DVD Player cannot play my older video CD's

[mikebosy]

Hi all
For 2 years I've used a Philips DVP520/05 as my player and it plays any disk I put in. VCD's, CD's with photos within folders (jpeg) home edited DVD's and even Karaoke CD-G's! Prior to the DVP520 I had a cheap player from Asda for 9 months until that gave up the ghost. It played all my disks when it was working OK.
I decided to buy a player for the bedroom TV, so assumed all players nowadays would be compatable with my discs. I tried a non branded from Asda but that would'nt play my VCD's or my photo CD's. I took it back and bought a Philips (can't remember which model) and that wouldn't play VCD's/photos.
I'm now getting desparate so went into town to a specialist audio/visual shop and took my disks with me (having previously checked all disks on my 520/05 and they all were OK) Guess what? even on expensive model they couldn't get the disks to play except the home edited DVD's I then tried 2 more specialist shops and the result was the same!! So I've bought a Philips 3020 as the 520 is not available and resigned myself to a ball aching job of converting all my VCD's to DVD and burn my photo folders/files to DVD.
Has anyone else had this problem or is it just me!!!!????
Mike

[Krispy Kritter]

You can search in the DVD Players section for a unit that will play thouse formats. Just check VCD/SVCD in the options.

Also, from the reviews, the 3020 does support VCD and SVCD, but the 3020K only supports SVCD.

[jman98]

I have a Philips DVP-642 and it is incredibly fussy about VCDs. It will play all commercial ones except it won't let me time skip (jump to a specific time) at all. I have some old VCDs I've made from a variety of sources, usually old VHS tapes I made of TV shows years ago. I authored them with VCDeasy and my player refuses to play quite a few of them. I've got a few VCDeasy authored VCDs that it will play, but most of them it just refuses to play at ll. Why? I have no idea. I haven't had any better luck with Nero authored ones either. Philips seems to have some weird quirks where it may or may not play your homemade VCDs. So yes I have had this problem and unfortunately it seems to be "normal" for Philips

[jman98]

I forgot to mention that it does play all my VCDeasy authored photo VCDs. If you authored any photo VCDs with Nero, that could be a problem as Nero plays loose with the specs for these and I have seen players (notably Pioneer) that just refuse to play Nero authored photo VCDs but will play VCDeasy authored photo VCDs.

[mikebosy]

Hi jman98
Good news regarding my problem, I contacted Philips and to my surprise they actually rang me to talk about my disks not playing!!! Bad news is that the technology in the new DVD players is so refined now that the players do not cope the the vast spread of disks (CD / DVD) on sale and the various type of formats with video editing.

So..... this is what I have done:-
1/ Transferred all my jpeg slide shows to a branded disk eg Philips, Verbatim and Sony. CD's now play on my portable DVD player and my new DVD player

2/ Ripped videos from CD's and converted and burned to DVD's using Ulead Studio v7. DVD's now play on my portable DVD player and my new DVD player.

This is a good result and only another 30 CD's to rip , convert and burn!!!!

Regards
Mike