I will post results shortly.

[vivisimonvi]

I've used CopytoDVD to burn the TDK disc at 1X write speed. The resulting disc has burned successfully AND is readable on my Apex player!! The 2X speed discs are still unreadable on the player, even through they read fine on the computer... Is there a particular reason a perfectly good disc burned at 1X and 2X would read differently on a DVD player?

[disturbed1]

The disc can still have an abundance of C1/C2 errors on the disc at a 2x burn.

If you have a lite on DVD-ROM you can use KProbe to scan the disc. I know with my A03, some media burnt at 2x won't play on my Apex 500ad, but does play when burnt at 1x. The 5131 plays all.

Apex uses a cheaper laser which may not be able to cope with the read errors, where your PC's DVD-ROM, which is higher quality, can read it fine.