Strange XSVCD/XVCD Playback Question

[ld]

I have an unmodified Apex 600A with loophole menu, and it's been extremely tempermental about playing svcds or xsvcds. Often it will play and then not play the same exact disc (more often not playing). I've wondered if getting some updated firmware might help, if not a new player.

Anyhow, what I've been doing which works consistently is capturing in MPEG2 with my DVC II, and then re-multiplexing it in TMPGE using the MPEG-1 VCD Non-Standard setting. I've done this with resolutions of 352, 480, and 720 (x 480) at bit rates up to 4500. My question is, does the playback suffer compared to a true SVCD or XSVCD when I multiplex the same MPG2 as a VCD?

What's nice is there's no reencoding, so I can capture in real time and get decent results. Since I can almost never play an SVCD in the Apex, I can't compare a regular SVCD with the same stream remultiplexed as mentioned. Any thoughts?

[Truman]

If you have problems with SVCD, you can multiplex as XVCD (Video-CD non-standard). Since it is the same MPEG, the playback wont suffer. But you lose all the SVCD advantages, like 2 audio streams/ subtitles. Maybe the a 4500 bitrate is a little to high for your player.