Is it the Disk or the Player

[brakiss]

I have copied a movie with no problems using dvdXcopy and nero. I can play it on my pc dvd player with no problems. I put it in my DVD player (oritron 600) and the picture comes out choppy and delays. Is it the disk or the player? Any help would be great. Thanks in advance.

[garryheather]

Chances are it will be the media. "Unfortunately" your DVD-ROM drive in your PC and the playback software on the PC itself will probably be more "fault tolerant" than a standalone player. It is not uncommon to see a PC play a DVD that is not compliant (a lot can play just the VOB files on their own, but a standalone player can not, for example), whereas a DVD player will reject it or have problems.

If the video seems a little jumpy then also look towards encoding problems, however if the playback seems to break up and jump about instead of just stuttering, then it's likely to be a media issue. You can definitely suspect this if it gets worse the further into the film you play the disc since the outer edge is problematic on a lot of media at the moment, especially some of the bargain basement variety.

[freebee22]

It is really hard to tell if it is the disc or the player...first off not all player can play dvd-/+r.....I have a player that does that and when I use the same disc on another player it plays good (media was a pioneer)....try that disc in another player see what happens....now you mentioned NERO.. I have had problems with nero giving me skipping and freezing on play backs with stand alone player, so I went with recordnow max and gearpro dvd and both burning software were great no skipping or freezing. All Iam saying here is, it is a trial and error combination of burning software, media and player...to see what works for you....what I did was, I use the good media to for my experiment just to make sure it is not the media...and yes it was a little bit expensive for a trial and error but now Iam using ritek and all my backups works fine on my stand alone player..

just my .02 cents

[P@iNKilleR]

well freebee22 is dead right about Nero its a bit of a pig the way it works!! U would thing they'd get the compatibility sorted by now. I have 2 players in the house & if I use nero to write a dvd I will work on my an eclipse dvd 695 but not on my mothers cyberhome adl 528 its not the disk as I use diferent ones depending on the film (not cheapo disks either) if the cost of buying now software is expensive look around for a copy of vob instant cd/dvd this works for me & its about £10 for the oem version

Kev!

[garryheather]

... Yeah, we all blame Nero !!

Well, I don't - I have no problems with it at all... the only criticisms I see of it are here in the forums !

Don't forget the recording application dictates WHAT is written to the disc. The firmware in your recorder dictates HOW it is written.

While I do not deny that some recording software could technically be more complaint in what it produces as far as the recorded medium goes, there is not a single authoring application out there today that can compinsate for bad media. If the media is flaky and the recorder doesn't support running OPC, or selects the wrong write strategy for whatever reason, then you will get a bad burn. Your recording software can NOT compensate for imperfections on the disc. Practically all software communicates with your hardware using a generic language protocol (the MMC instruction set) and the only real cause for any incompatibility is if either the recorder or the software does not impliment these instructions correctly.

Don't forget also that the quality of cheap media may fluctuate between a number of discs in the same batch. Unless you ALWAYS get problems with software A but NEVER get problems with software B, you should always look towards firmware upgrades (or in some cases, downgrades) and the media you are feeding your recorder.

If you find that your software does not do what it says it will, then you complain like hell until you get your money back.