Pioneer 533 problems

[Bridge]

I got the Pioneer 533 unit. I tried my first disk but it had a write error at the end of the disk and the whole thing was destoyed.

I tried my second and after I filled the disk up it finalized. I put it in some other machines and not one of them would see the disk. It froze two machines up duing startup. The others just didn't work or said disk error. Only the Pioneer 533 would see and play the disk.

I tried a third and only put one file on it. The machines found that one but it just started playing. No title screen. You have to stop it and hit the top menu button to see a title screen.

- Do I have a bad machine? I see that the burner fills things up to the very, very end; does the Pioneer over burn it's disks so when other machines try to read the disk it can't read that far out?

- Does it sound like a problem with it generating table of contents and title menus?

- Has anyone else had problems where they burn a Pioneer 533 disk and it has trouble being read by all other mahines?

- Anyone know how much space (minutes) I have to leave left before I have to finalize the disk if it is an overburn issue?

[Frobozz]

First, try a different brand of blank media.

I presume you are burning and finalizing video-mode DVD-R. Other players won't play a VR-mode disc even if it is finalized.

The Pioneer won't let you overwrite the disc.

[trhouse]

Some machines allow you to select play at once or default to a menu screen first, the Pioneer only has play at once, so the machine is working normally.

The 533 allows recording to dvd in video mode or VR mode. VR mode is less compatible with dvd players as mentioned above. VR mode is useful if you need to remove video from the hdd and later put it back on without re-encoding.

Your failed first burn near the edge may indicate a media quality issue as well. Poor quality media typically will have problems near the outer edge. Good quality media I have used is Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim ( MCC media ID ).

[Bridge]

The two bad disks where TDK. Funny thing is the one that worked was a cheap Nexxtech disk because I didn't want to waste any more TDKs.

So, the Pioneer is set up to start playing as soon as you put in the disk 'eh? All my others brings up a title screen first.

Yeah, I was using Video mode as it was a -R disk.

Maybe the unit doesn't like the TDK? I have to keep trying to fill up the disks and see what happens before my 30 day return policy runs out.

[blinky88]

I have a Pioneer 530H-s and use -RW to record material from the HDD in Video Mode and SP quality. If the recorded material is over 2 hours, I split the image and then burn both images on 2 discs. I then edit the disc or discs on my computer using DVD Shrink and burn with DVD Decrypter .... never had a problem of any description, more importantly, the end result is as good as the original material on the HDD.